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What’s happening to boys in our universities?
Paul Dumitru, Mariana Marin, Ioana Pavel
What’s happening to young men at our universities? While the number of students in Romanian higher educational institutions rose from 190,000 in 1990 to 650,000 by 2005, the proportion of male students has fallen sharply. Today, nearly 71 percent of students enrolled at the University of Bucharest are female, according to Teamwork, a private organization of academics and students linked to the Department of Sociology.
The trend has been dramatic. In 1990, almost 53 percent of university students in Romania were male. By 2005, the situation had turned on its head with over 55 percent of students women, a gap of more than 50,000.
Professors often find themselves confronted entire classes of women with not a single male. There are more women enrolled in every field of studies except engineering and agriculture. In education, over three quarters of students are women; in humanities and arts almost 68 percent; in social sciences, business and law almost 62 percent and in science 60 percent. The question is, Why?
“Girls, psychologically speaking, are more serious and prudent and they see that it is very important to have superior studies in order to gain professional success,” said Ionela Mihut, an expert in psychology at the workplace. Gender Gap Index 2006 reveals that the dropout rate among Romanian boys grows as they advance through the educational system. The number of boys and girls is almost the same in kindergarten and primary school. The problems begin in the teenage years.
“Boys mature slower than girls do and their psychological profile becomes more receptive to the temptations around them like alcohol, premature sex, drugs and the Internet,” said psychologist Diana Parlog, an expert in the aging process. Other young men become impatient with education and anxious to start earning money as quickly as possible, said Mihuţ.
Only 36 percent of high-school males in Romania choose to go to university, while 45 percent of the girls enroll. Many other countries have seen the same trend. In Hungary, 55 percent of university students are women; in Bulgaria 54 percent; in Albania and Estonia, the figure exceeds 60 percent, according to a study by UNESCO issued in 2001.
Experts have put forth several different explanations. Christina Hoff-Sommers, an educationalist with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, thinks schools have become too feminized and natural male behavior is discouraged and frowned upon.
“In a great number of American schools, gender reformers have succeeded in expunging many activities that young boys enjoy: dodge ball, cops and robbers, reading or listening to stories about battles and war heroes,” she wrote in an essay posted on the Internet.
Other possible problems: most school teachers are women and boys growing up may have few positive male role models. Instead, the media glorify sports heroes, rap singers and even criminals.
“If parents don’t watch carefully over the education of their sons, and if they don’t encourage communication, which is extremely important especially when boys are very young, these children can take the wrong path … and can get lost trying to find themselves and attach themselves to (negative) models promoted by the mass media like Gigi Becali,’ said Parlog.
Some experts believe an education system more and more focused on standardized tests favors girls because they seem to be better able to maintain their focus and concentration. Boys tend to be more disorganized and suffer in greater numbers from conditions like Attention Deficit Disorder. At the same time, physical education and sports programs, which used to give boys an outlet for the excess energy, are hardly maintained.
A Newsweek article last year quoted studies showing that boys tend to have better hand-eye coordination and are more impulsive than girl. They prefer a more dynamic way of learning and would rather compete with each other than collaborate or work in groups.
“The male tendency to be competitive, risk-loving, more narrowly focused, and less concerned with feelings has consequences in the real world. It could explain why there are more males at the extremes of success and failure: more male chief executive officers, more males in maximum security prisons,” said Hoff-Sommers.
Some educators suggest returning to single sex education. Studies have shown that both boys and girls may perform better when they are in classes with their own sex rather than in mixed classes.
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