With its new booklet The Missing Men on Campus: Can Colleges Boost Male Enrollment? the influential Chronicle of Higher Education has confronted one of the academic world’s most ignored problems. Unfortunately, some “solutions” reflect deep seated mindsets that did the damage.
Missing Men—a republication of select articles—opened with a piece highlighting two major issues. One was anti-male bias, including: 1) “The sentiment that men are the problem” in college life. 2) “Discipline policies that disproportionately net boys.” 3) “Sexual assault prevention programs” which suggest every male student is a potential rapist. It could have added that females have more scholarships available.
The other was disturbing statistics. Student bodies haven’t had comparable proportions of males and females since the 1970s. Today nearly 60% of students are female. 2020 saw the male percentage of students drop by three times the female percentage. And those are milder numbers. Another study found that 13 million more women than men hold college degrees—a gap growing as older generations disappear.
Three articles detailed policies counteracting these problems. Heading the list were addition of new majors, sports teams and clubs that attract male applicants. Other articled looked at consequences of excessive drinking, pornography addiction, womanizing, etc. These include: 1) Impairment of academic performance and increased dropout. 2) Alienation of males who want to avoid expectations of such behavior.
But such matters were addressed by only five of 15 articles. Five others took a male “angle” racial issues-combining useful observations with "Critical Race Theory" type screeds. One article advocated male enrollment as a means of propagating leftist ideology. Another patronizingly claimed white working-class male conservatism results from “understandable resentment” rather than principle.
The problem wasn't just that concern for males as such was limited. Much of the book promoted ideas contributing to the problem it claims to address. Several articles used prejudiced interpretations of fact or contorted logic to claim female dominance of college life is “no big deal” or masks continued “unjust male dominance.”
Potentially more damaging was promotion of “toxic masculinity theory.” This doesn’t just seek to correct negative manifestations of masculine traits. It condemns as "toxic" such normal masculine traints as toughness, acceptance of risk and self-reliance.
The first article contrasted “toxic masculinity theory” and traditional methods of overcoming male misbehavior as a difference between “changing or channeling male mind-sets.” Traditional "channeling" would affirm masculine toughness—then direct it towards quasi-stoical qualities and away from belligerent machismo. This presupposes masculine qualities are both innate and positive.
“Toxic masculinity theory” considers masculine toughness to be both a "social construct" and negative. It aims “to shatter stereotypes around what a man is and what a man should be.” And it insists “Traditional masculinity — commonly viewed as males being tough, not asking for help, and not crying or showing emotions — [negatively] impacts people of all genders.” Males are to be made "vulnerable" rather than strong.
One basis for this is the unscientific theory that psychological fragility is innate in humans. Psychological toughness is presumed impossible. “Apparent” toughness is explained away as a “coping mechanism” for “unresolved trauma.” Valuing toughness is seen as psychologically damaging “repression.”
Another basis is valuing physical and material well-being above good character and “non-material” sources of personal satisfaction. Valuing safety above bravery it condemns acceptance of risk. Valuing "net success" above the satisfaction of unaided achievement and individualistic self-confidence it condemns self-reliance.
Such priorities don't make normal males happy. And as “traditional masculinity” has declined “men are falling behind in school, committing suicide, and dying of overdoses at a horrifying rate” and “their wages have been erratic — but still lower (in adjusted dollars) than they were two generations ago.”
Providing the right majors and activities is certainly needed to increase male college attendence. So is elimination of anti-male bias. But this cannot stop at eliminating "bias against people who are male" while "bias against masculinity" remains. The more colleges treat "traditional masculinity" as "toxic" the less likely it is that normal males will be interested in attending them.
