Trend on campus spells trouble

By KEVIN WACK and BETH QUIMBY, Staff Writers

Copyright © 2006 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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	Staff photo by Gregory Rec Travis McClain, center, attends an introductory marketing class earlier this month at the University of Southern Maine, where 38 percent of students are men.
	Staff photo by Gregory Rec Travis McClain, center, attends an introductory marketing class earlier this month at the University of Southern Maine, where 38 percent of students are men.
	The New Gender Gap Sunday: Maine's boys are lagging behind girls in the classroom, and there are signs that the gap is widening. (Read more ...) TODAY: The classroom struggles of boys do not end inside the walls of a university. The number of men at Maine's colleges is dwinding; many are not doing as well as women. (Read more ...) enlarge enlarge Tuesday: The loss of high-paying manufacturing jobs in Maine threatens to leave men behind in an economy that holds less room for the uneducated and unskilled. Wednesday: Maine schools are trying methods such as hands-on learning and single- sex classrooms to narrow the gender gap. Let Us Know E-mail your thoughts about this series to boys@pressherald.com or post a comment on our Reader Comments page. To top of story

Many of the faces in Kate Mitchell's remedial English class are profiles in boredom. One student suppresses a yawn. Another cracks a joke. A third peers down at a cell phone, distracted by a text message.

The students, freshmen at the University of Southern Maine, divide into small groups to answer questions about an essay by the Dalai Lama. They're here to learn skills they should have picked up in high school. But soon some lose their focus and start chatting.

"How many of you have actually read the article?" Mitchell asks one group. The students respond that they're reading it now.

Thirty-eight percent of USM's students are male, but inside Mitchell's classroom on the Portland campus, half the students are men.

The pattern of girls outperforming boys academically, which begins in the lower grades, is continuing after high school. Just 40 percent of the 65,000 students enrolled in public and private colleges and graduate schools in Maine are men, the sixth-lowest percentage in the nation.

The gender gap in college enrollment is sparking nationwide concern. But what happens once students arrive on campus gets comparatively little attention, even though statistics show that men who make it to college are less likely to graduate than their female classmates.

For classes entering the University of Maine in Orono between 1994 and 1999, 44 percent of male students graduated within six years compared with 59 percent of women.

There are some clues to why male undergraduates are enjoying less academic success. A 2002 national survey of college freshmen by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA found that women spend three more hours per week studying, doing volunteer work and participating in student groups than men. Men, on the other hand, devote seven more hours each week to exercising, watching TV, playing video games and partying.

College students consistently describe men as less organized, more likely to goof off and less dedicated to studying.

"Guys don't like homework," said Devin Provencal, a first-year student at Southern Maine Community College. He finished in the top fifth of his high-school class and says he was content with a B-plus average.

Some are asking whether girls are simply more adept verbally and thus better suited for the information age. Others are wondering whether men have been caught flat-footed by the shuffling of traditional gender roles over the last few decades.

"It may well be that since before this took place, both faculty and students who were male simply assumed their own position," said Nancy Gish, an English professor who founded USM's women's studies department. "And now it is no longer an assumption."

Amanda Andersen, a junior biology major at USM, had a hard time naming any male students from her graduating class at Old Orchard Beach High School who are still enrolled in college. "It's really sad," she said.

CHANGES OVER A GENERATION

A generation ago, higher education in the United States was still predominantly male. Title IX was adopted in 1972 and would provide more scholarships to women. But in 1974, its impact was not yet felt, and there were still relatively few female professors. At USM that year, 46 percent of the degrees were awarded to women.

Today, while men still hold 64 percent of full-time teaching jobs at four-year colleges, the pendulum is swinging the other way. At USM, for example, 11 of the 21 sports teams are female, the women's studies program just celebrated its 25th anniversary, and last year female students at USM earned 64 percent of the degrees awarded.

Men have lost their pre-eminence in many academic fields. Men earned 91 percent of undergraduate business degrees in 1970 but only 51 percent by 2001, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In some subject areas, such as accounting, the decline has been even steeper.

These days, computer science and engineering are about the only academic areas in which men continue to dominate. Nationally, women earn about 58 percent of all master's degrees. Professional schools in medicine, dentistry and law are now more than 40 percent female, according to data from the schools' national associations.

On campuses in Maine and across the country, the dwindling percentage of male students is sounding alarms. In the University of Maine System, the enrollment gap reached 63 percent women to 37 percent men in 2004.

The gender divide is close to even at elite private colleges such as Bates, Bowdoin and Colby. But at some other private schools, such as Saint Joseph's College of Maine and the University of New England, women outnumber men by 2-to-1 or more.

Maine's technical colleges were almost two-thirds male in the mid-1980s. But in 2004, the year after the seven campuses became community colleges, women comprised 51 percent of first-year students.

IS ACTION WARRANTED?

Women's newfound majority status is the result of fast-rising female enrollment rather than falling male numbers. But it has raised the question of whether the state should focus specifically on getting more men into universities.

A few Maine colleges, generally schools offering hands-on training, are bucking the trend. The student body at Maine Maritime Academy in Castine is 85 percent male. At The Landing School of Boatbuilding and Design in Arundel, men make up 96 percent of the student body.

"Why do you think there are boys there? They're building boats," said Lynne Miller, a USM education professor.

But at the University of Maine at Farmington, there are now two female students for each male. Students there say the gender imbalance affects life inside and outside the classroom.

Casey Brackett, a sophomore from Gorham, said Farmington's campus clubs and organizations are more focused on social activism than they would be if more men were involved. She also said that men don't take control of classroom discussions as much as they did in high school.

"Women feel more comfortable about speaking out loud and being open," Brackett said.

Back in Kate Mitchell's remedial English class at USM, the mood is somber as Mitchell returns her students' writing assignments.

She tells the class that no one earned an A. Some of the students are still having problems with basic grammar, such as capitalizing the first word in a sentence. Some failed to cite sources correctly. Three of their papers appear to have been plagiarized from the same Web site.

"I'm really worried," Mitchell tells the students.

Staff Writer Beth Quimby can be contacted at 791-6363 or at:

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