The majority of college students are women -- as are the number of bachelor's and master's degree recipients (bachelorette's and mistress'?). Why? I can only speculate, but I'd guess that it has a lot to do with the feminization of education at the primary and secondary levels. All the way through high school, kids these days are taught that having high self-esteem is more important than actually learning and performing.
Even though men still dominate universities (and earn the majority of doctorate degrees), the public education of children is run by women. Not just teachers and principals, but mothers -- who are often raising children alone, or practically so with fathers who can't be bothered. This story doesn't say so (and indeed the bewildered principal is a woman) but does anyone have any doubt that the "parents" who said grading with red ink is "stressful" were mothers?
Society would benefit if men got more involved in raising their kids. Divorce is a huge obstacle, but even in two-parent families the men are often distant from the child-rearing process.
(HT: Glenn Reynolds and Fark.)
Gaps in anything will be filled, and here we see that at work in the child-rearing field. For so long, children were seen as the woman's "field" while the men went to work. While the men were gone, women sort of took over and jumped the education system.
Come on, guys, time to even out the scales.
I'd like to see how the numbers would settle out if students had to pay for their own education. I'd guess there would be a lot fewer students in women's studies, post-modern literature, and other non-employable fields if the students had to be well-enough educated (or at least trained) to find work to pay off their loans.
DeoDuce,
You say that like a mass movement of men to full-time child rearing would be a good thing.
Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't, but I think it would be a good idea to try and figure out why women were traditionally the child rearers for thousands of years before saying that we should toss it out the window.
DD and JC: I'm not saying men should replace women in child-rearing -- which would probably be impossible -- but I do think men should be more involved with their kids than they often are.