Utah Foundation hopes to grow economy through (female) graduates

'Since 1985, state appropriations have gone from an average proportion of total funding for higher education of 77.4 percent to 51.6 percent, according to 2014's state higher education finance report. Tuition in Utah has subsequently risen to account for the loss in funding.

While Utah's in-state tuition rates remain the third lowest in the nation, the rising costs imposed on students still has educators worried.

"We're trying very hard to figure out ways to enhance our revenue to keep that cost down," Huftalin said.'

There you have it. The motivation is not to try to get more women into bachelor's degrees instead of associate's degrees. It's to get them to borrow more money to turn around and pay to the colleges who see maybe half their last-two-year revenue stream drop out and marry the guy they met in college -- which was the whole point of going in the first place, especially in Utah.

"What?", you say? "Just what the hell are you on about, Matt?"

For those who don't know, Utah has the largest number of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (a.k.a., "the Mormons", or "the LDS Church") in the United States. In fact they initiated the territorialization of Utah with the US gov't back in the 19th century and the main headquarters of the church is in the state capital, Salt Lake City. The LDS Church was founded in upstate New York, not too far from the city of Rochester. They moved westward and attempted to spread their new belief system and were usually driven out of their new settlements, sometimes quite violently and/or under threat from local or state-level officials. Their new theological ideas were considered heretical and inconsistent with Christianity even though the new religion professed the belief that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the son of God. But with so many other new beliefs not even considered tolerable by many mainstream Christians of the time, they were typically sent packing, sometimes under threat of or under actual gunfire.

The new religion's adherents, once finally settled in a relatively safe place, adopted as common canon values that emphasized marriage as an important and necessary institution enabling people to reach full maturity as adults and to create stable environments for children, creating cohesive family life values, the avoidance of use of any intoxicants/stimulants (including alcohol, nicotine-containing products, caffeinated drinks, etc.), thriftiness, hard work, and showing respect and obedience to earthly governmental authorities of whatever kind (so long as these authorities were legitimately recognizable and did not infringe on their religious consciouses or repress their religious practices). These traits made them desirable citizens. After all, what sort of trouble are people like these going to cause? So they were left in peace to do their thing. This was the same thinking that the gov't has taken toward such sects as the Amish and Quakers. They may not be "like everyone else", but they aren't out to do bad things nor are they shiftless, lazy, or unproductive; quite the contrary. So while the Mormons have not had much trouble with government officials persecuting them since settling in Utah, they have with people who don't think their theology is fit for comparative religious belief discussions also involving, for example, Catholic theology, Lutheran theology, etc. [I'll refrain from rendering judgment on that matter, as it's out of scope of the issue at hand, and besides, when it comes to theology and what is and is not fit for discussion within a particular topic, hell if I know "the rules". Not sure there are any, anyway.]

It wasn't until they reached what is now Utah that they were safe to really settle down and start building towns, etc. Now Utah is what it is today, a big ol' state, and it has lots of Mormons in it. Not everyone you meet in Utah will be a Mormon, but a lot of them. (Utah's pop'n is ~2.9 million, and of those, ~62% are Mormons). Not every Mormon you meet will be a fully practicing Mormon either, but that's true of any religion, especially these days. Traditions however around what is expected of people in terms of family life decisions are among the very last things to get challenged or changed when a religion is under strain from external influences, such as modernity or distractions created by modern living and media, which Mormonism is, like all the rest. Even if a Mormon drinks coffee, for example, that does not mean he or she does not feel like delaying marriage until 30 or even 25 -- and it's unlikely his or her parents won't, either, and they'll probably say so.

Predictably, one thing that is still rather common in Utah is the notion of young Mormon women going to college because that's where the "good ones" are to be found (reasoning: young men who will likely make good husbands are to be found in colleges because a man with a 4-year college degree is a lot more likely to be able to get and stay employed well vs. one without a 4-year degree).

The Mormons are still by and large quite traditionalist in their thinking about men and women's roles. Going to college with "temples in her eyes" (Mormons refer to their houses of worship as temples, not churches) is an expression used to say that a young Mormon woman is going specifically to meet a man to marry, and not really to get a college degree as such. An expression has been used much more in the past to describe the same thing but absent a specific religious context is "going to get an M.R.S. degree". This was a lot more common a saying back in the 1960s and '70s than today; you might be hard-pressed to find many people who use it today, at least not in pubic.

It comes then as no surprise to me to read that so many in-state female college students in Utah drop out after a couple years in a 4-year program college ('cause that's where the boys are), and it is not uncommon in colleges in Utah for a good number of their undergrad students (who are also under 25, usually under 23) to already be married, maybe to another student there, maybe not. It is also not uncommon for people to get married while they are in college to a fellow student. And indeed, given the sex role expectations among Mormons, the new bride usually drops out of college and typically a baby isn't too far behind after her new husband graduates and gets his first post-collegiate job.

This social pattern is however getting in the way of the colleges' revenue streams. And we all know it's more important to make money than it is to let people live their lives the way they want to! Not that I think it's wise to drop out of college with only an associate's degree and no plans to get employment experience, nor wise for young adults to marry so young in an era when in so doing, the men are taking a big chance at losing their shirts in a divorce and the women foregoing opportunities to learn new things and try different ways of living life before heading straight into wife-and-motherhood. Age 23 and already married with 1+ kids? Heck, did I even know what I wanted out of life at 23? No. Maybe others might, but I didn't. Takes some time, especially these days.

Nonetheless, if people want to live a certain way and go down a particular path, the gov't and/or colleges should not be trying to mess with it. We've had enough g*ddamned social engineering over the past 40 years to last us (well, me, anyway) the rest of my life. But to think, this whole thing is really just about getting more young people into college tuition debt. Ugh.

I used to think the investment bankers responsible for the toxic home loan and asset bubble pump-up schemes of the last decade of the 20th and first decade of the 21st century were the lowest form of financial leech scum-suckers in existence today, but now I am ready to lump college financial managers and strategists into it as well. Talk about being the species that preys on its own young!

Scum-sucking leeches. Disgusting.

Actually, Matt, your comments touch on some radical changes that are comnig to universities in the US (some of which have positive potential for men). You are very prescient.

First, the numbers: the number of potential college students is declining. The numbers (male or female) are not going to college. St. Mary's in NJ is about to vote to admit men. Many of these schools have no choice. It is not ethics driving this; it money: the lack of students. So many are now finally opening up to men.

But there is more...

From about 1995 to about 2006, universities expanded rapdily. Their endowments were all invested in real estate because it came from imaginary real estate money (Harvard, for example, has one third of its endowment in real estate and this is very bad). And they began constructing all sorts of nonsense departments in social sciences. And now that the money is scarce, those departments, very heavily weighted with female professors and female students, are going to shrink. Meanwhile, engineering schools are bursting at the seams. So it should be interesting how this impacts university policies: the money is no longer available to support left-wing Marxist departments.

So I think what you noticed here is the beginning of a tidal wave of desparation as campuses recognize the financial times that are coming. And men hold the key.

Meanwhile, we all know the ranks of men are decreasing on campus. But is this really so bad?

As an aside, first, before I return to ranks of men on campus, let me digress. Men are working in labor, military, trades,firemen, policemen, miners, oil riggers etc. They are getting pensions. They are doing real manual labor while women are entering jobs that will not stay: real estate agents, publishing, law -- which is in HUGE oversupply. Even the family practice MD is in oversupply (once nurses can prescribe medicine and once computers are used more widely for clinical assessment; women are higher in numbers in family practice but men dominate surgery and specialities which will not be replaced by nurses with computers). So it is these men who will have the jobs in demand: all men do not have to go to college. Men should just keep doing what they are doing: finding the path of least resistance.

Anyway,men are 40% of the campus. Aside from lesbians and gay men, this means 2 women for every one man. Men are now in the position women were on campus 30 years ago: a huge minority. (ANOTEHR PARENTHETICAL: SO what does the media do? It now speaks about how old sperm can induce birth defects. But this is a lie put forth by the system to induce men to marry. Old sperm only induces defects with old eggs. And the only deformity attributable to old sperm is schizophrenia, going up from 1 in one 3000 to about 1.1 in 3000 -- hardly worth worrying about. The point is that men can now be choosy and delay parenthood. Women cannot. And there are not enough men on campus.) Men should only realize their power to demand being taken on dates and have women pay for the dinner. They should give the feminists what they want: make the women sign a contract for sex. Men can be choosy now. The feminists have turned women into sluts and now validate slut-culture.

Meanwnhile, we will see more and more all-women schools having to switch over. The student paying body is not there. You hit the nail on the head. In Utah they are trying to tax everyone to fix this problem. But it will not work.

(What do you think is at one corner of this debate on immigration? The universities are desperate for paying students, even if they must come from abroad.)

I would like to close with one issue that does disturb me and which will likely be addressed soon enough. I was in the last all-male class at Columbia. During the years it considered admitting women (I am glad they did), Colubmia proposed to Barnard (an all female school across the street of Broadway) to merge. Barnard refused. So now women are 100 percent at Barnard and 50% at Columbia. This has happened in a few places (mostly the seven sisters and the seven Ivy League schools). Now, legally, I have no issue with this. But Barnard uses the Columbia U. library. And that means that Barnard is indirectly tax supported and that is illegal. At some point, once the tuition crunch continues, I suspect Colubmia may even have to retract on their agreement with Barnard and charge them for the illegal tax-supported use of a library for a private school. Or maybe some sharp lawyer will see this and sue for a son not getting admitted to Barnard.

All of these changes will come in time. Men just need only hold on tight. You see, in reality, the NUMBERS of men attending collge have not changed: only the percentage. And this is because more women are attending (nothing wrong with that). Unfortunately, many feminists led these women down the path of social sciences and universities followed suit with fast money from real estate and opened up departmetns like: The Department of Tourism and Hospitality (I kid you not, such departments exist). But the tidal wave is coming. And the debate on online learning and MOOCs is the harbinger of change that is coming.

Really: Department of Math, Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, Biology, Art, Music and Literature. Isn't that all that is really needed?