The Fan: College scramble to meet outdated Title IX quotas

Article here. Excerpt:

'Before Title IX it was common in sports played by both genders, such as basketball and soccer, for the men’s coach to get paid five times what the women’s coach was paid, and for the men’s teams to fly to exotic places while the women took a bus to the next state. Doing away with such blatant discrimination gave women a chance to have as rewarding a college life as the men, and increased their visibility so that others wanted to join them.

But when the government steps in with good intentions, it often goes overboard. Sports are just one of the many offerings at a school, and shouldn’t be regarded as more important than the others. No one cares if more women than men choose to take dance or more men opt for the challenging “Principles of Coaching Basketball 101.”

For a woman who wants to play a certain sport and study chemistry in college, it might be hard to discern whether a college’s chemistry department is any good, but much easier to tell if its very public sports teams are suitable. Colleges are competing for students, and women are entering college in greater numbers than men. So it doesn’t require government quotas anymore to encourage schools to do the best for the athletes and pre-med scholars alike.'