The director of Yale University’s Faculty Teaching Initiative says “the power of a college degree” is tied to an individual’s gender.
Nancy S. Niemi, author of “Degrees of Difference: Women, Men, and the Value of Higher Education,” was interviewed this week by Inside Higher Education to discuss her role at the iconic Ivy League school and the declining share of male college enrollment. She used the discussion to spotlight “sexist notions” in the workplace that make women think “they’re not good enough,” and the “chest-thumping masculinity” linked to President Trump’s election.
“It is common in higher education these days to talk about the ’problem’ of women making up a majority of students, as undergraduates and in many professional fields,” the academic website reported Wednesday. “Is the declining share of male enrollment a problem? Are there problems with talking about gender imbalances in this way?”
“Labeling the declining share of male college enrollment as a problem is a misnomer, I think, because it misleads us into thinking that balanced gender numbers in college lead to equitable outcomes for men and women once they graduate,” Ms. Niemi replied. “The power of a college degree is dependent on its holder’s identities, and one of those is gender.”
The author then asserted that women pursue more higher education credentials because they are responding to a cultural mandate that requires them to “prove their intellectual competence in ways that men do not.”
Inside Higher Education’s interview then turned to Mr. Trump’s election victory over Democratic Party rival Hillary Clinton, and ways it may be correlated to white men without a college degree.
“I think that what educators and politicians across the spectrum failed — and fail — to see is that white men with little or no higher education are afraid of the economic and social changes they see around them,” Ms. Niemi said. “When they found a presidential candidate who offered the possibility of renewing dependable blue-collar jobs, while simultaneously channeling chest-thumping masculinity and downplaying the power of academic degrees and diversity, it was easy to follow Trump’s angry lead.”
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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