Wow. This is real.

Wow. This is real.

Few things on Earth are as quotable as The Simpsons (except maybe Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy). And few characters on The Simpsons are as quotable as Malibu Stacy, the Barbie knockoff that little Lisa alternately loves and hates.  In addition to the post title above, Malibu Stacy has been known to say things like, “Thinking too much gives you wrinkles,” or my favorite, “Don’t ask me, I’m just a girl.”  (You can listen to fine selection of her quotes here.)

And while the vapid utterings of Malibu Stacy makes for giggles and seems like ancient history to most of the girls I work with, the very success of these same young women has had the unintended consequence of reducing the percentage of boys in college and creating a significant gender imbalance at many institutions.  So much so, it’s not uncommon to hear it regarded as a crisis.  An op-ed in today’s LAT lays it out all quite thoroughly:

After 17 years of concentrated effort to raise the academic achievement of girls, who in previous decades had often received less attention in the classroom and been steered away from college-prep courses, the nation can brag that female students have progressed tremendously. Though still underrepresented in calculus and other advanced-level science and math courses in high school, women now outnumber men applying to and graduating from college — so much so that it appears some colleges are giving male applicants an admissions boost. As a result, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is examining whether colleges are engaging in widespread discrimination against women in an effort to balance their male and female populations.

The has been an ongoing topic of discussion in the admissions world since Kenyon’s Jennifer Delahunty’s brilliant piece in the NYT several years ago.  I don’t have any answers but I must admit, even as plugged in as I’d like to think I am, I was a bit taken aback by some of the stark numbers revealed in the op-ed.

Consider some of the numbers at leading schools: At Vassar College in New York State, a formerly all-women’s college that is still 60% female, more than two-thirds of the applicants last year were women. The college accepted 35% of the men who applied, compared with 20% of the women. Locally, elite Pomona College accepted 21% of male applicants for this year’s freshman class, but only 13% of female applicants. At Virginia’s College of William & Mary, 7,652 women applied for this year’s freshman class, compared with 4,457 male applicants. Yet the numbers of each who gained admittance were nearly the same. That’s because the college accepted45% of the men and only 27% of the women.

Like I said, I don’t have an answer to any of this.  I don’t know that there’d even be just one answer and it’s probably less an issue of admissions than it is an statement on how seriously boys take education and are taken in education in contemporary America.