Addressing the Gender Gap in College Aspirations

By Cate Doty (New York Times)

For every 100 American women enrolled in college, there are only 77 men. And for every 100 women who graduate with a bachelor’s degree, only 73 men accomplish that, according to data from the Postsecondary Education Opportunity.
At a College Board program Thursday afternoon, educators talked about the ways they are trying to close that college gender gap.

The gap is chalked up to a myriad of reasons. Traditional schools aren’t tuned in to the hands-on learning styles of boys; the media portrayal of smart young men generally is of socially awkward boys who don’t get dates to the prom; and young male students, particular at-risk youth, lack positive male models in and out of the classroom.

Melissa Kleiner, an assistant principal in Pittsburgh who led the program, said that throughout her career, she has seen capable male students get left behind as her female students move on to college. She also pointed out that as jobs in traditionally male-oriented professions, such as manufacturing, disappear, young men are left at a further disadvantage. “Boys and men will have to rethink their place in academia,” she said.

Ms. Kleiner set up a program for boys in her middle school, using frequent group sessions and field trips to examine what leadership is, and how the students can assume leadership roles. She hopes that the students will use these skills to move on to higher education. Her program starts with eighth-grade students, and she will work with those same boys until they graduate from high school.
Some of Ms. Kleiner’s motivational tactics might seem like recess, such as a ropes course in the Pennsylvania woods (during class time, to which other teachers might object) or watching a montage of clips from movies like “Gladiator” or “Saving Private Ryan.” But the film clips, in their own way, show men leading other men, which, Ms. Kleiner hopes will motivate her students to find leadership and success in their own lives.

“The challenge for all of us is how to engage these guys at a younger age,” said Nancy Beane, a college counselor from the Westminster Schools in Atlanta. Although her school has a 100 percent college attendance rate, she said, the male students still need extra attention. Guidance counselors at her school started a leadership program called Guise, which targets male students with similar tactics as Ms. Kleiner’s.

But outside the school walls, the obstacles for those male students are still there, and one of them is parents who have questioned why their sons should participate in such a new, untested program.