As a university trained engineer (McGill) I would recommend to boys today to avoid university altogether, unless they have the aptitude and interest in hard core quantitative subjects (math, physics, engineering, finance) and avoid the arts and humanities at all costs, ESPECIALLY grievance studies which has negative economic value.
Well that's an interesting perspective, Steve. Certainly for the technical fields you mention, university is the only pathway in. That said, many CEOs have a humanities background because this is where one learns history so as not to repeat itself, context for life's challenges and different philosophical approaches to tackling problems. Much of management acuity comes down to managing people. Interesting that McMaster's highly regarded medical school does not require a technically-oriented undergraduate degree. In fact, research has shown that graduating MDs with a background in the social sciences or humanities perform better as physicians. They are treating people, of course, and not robots.
That's an interesting perspective too. I'd agree in principle, but in practice the universities no longer seem proficient at teaching history, context, or multiple philosophies, rather they've replaced all of them with indoctrination in progressive dogma. Can you look objectively at the campus climate this past decade and say that even the faculty and administration are showing any proficiency at "managing people"?
I can't speak directly to the Canadian academy but here in the US surveys of students find them increasingly afraid to speak their honest opinions, afraid to disagree or debate with each other, afraid to even associate with members of other demographics, and rating their campuses as "toxic".
In theory, universities SHOULD provide these soft skills and classical educations in the humanities, and they have done so previously, but they certainly don't seem to be doing so now.
Incidentally, would you mind providing the citation for that study you mentioned? I'm always interested in counterintuitive findings like that.
There WAS a time, maybe 40 years ago when if you didn't know what you wanted to do, had some money and time, you could park yourself in a good university and do a
four year BA and do alright in life - the BA might have gotten you employed or served as the basis for more education. But today, unless you do something quantitative that has value in the marketplace (i.e. math, engineering, etc), doing a BA (and at high cost) is waste of time and money - you pay to be indoctrinated in negative thinking. You would be better off getting a high value trade (electrician, say) and reading the classics in your spare time - you will be WAY further ahead.
These programs are de facto designed to produce activists and professional problematizers. There is a very limited market for problematizers, the real market is for problem solvers.
It depends on the CEO, lots of CEOs today have MBAs etc, it would be rare to find any CEO today that has only a BA. If a boy wants to become any kind of high level professional in a regulated sector, they are obliged to attend a university professional program, but as the university's have become increasingly politicized and corrupted, its clear to employer's that if they want smart and independent minded employees, they may have to look elsewhere. No sane employed today in the private sector would touch any new graduate of any grievance studies program, why employ whining activists who can potentially cause a lot of trouble?
I'm liberal, but not "woke". In the US there's definitely a swing back towards sanity in the universities, and I'm hoping Canada will follow. The link is to Ted Balaker's substack if you're interested (quick read). Ted is following DEI trends:
I don't think many kids are signing up for university thinking they are going to be a CEO. That's sort of like taking driver's ed because you want to drive F1. There's a corolation but they are the 0.1% or 0.01% the rest of us have to find value in our education.
The point about Dr's may be true, I've dealt with a few that should be workign on robots, and we have a shortage of Dr's not CEOs.
I, a male, attended a vocational college and enjoyed a long and happy career that lasted forty-one years. Different times, though. When I started out there were almost no women in my chosen field and the few that there were endured much hardship. Now, happily, the playing field is more even and women occupy leadership positions.
A university education is of course helpful but only if it is followed by relevant employment. Too many people are spending too long in school only to discover at age twenty-two or older that all that ‘book learning’ has not prepared them well for a job.
I'm rather curious if you have any corresponding insight into workers changing career fields. Are the women in these degree paths not entering those fields of work at all or are they completing these degrees only to discover that they don't care for the work itself and only then transitioning to something else?
Likewise, if the drop in male enrollment isn't showing up in employment, are the entry requirements in those fields increasingly accepting alternative forms of qualifications outside university (industry certification, etc) or are men simply finding entry level positions that don't require any particular academic qualifications and working their way up through OTJ training and experience?
Fascinating question about what women are doing after earning their degrees. I've seen Canadian data on students changing majors in mid-stream (the results are, predictably, an expensive disaster). But I haven't seen anything solid on career change trends. I'll keep my eyes open for it, though.
There's definitely evidence that many of the U.S. tech giants are de-emphasizing degrees in favor of demonstrable skills. Some levels of government in the U.S. have also taken similar steps.
As the mother of a university aged son, I can attest to this bias. However, throughout history there has been extreme bias toward women attaining any type of higher education so the pendulum had to swing somewhere and perhaps will eventually settle in the middle. Let's be grateful we are not in Afghanistan or other places where gender determines all.
Thank-you David. I read the Celeste Davis article too (the reaction from the male readers was viscious). I do think there's something to her theory. Anecdotally I've noticed myself when women and girls become interested in something, the men and boys go find something else. On the other side, as a nurse I've seen a huge enrollment of men in the field, which I believe has resulted in a higher status for nursing. Now men are tik-tok'ing about the challenges and and bringing more public respect for the work. And the pay scale raise that goes with that.
The concern, if it exists, of lower university attendance by males hasn't translated to any changes in the chemically deterministic pecking order of DEI where white males remain at the bottom. The Marxism, both cultural and economic are features rather than exceptions of a half century of growth in not just humanities faculties. Some level of shaming sessions likely await those males who now enroll.
Good point. It might just be that Canada is behind the curve on those things and they're coming soon. It's rare that we could completely escape such large-scale global trends. But then, perhaps over the long term, some contraction in the higher ed industry isn't a bad thing - along with the savings in public funding that would come with it.
As a university trained engineer (McGill) I would recommend to boys today to avoid university altogether, unless they have the aptitude and interest in hard core quantitative subjects (math, physics, engineering, finance) and avoid the arts and humanities at all costs, ESPECIALLY grievance studies which has negative economic value.
Well that's an interesting perspective, Steve. Certainly for the technical fields you mention, university is the only pathway in. That said, many CEOs have a humanities background because this is where one learns history so as not to repeat itself, context for life's challenges and different philosophical approaches to tackling problems. Much of management acuity comes down to managing people. Interesting that McMaster's highly regarded medical school does not require a technically-oriented undergraduate degree. In fact, research has shown that graduating MDs with a background in the social sciences or humanities perform better as physicians. They are treating people, of course, and not robots.
That's an interesting perspective too. I'd agree in principle, but in practice the universities no longer seem proficient at teaching history, context, or multiple philosophies, rather they've replaced all of them with indoctrination in progressive dogma. Can you look objectively at the campus climate this past decade and say that even the faculty and administration are showing any proficiency at "managing people"?
I can't speak directly to the Canadian academy but here in the US surveys of students find them increasingly afraid to speak their honest opinions, afraid to disagree or debate with each other, afraid to even associate with members of other demographics, and rating their campuses as "toxic".
In theory, universities SHOULD provide these soft skills and classical educations in the humanities, and they have done so previously, but they certainly don't seem to be doing so now.
Incidentally, would you mind providing the citation for that study you mentioned? I'm always interested in counterintuitive findings like that.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ontario-to-reserve-majority-of-medical-school-spots-for-students-from/?login=true
Sorry, there is a paywall.
There WAS a time, maybe 40 years ago when if you didn't know what you wanted to do, had some money and time, you could park yourself in a good university and do a
four year BA and do alright in life - the BA might have gotten you employed or served as the basis for more education. But today, unless you do something quantitative that has value in the marketplace (i.e. math, engineering, etc), doing a BA (and at high cost) is waste of time and money - you pay to be indoctrinated in negative thinking. You would be better off getting a high value trade (electrician, say) and reading the classics in your spare time - you will be WAY further ahead.
In my humble opinion he's right about grievance studies. I think it's a waste and corruption of values.
These programs are de facto designed to produce activists and professional problematizers. There is a very limited market for problematizers, the real market is for problem solvers.
It depends on the CEO, lots of CEOs today have MBAs etc, it would be rare to find any CEO today that has only a BA. If a boy wants to become any kind of high level professional in a regulated sector, they are obliged to attend a university professional program, but as the university's have become increasingly politicized and corrupted, its clear to employer's that if they want smart and independent minded employees, they may have to look elsewhere. No sane employed today in the private sector would touch any new graduate of any grievance studies program, why employ whining activists who can potentially cause a lot of trouble?
I'm liberal, but not "woke". In the US there's definitely a swing back towards sanity in the universities, and I'm hoping Canada will follow. The link is to Ted Balaker's substack if you're interested (quick read). Ted is following DEI trends:
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecoddlingmovie/p/is-there-any-hope-for-the-ivy-league?r=8c7x2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thx will read.
I don't think many kids are signing up for university thinking they are going to be a CEO. That's sort of like taking driver's ed because you want to drive F1. There's a corolation but they are the 0.1% or 0.01% the rest of us have to find value in our education.
The point about Dr's may be true, I've dealt with a few that should be workign on robots, and we have a shortage of Dr's not CEOs.
I, a male, attended a vocational college and enjoyed a long and happy career that lasted forty-one years. Different times, though. When I started out there were almost no women in my chosen field and the few that there were endured much hardship. Now, happily, the playing field is more even and women occupy leadership positions.
A university education is of course helpful but only if it is followed by relevant employment. Too many people are spending too long in school only to discover at age twenty-two or older that all that ‘book learning’ has not prepared them well for a job.
I'm rather curious if you have any corresponding insight into workers changing career fields. Are the women in these degree paths not entering those fields of work at all or are they completing these degrees only to discover that they don't care for the work itself and only then transitioning to something else?
Likewise, if the drop in male enrollment isn't showing up in employment, are the entry requirements in those fields increasingly accepting alternative forms of qualifications outside university (industry certification, etc) or are men simply finding entry level positions that don't require any particular academic qualifications and working their way up through OTJ training and experience?
Fascinating question about what women are doing after earning their degrees. I've seen Canadian data on students changing majors in mid-stream (the results are, predictably, an expensive disaster). But I haven't seen anything solid on career change trends. I'll keep my eyes open for it, though.
There's definitely evidence that many of the U.S. tech giants are de-emphasizing degrees in favor of demonstrable skills. Some levels of government in the U.S. have also taken similar steps.
As degrees became more common their value decreased. They were no longer a reliable metric for evaluating a potential employee.
There is definitely an anti-male bias in the education/university sector.
Males are generally seen as being the 'oppressor' and females as the 'oppressed' in the DEI ideology, which pervades academia.
As the mother of a university aged son, I can attest to this bias. However, throughout history there has been extreme bias toward women attaining any type of higher education so the pendulum had to swing somewhere and perhaps will eventually settle in the middle. Let's be grateful we are not in Afghanistan or other places where gender determines all.
Thank-you David. I read the Celeste Davis article too (the reaction from the male readers was viscious). I do think there's something to her theory. Anecdotally I've noticed myself when women and girls become interested in something, the men and boys go find something else. On the other side, as a nurse I've seen a huge enrollment of men in the field, which I believe has resulted in a higher status for nursing. Now men are tik-tok'ing about the challenges and and bringing more public respect for the work. And the pay scale raise that goes with that.
Gaming
The concern, if it exists, of lower university attendance by males hasn't translated to any changes in the chemically deterministic pecking order of DEI where white males remain at the bottom. The Marxism, both cultural and economic are features rather than exceptions of a half century of growth in not just humanities faculties. Some level of shaming sessions likely await those males who now enroll.
Interesting article, thank you. My initial reaction is to agree with you, this isn't necessarily a problem as long as young men are getting training somewhere and entering the workforce. It certainly seems that Canada is doing pretty well relatively on this front, the fall in education numbers in the US you referenced is definitely more concerning (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/12/18/fewer-young-men-are-in-college-especially-at-4-year-schools/), where post-secondary enrollment has fallen for both men and women (but more for men), as is the rise so-called NEETs in the UK (not in education, employment or training, https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotinwork/unemployment/bulletins/youngpeoplenotineducationemploymentortrainingneet/august2024).
Good point. It might just be that Canada is behind the curve on those things and they're coming soon. It's rare that we could completely escape such large-scale global trends. But then, perhaps over the long term, some contraction in the higher ed industry isn't a bad thing - along with the savings in public funding that would come with it.