Gender debate revived at Harvard

While there may be fewer women involved in math and science, Rhoads said, they tend to dominate in the field of psychology and the humanities. But this disparity has not raised concerns among academics, he said.

"We're not going to have affirmative action for men going into child development," he said. "I don't see that argument being made."

Same shit, different day. One over-representation is okay (even laughable to suggest it a problem) while the other is an emergency and needs to be remedied immediately. Why aren't men more involved with the humanities? Nothing against the subject, but it's probably something that isn't studied nearly as much as why women aren't into Computer Science.

There was an article on here a while back about artificially inflating women into the medical profession is leading to a shortage of doctors in UK (since women are more likely to take their huge amount of knowledge in the field with them when they quit 10 years later). Don't you dare suggest that this should change enrollment levels or you might lose your job.

I know that articles like this (and others on the numbers of men vs. women in college) have been posted here now and again. Does anyone recall offhand if any of these discussed undergraduates and graduate students separately? I can only remember them referring to "college students," which typically implies undergrads, but could be interpreted as including grad students.

I'm a first-year grad student studying Literature (an MA degree), and there are more men than women in my program. It surprised me at first, but does make sense: if so many women go to college only to find husbands, the balance of the sexes would necessarily change at the grad level.

A female friend of mine is about to graduate with a BM in Opera Performance, and will go straight into grad school. According to her, the undergrad program is mostly women--but on the graduate level, the sexes are pretty equally represented.

My sister-in-law is a Computer Science grad student, and my father's a professor of Sound Recording Technology (which is male-dominated at the undergrad level). I've not asked either of them about this yet, but I certainly will.

Has anyone here noticed a similar shift between the undergrad and grad levels in their program?

In any case, if the research being performed is only focused on undergrads, they might very well be crippling the accuracy of their results. Personally, I'd like to know exactly how the sexes pan out on the grad--and doctorate--level.

and men know it. that is ONE of the reasons that men are not attracted to that field. it is mildly interesting. but men typically have responsibilities and they know that they are going to need to make money to support their families...and the humanities are not going to provide a high enough income and thus they look for other majors.

oregon dad

I have to interrogate your statement that the humanities do not pay.

I have two real good friends and colleagues at a Big Ten private university who are professors in cultural studies, and they each make $200,000 a year.

Is that not sufficent "pay?"

That is approximately 50% more than what an engineer makes after graduation.

I do believe you have a point about why men tend to not go into the humanities.

But you have not yet explored it...

the best salaries I could locate on AAUP Faculty Salary Survey were the mid 160s at Yale and a couple others.

This would not be considered the norm, however, as most of these positions were well below that.

Certainly an undergrad degree or even a masters would not yield anywhere near what an engineering degree would.

My point is that, while the humanities are interesting topics, getting a typical undergrad degree (not a full professorship) in this area is not going to pay the way very easily for a family of 4.

oregon dad

Graduate school is a good path, and especially if you can get the university to pay for it.

Apply for a teaching assistantship, and they will pay YOU to go to school.

I was paid $10,000 per year with all tuition and fees waived to complete an MFA program at a Big Ten university.

It is not that difficult to set yourself up.

You have to know the system.

You're saying engineers make $133,000 after graduation?

I have absolutely no idea where you heard that. It is a work of fiction - maybe you are talking about engineering professors with years of teaching experience?

Even an MIT grad with 4-year degree does not make near that much, entry level. And if your engineering or computer science degree is not from a top university, you're doing well if you ever make more than half that before retiring, unless you get into upper management (which MIT, etc. grads usually do, unless they get Ph.D. and go into academia or research.)

Master's degree doesn't help that much over 4-year either, although these days many companies list that as a minimum requirement, since there is such a surplus of engineers and programmers looking for jobs. The majority of engineering graduates probably start from $24k-35k, and are working for a miserable asshole manager who has them sitting in a corner doing drawings for the first five years.

Four-year computer science graduates are lucky if they can even get a job, usually at help desk or web page design. I have even heard of Ph.D.'s doing the latter.

And in both these fields, if you lose your job while in your 40's or later, you're lucky if you can find another one.

Check out Norman Matloff's web site, if you don't believe me. He's a computer science professor at U.C. Davis, and writes about age discrimination and the H-1B issue.

-ax