How Educational Differences Are Widening America's Political Rift

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The front lines of America’s cultural clashes have shifted in recent years. A vigorous wave of progressive activism has helped push the country’s culture to the left, inspiring a conservative backlash against everything from “critical race theory” to the purported cancellation of Dr. Seuss.

These skirmishes may be different in substance from those that preceded them, but in the broadest sense they are only the latest manifestation of a half-century trend: the realignment of U.S. politics along cultural and educational lines and away from the class and income divisions that defined the two parties for much of the 20th century.

As they have grown in numbers, college graduates have instilled increasingly liberal cultural norms while gaining the power to nudge the Democratic Party to the left. Partly as a result, large portions of the party’s traditional working-class base have defected to the Republicans.

Over the longer run, some Republicans even fantasize that the rise of educational polarization might begin to erode the Democratic advantage among voters of color without a college degree. Perhaps a similar phenomenon may help explain how Donald Trump, who mobilized racial animus for political gain, nonetheless fared better among voters of color than previous Republicans did and fared worse among white voters.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/educational-differences-widening-americas-political-182536495.html

[cinematicdiversions]

1. It does help explain the gender gap as most college degrees are held by woman as men are discouraged

from higher education.

[Irish_Dem]

2. I'm curious, how do you think men are discouraged from higher education.

I've been trying to understand why males are not going to college in the same numbers as women now.

[cinematicdiversions]

4. It is a soft discouragement but I have witnessed it since the eighties,

A lot of it is that most programs to help people get into college are oriented towards encouraging woman to get a higher education.

But I think that a lot of it is the curriculum in many public high schools is also oriented towards sending girls to college.

Again, it is a soft thing with no smoking gun. But like severe racial disparities, the lack of a smoking gun does not mean that there is not a problem.

(To use an example reading lists in high school english are heavily oriented towards subject matters that traditional engaged female readers. (You won't find Tom Wolf's The Right Stuff on many reading lists, for example, yet alone a Michael Crichton novel)

College has been majority female for generations now but we still focus on getting woman to take engineering jobs. There is no similar push to get men to try teaching or nursing careers.

[Irish_Dem]

6. Interesting. Thanks for the info.

I had no idea this was happening.

Time to make some changes.

I do know that nursing schools are recruiting males, and trying to balance the gender gap.
Male nurses have a leg up in nursing job interviews too.

Males don't seem to be going into the trades either.
What are males going to do for an income?

[cinematicdiversions]

7. What are males going to do for an income?

In my experience find a woman with a job...

[Irish_Dem]

8. Jebus. I was afraid you were going to say that.

Talk about 1950 role reversal.
Women go out and work.
Men stay home with the kids and housework.

[whathehell]

3. Hi..Just curious

In what way do you think men are "discouraged" from higher education?

[cinematicdiversions]

5. See my above post. (Which I just posted)

I think the numbers over the last 40 years show a clear problem. I speculate on some reasons and I am sure there are others. I think educating men simply isn't a priority like educating woman for the workforce seems to be.

If the number were reversed and women were only 40% of college students we would hear no end of it and programs would be launched immediately to close the gap.

[whathehell]

10. ..Not a priority for whom?

If true, it would be quite the reversal, since males have definitely been prioritized for education throughout history.

As baby boomers, you don't know how many of us heard "I don't know why women should go to college when they're just going to get married and have children".

I know that, in recent times, there's been a discrepancy in the number of male and female college students, but frankly, who, besides the men themselves, is responsible for that? Men face no more roadblocks to higher education than do women .
.

[cinematicdiversions]

11. The baby boomer times is a long time ago though

women earned only 9.1 percent in 1970-1. As opposed to near half by 1985 and the majority since the nineties.

The pill, the divorce rate, the seventies or just the difference between Generation X and baby boomers. Boys didn't need to go to college to avoid the draft in the eighties.

In The Homecoming of American College Women: The Reversal of the College Gender Gap (NBER Working Paper No. 12139), authors Claudia Goldin, Lawrence Katz, and Ilyana Kuziemko they speculate
" Another aspect in the reversal of the college gender gap, rather than just its elimination, is the persistence of behavioral and developmental differences between males and females. Boys often mature more slowly than girls. In grades K-12, boys tend to have a higher incidence of behavioral problems (or lower level of non-cognitive skills) than girls. Girls spend more time doing homework than boys. These behavioral factors, after adjusting for family background, test scores, and high school achievement, can explain virtually the entire female advantage in getting into college for the high school graduating class of 1992, the authors figure. It allowed "girls to leapfrog over boys in the race to college." Similarly, teenage boys, both in the early 1980s and late 1990s, had a higher (self-reported) incidence of arrests and school suspensions than teenage girls."

The boys are slower than girls theory.

[whathehell]

12. Yes, and if we were speaking only of that generation, that fact

might be relevant, but as I said, men have prioritized for education (and most other things of value) throughout history...Besides it's value, it simply fit into of traditional gender roles, of men being "breadwinners" , women staying home to bear and raise children.

As for men "maturing" later, that's had little impact on that, or the view of men being generally more "logical" and intelligent.

[FrankChurchDem]

9. We are losing

The line of scrimmage is at the school board level. And we're getting sacked before we even know the ball was in play. I'm too tired to get into details but personally and professionally, I've seen the right push hard and fast this year. Step 1: get more qualified D candidates on school boards. We should never let an R run unopposed for a seat but unfortunately is happening nationwide.