Do you think Affirmative Action should be applicable to men in college?

I'll admit I don't know much about this issue, but I don't support affirmative action at all, with maybe the exception of the poor. However, since most college in the US are private institutions, I think it's up to them to decide how people get in. But as a principle, I'm against it.

Anyway, does this happen in all courses/majors or only some of those? Some courses have always had a female majority and others a male majority...

 

I dont think affirmative action should be used to help white men. I think it should be used for what it was introduced for... helping out ethinic minorites.

 

Affirmative Action does apply to men from marginalized groups.

However, even aside from that fact, women are significantly less likely to perform blue-collar or public safety jobs than men. Men without college degrees are far more likely to find success in working up the latter in many of our public safety sector of society. Many popular careers among men do not require higher education, while all careers that are popular and respected among women require them. Men are not less likely to be accepted to universities. They are less likely to apply. They are not disadvantaged because of their genders in academia. It simply isn't the case.

 

I think the best course of action regarding dropping rates of male college attendance, is looking at why men are less likely to apply, why they are less likely to graduate and why men in their 20s in particular are performing below their female equivalents across the board.

I don't think it's just a case of lower male college attendance either - Western economies are increasingly service-based and things like manufacturing and engineering are far less prevalent than they were before. I know that tons of communities here have been permanently damaged by the loss of their industry in the 1980s, and haven't recovered at all.

I don't think affirmative actions is the answer for anything.

 

Social inequality is not the same as mathematical inequality. Sociological inequality is marked by disproportionate opportunity. Mathematical inequality is when two numbers are not the same. These are two extremely different things.

More women work in the Fashion industry then men; however, there are more male top designers and CEOs in the industry then female. This is not a case of sociological inequality. You could argue that the idea working in fashion not being seen as manly might discourage more men from working in fashion. You could argue that culturally men are not so much discourages as much as less likely to be interested. Either way, statistically we know that the opportunity and accessibility is not unequal; therefore, this is not an issue of social inequality.

 

Either way, the education system, and particularly the examination process, at least in the UK, was changed in the 1980s so that girls could achieve better results - which, as Simple Thoughts says, isn't a bad thing in itself, but it's not very good if boys do worse as a result - and they have been doing consistently worse since the 1990s - and the gap has increased.

I've mentioned it before and I will mention again, and again - a one-size-fits-all approach to educating boys and girls does not work, and has never worked, and never will work. Simple as that. They simply acquire and process information differently - which has been proven with reliable research.

Nothing will change with regards to college attendance rates until things change in the primary and secondary levels of education.

 

this is something that my school sort of went through in high school, and i'm sure it would affect the numbers for university/college later on. at my high school, you were allowed to leave school at 16 if you wanted, assuming you passed year 10, most of the guys didn't really want to be there, they mostly just wanted to get a job and be free from school. at the end of year 10 i would say close to 50% of my male friends dropped out to get a job, at the end of year 11 there was literally 5 friends left from about 40-50 in year 10.

 

All jobs do not require bachelor degrees. All good, well-paying jobs do not require bachelor degrees. The police officer who is working their way of the rank will most likely surpass the high school teacher with her shiny English masters degree in annual wage through their career. Blue collar jobs are not lesser jobs, but there is no doubt that men are more likely to pursue them. That is all.

Let the record show that I am currently pursuing a degree that I might never actually use. I adore education and encourage others to see it out regardless of need; however, that is far from practical for the average American. Most people would jump at the opportunity to jump into the workforce without having the job through the hoops that have now become much of our education system today. It just so happens that more careers that are popular among men do not require college degrees. I don't know how what I've said translates to them being "pushed out" or told to "go somewhere else".

 

I don't believe in any form of Affirmative Action, so no.

 

There will never be equal prominence of all social groups in any part of our society. Whether it be education, the workforce, media, etc. What we can work towards is sociological equal opportunity. (Not to be confused with true equal opportunity as there can only be factors that hinder specific individuals rather than social groups.)

The thing about affirmative action that many people don't realize is that it is not a checks and balance system. Affirmative Action is a symbolic piece of policy. There are no statistics to support the idea that there has been some giant influx of the groups that it is allegedly meant to help. The increased presence of women and people of color over the pass few decades can only be compared to their outright non-presence in the time prior.

Nearly all major universities across the nation have come out and made it blatantly clear that they take the demographic information from their students applications and use it to create their statistics on their student bodies, but they do not even glance at them during admission. Academia hasn't followed AA for decades; some universities never started because, as I said, there are no checks and balances.

The only reason why it has not been removed because federal and state governments don't want to form a replacement policy. A truly progress policy would be to work against academic inequality by actually funding schools in urban areas at the same rate as other institutions. That, however, would require that the government actually dedicate funds to the public systems in those districts.

Affirmative Action is absolutely a band-aid that hardly even helps marginalized groups as Caucasian women are by far the largest beneficiaries. However, there is little sense in ripping out band-aids when the wound refuses to heal. When our governments would rather have a controversial, symbolic piece of policy rather than actually attempting to bridge the racial and ethnic gaps behind academic funding in this country.

 

We can never have true opportunity for the individual meaning people are also disadvantaged for reasons that aren't sociological and that there is nothing that can be done about that. (i.e. things that hold us back from our personal or home lives. Not because we are of a particular race, gender, class, or orientation.) My reference towards the individual had nothing to do with individualism or collectivism.

We cannot have true equal opportunity for individuals because our governments cannot control fate and protect us from personal disadvantaged. We can have equal opportunity on a sociological scale, which says that the reason why we are held back is not simply because of our race, gender, sexuality, etc.