Equity & Diversity

Gender Equity in College Admissions: Do We Have a Problem?

By Catherine Gewertz — December 16, 2009 1 min read
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We already know that there isn’t exactly, ahem, a consensus on whether there is a “boy crisis” in education. (See some links to stuff on this in my recent blog post.)

One aspect of this debate, as discussed in that blog post, is whether women have too much of a presence on college campuses, and whether admissions practices need to be tweaked to address that. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is investigating this, according to Inside Higher Ed.

The Washington Post reports on how the dominos are falling at some local colleges as that investigation takes shape. And there is some interesting reading, as well, in blog items from the Post‘s Valerie Strauss (here and here) and a refreshing personal perspective in a column by Petula Dvorak.

See also columnist Mona Charen, who took a tack similar to my own in this blog, suggesting that we focus earlier in the pipeline by grappling with the dynamics that fuel the gender gap to begin with.

A version of this news article first appeared in the High School Connections blog.