Do you know what is so sad about this preceding, tedious exchange between Brook and Hales?
It is precisely the sort of nit-picking pedantry and professional logic-chopping that turns even bright undergraduates away from Philosophy.
Moreover, as a heretofore esteemed university discipline, Philosophy is itself in serious full-time hiring and programatic decline across our fair land. And Hales’ correctly concedes that the APA cannot begin to fix this trend, given its obsessive DEI infatuations.
Most important, this above exchange completely ignores Hales’ troubling observation that currently in the USA, young white men are declining to even attempt college. This, compared to women and minorities who are increasingly stepping up to the challenge and, yes, graduating in ever impressive numbers.
Just as the charge of “structural racism” is typically unfalsifiable, so too is the glib demonization of “patriarchy.” So what has gone wrong with young white men, their lack of ambition, their unwillingness to even apply?
Dare I suggest, as Hale has elsewhere hinted, that the rising power of the American matriarchy in our culture may be largely to blame? Young white men in particular do not find college campuses welcoming places anymore. They are increasingly seen, at both elite and mainstream schools, as predatory, toxic, irrelevant. They are covertly or overtly condemned by the tragic sins of their patriarchal fathers, grandfathers, uncles (you know the list: colonialism, slavery, sexism, etc.)
So finally and increasingly, these young white men think: who needs this shit? And they walk away in favor of other more attractive, more respectful, friendlier adventures.
Agreed!. Who would expect people to consider examining the problem and trying to find a solution? Let's just walk away and not have our tender sensibilities hurt by trying to understand other points of view. Oh my, college was not welcoming to me; my professors required me to read a textbook, join in with a classroom discussion, and finally take a test.
As someone who basically fits that demographic, I figure it may be worth sharing my perspective as a drop-out myself. To some extent, I can relate to what you're saying, but only in a very vague sense. You are correct in that I became disillusioned with college, but for a different reason. You're also correct in that I took issue with the social aspects, but again for a different reason.
For me, the issue was that college seemed completely unserious and focused more on cultivating a social experience than an academic one. Now, I'm actually a very social person, and I greatly value my friendships, so this shouldn't be interpreted as some sort of anti-social tendency of mine. I made many friends and had a great social life while I was at school. The issue was that I felt the social environment was very coddling. I wanted an experience where I would go to school and also have a life outside of school, in which I socialize, work, etc. I wasn't against having some crossover, i.e. making friends in class that I then saw outside of class, but I didn't like having *everything* be based around the school. Living on campus, clubs and events focused around the campus, everyone you know is from the same school, etc. It felt like a summer camp, not a serious academic environment. You can see that very acutely if you compare it to how university is viewed in other countries: students often live off-campus from the start, choose a major right away, devote themselves to it, and don't base their lives entirely around their school (I know there are probably some schools in the US that take this approach, but by my luck, I didn't happen to find them). There are advantages to requiring general studies before choosing a major, but there are also advantages to allowing students to focus entirely on their major if they know what they want from the beginning. Different strokes.
Overall, I felt these factors contributed to a very diluted academic environment. I wanted something more akin to a conservatory experience. In a conservatory, students are deeply dedicated to their craft despite the low odds of success. They're focused on achieving mastery, not just good grades, and they practice hours and hours each day to achieve that. I wanted that grit, determination, and focus but in an academic environment. That sort of passion is motivating and inspiring. Instead, what I got was an experience that was almost entirely focused on career outcomes and social life. Very few people actually valued their academics outside of the potential for getting a job, and that was very demotivating. I wanted education, not career preparation and networking — or at least an environment where the clear focus wasn't career preparation and networking from the get-go.
So, I relate to and agree with what you're saying here in the sense that I think the issue is optics and how college presents itself. I do realize that my specific desire for an extremely intense academic environment where students completely immerse themselves in rigorous academics is also likely not in line with what most men want. I don't think most people are foregoing college because it's not austere enough. But I think there are some elements that crossover — Jonathan Haidt wrote that book The Coddling of the American Mind, and that sense of coddling was extremely off-putting, and even though I was put off for different reasons, the ultimate issue came down to just not liking the vibe.
It’s too bad that was your experience of college. It definitely sounds to me like you just couldn’t find the right fit. Your story really illustrates the fact that there is such a variety of colleges and universities and that they offer such different experiences. Maybe a Great Books program like St. John’s would have been the sort of thing you were looking for, or the University of Chicago, where the Dean once famously told the students they needed to get out of the library once in awhile and socialize. Most students are here because they want a “good job”, not because of their thirst for knowledge. Also, between phones and Covid, their social skills have atrophied to bed-bound hermit levels. So colleges do a ton of social programming to keep them happy and enrolled. I will say that the conservatory-type environment you were looking for was my experience of grad school, which for me was a Marine boot camp for intellectuals. “Hey stupid, drop and give me 20 pages!”
I agree overall. NYU was my top choice, and I think it would have been a good fit, but it was just far too expensive, and it was especially difficult to justify the cost when I got into other higher-ranked schools that charged less (not great reasoning, but I was 18 at the time). What I liked about NYU was that it was integrated into the city and gave a real sense of independence.
There was definitely a lot of complexity around my college decision, and I knew at the time that I was making the wrong choice with the school that I chose, but I did so for a number of reasons that aren't worth getting into in specific terms. But what is relevant about those reasons is that it indicates to me that one potential solution is encouraging gap years. I think a big part of my trajectory came from wanting to make a careful decision, but being forced into what I viewed as a very rushed one. If it had been more socially acceptable to take a year or two to work before going to school, I think I may have fared better. If more men worked, did a program, or pursued their own projects for a bit before going to school, and especially if they didn't feel they were *expected* to go to school, but that it was just an option available to them, they might feel more like they're choosing it of their own agency. For me, I just felt like I was being funneled into a corporate feeder school out of some general social pressure and was losing my agency in the process.
This was all significantly before Covid, so it is interesting to think how that would affect the environment. Your description of grad school sounds appealing. If only there were some type of more intense option straight from the get-go. I think either Oxford or Cambridge (or both?) are more like that with their tutor model.
I was lucky enough to attend an undergraduate program like this, where I spent most of my time dedicated to my work. The upside is I gained a firm foundation in the skill of learning-to-learn, and I feel confident in my area of study (Computer Science). The downside is I made few long-term friendships with peers, even ones I spent a lot of time working closely with. Maybe this was a personal problem, maybe I could have avoided this had I stayed in closer touch with them, but I graduated 10 years ago and I only have two or three friends from college I speak to with any frequency.
As to the main content of the post, I believe H.B. is absolutely right in their assessment of the situation. I felt the beginnings of this in 2011 and 2015, and ironically it was the experience of confronting these various ideological threads that sparked my original interest in philosophy (basically: why did all the art school girls I liked say such strange and condemning things? What is it they truly believe and how can I relate to those beliefs? The first book I happened to pick up was Foucault's History of Sexuality Vol. 1, for some reason, and by the end I had a moment of realization: "holy shit, he would hate everything about this"). I had taken exactly zero philosophy courses in university, but I felt confident that I could figure it out, and I spent years reading on my own, learning a lot and enjoying discussions with online and irl peers.
I believe a university philosophy degree would have exposed me to more breadth of canon, and there were plenty of experiences I had where a teacher figure would've helped immensely (looking at you, Hegel). But I also enjoyed the freedom of charting my own course, and finding ways to synthesize my philosophical readings with the demands of my career.
I guess what I'm saying is that nobody is stopping you from pursuing the ultimate goal of education with as much rigor as you care to muster. University is not the only path there, and even though I'm into my 30s now, I still enjoy taking classes at local educational institutions, like Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, which was a huge help when I recently chose to tackle Critique of Pure Reason. I don't think I could've made it through that text on my own.
For sure, definitely agree — that's what I've been doing, and that's why I don't have plans to go back to school at the moment. I aim to basically live the life of a monk-scholar, and I'm approaching that, although I'm still pretty far off the goal (I still engage in entertainment and a lot of non-monk activities etc.). But I move in that general direction. I've been lucky enough to find work that supports that lifestyle, but it's precarious, and I may have been in a more stable position had I found a degree program that fit my vision better. Or maybe I would have been worse off, pushed to accept a job in the city and not live surrounded by forest like I do now. Who knows. I just think that there should be clear options available for those who want to pursue a very focused study program, as that's what university purports to do anyhow — so there should be more programs that really fulfill that vision.
"In my opinion the sole practical aim of the APA should be making sure that colleges retain a philosophy major and hire tenure-track philosophers. Several years ago I realized that all the APA was really interested in was diversity initiatives."
I have had the same thoughts for years. Watching my colleagues emphasize woke progressive issues constantly was depressing, because I saw that virtually everyone outside of academia, democrat or republican, hates it and were NOT going to be persuaded any time soon. The woke philosophers were warned that this emphasis would be terrible messaging, long term, and now even standup comics make fun of woke academics and students. When I see academics even today, in this political environment, relentlessly talking about gender and racism, I can't believe how politically clueless they are, despite their education. Many of them genuinely think that moderates and the rest of the left really endorse some of it. They don't, period, and the woke arguments are really bad.
I completely agree. Especially after the left got its ass handed to it in the last election, you’d think this might be a good time for some serious self-reflection. It’s not time to go all in on a losing hand. The faster the left can distance itself from the woke, the faster it will regain power.
Yep. Our woke colleagues must be really bad at poker. We should play them sometime . . . .
More seriously, I suspect that one reason Obama did so well was that he projected a certain kind of masculine strength, dominance, and competence. We can talk all day about what *should* entice voters, but that type of politician gets votes. Even Margaret Thatcher had those three qualities; being female is fine. There are occasional exceptions, but for now, one needs a political candidate like that. And they won't be whining about gender like, at all.
Alright I'll share my thoughts. I'm a white male who got a degree in electrical engineering around 2014 and I'm successfully realized in the field. Here are the reasons why I wouldn't go to college if I had to do it all over again. Literally nothing to do with politics or women.
From the perspective of the highly intelligent, there are really two reasons one might go to college:
1. It's a place to build a network with other highly intelligent
2. It's a repository of knowledge
1. The presence of the highly intelligent is no longer guaranteed in college, since the tests are no longer proxy for IQ. Indeed the average IQ of college attendees has been steadily dropping. I'm fully able to find the people I'm looking for in the industry, so going there as quickly as possible and skipping college entirely is now an incentive.
2. The knowledge that universities offer for a very steep price is already freely available on the internet. In fact I completed my degree using my own research instead of the textbooks offered and found the textbooks significantly lacking. What I used for learning were textbooks from the 1940-50s. if the information universities offer is freely available and in better format, why would someone pay for a worse version of it?
Because of 1 and 2, not having a degree is no longer a problem for anyone aspiring to start working in my field. The industry is well aware of the decline in quality of college education, and these degrees don't hold the value colleges advertise. In fact I've never had a potential employer ask me for my degree. Being part of the recruitment process I can tell you for certainty that if a student takes the curriculum seriously instead of actively following the developments in the industry, he's going to be at a significant disadvantage when he graduates.
I hope that helps. Main issue is really the IQ. It's not the highly intelligent that need colleges, it's the colleges that need the highly intelligent, and they have forgotten it to their own detriment.
Why whites? Probably because statistically whites have the highest population of high IQ men in the West. They've opted out. Others have followed suit.
Besides the possibly higher IQ of the white men demographic (I'm not certain about those numbers), it's likely that women or minorities have been bombarded much more with the message that they *should* go to college e.g. because it's still a relatively recent political victory that they even *can* go to college (or at least elite colleges) and also because they still feel a much higher pressure to prove their value in society by conventional means. If that's the case, there might simply be a lag and the kind of disillusionment of college that this comment describe might attain soon other demographics too.
Yes, women and minorities are status-chasers, that erroniously believe that college provides association with the highly intelligent. It doesn't and as the prestige of the institution continues to decline, they will realize it.
The linch pin to your argument: “The answer is the small but constant, relentless pressure of being told, even by subtle implicature, that you don’t really matter” has been bruited about for decades now. Women were told that for millennia yet they still managed to strive for good grades and, now, go to college. Somehow, they escaped the “relentless pressure.”
A lot of what goes on in colleges today is stupid, to be sure. There used to be different forms of stupidity, more familiar to young white men than performative antiracism. In 50 years, there will be new forms of stupidity and someone’s nose will get out of joint.
Young white men flock to people like Andrew Tate, who tells them they need to man up and take what they want and to Peter Thiel, who tells them that college is a waste and to Joe Rogan, who preys on their insecurities. And they listen to a lot of older white men who can’t stop bitching about feminazis.
The issues facing boys start way before high school, let alone college. Instead of making them feel like victims of leftists, we can try to help them.
I shared this piece with my 20-something son, a graduate of a top state university. (BTW, he thinks you're a poser and not a philosophy prof because there was a grammar error in the post.) He also pointed out something about student literacy and writing, which is that your description fits perfectly what I was seeing in the California State U system in the early 90's, pre-cellphones.
The rest of it sounds believable because it correlates with what I've been reading about public K12. But I have to say, some of this is clearly not consistent across the board. My other kid recently graduated from a small Jesuit college, and the student body there was fabulous. He got an amazing education and made smart, engaged friends who get away from their phones on a regular basis. So there is hope... (just maybe not a *lot* of hope?)...
Finally, I also blame the "college for everyone" movement, which was (I say as a teacher of teenagers) really stupid. College isn't for everyone. College is for those who are ready to use what it has to offer and to work hard. A college can't force an adult student to work—they have to want it. I think a lot of the young people who go to college simply don't want it enough. When I taught in the 90s I saw a fair number of people who had dropped out and were returning. Perhaps there will be a path back for some of these people once they've got their priorities straight.
Hi, Hilarious. I’m new here, I’m not only a longtime member of the APA (I’ve attended at least one meeting a year since puberty) but a proud DEI hire. I was the first woman tenured in my department of 17 and only the second hired. And I had a very, very nasty time. I don’t believe that ‘diversity’ is of any value whatsoever. As a woman I have no special perspective, nothing to contribute that a comparably qualified male wouldn’t contribute. The purpose of affirmative action, from which I benefitted is to ameliorate ongoing discrimination against women and minorities. BTW I regularly team-teach a ‘Women and Work’ course with an economist so the data is very much in my face.
One piece of info that rarely comes up in discussion of why women are now over represented in college is that we play without a net. Before the 1960s/1970s, when women were forced out of the home and into the labor force men outnumbered women in college. Afterwards, when career housewifing was no longer available, women had to go to college to avoid miserable pink-collar shit work outside the home. I speak as a frustrated housewife. If I could have gotten full time career housewifing with guardrails—no divorce or at least alimony and the guarantee that I would never for a single day have to work
Outside the home I would never have gone to college, much less grad school. Women no longer have that option: we are driven through college by the stick, not drawn by the carrot.
Unless women can get into the unisex labor market for jobs in management and the professions that require a college degree or better our job prospects are ghastly intolerable—cashiering, data entry, care for incontinent infants or the elderly. We play without a net. Guys have more mid-range options that don’t require a degree—and I DONT mean the good, skilled plumbing, electrical work, blue collar trades that require an apprenticeship and pay well. I mean that half-assed men’s jobs that guys can get in an informal way—handyman type jobs, laying down carpet, gardening, cleaning upholstery and grout, etc. These aren’t great jobs but they’re a lot getter than standing in a 2’ x 2’ space and scanning groceries all day. So men don’t have to be scared shitless of what will happen to them if they don’t perform academically: they can get good enough if they aren’t especially ambitious, as is the case for most of us. Apart from the minority of highly ambitious guys, men can get good enough without going to college. They aren’t driven by the big stick that drives women.
Just my $.02, Hilarious. As a fellow metaphysician I am of trying to figure out who you are so now that I’ve subscribed I’ll be lurking for clues.
Thanks for your comment, Harriet. Two points: (1) I guess I’m not convinced that that the unskilled jobs available to men who lack a college degree are really that preferable to unskilled jobs available to women who lack a college degree. My (female) department secretary does not have a degree, but works in a climate-controlled office and has health benefits and a retirement plan. That’s better than wrecking your back laying carpet with no benefits. Even taking care of the elderly, which you describe as a female-coded job, is a better deal than manual day laborer. (2) your account does not explain why white college enrollment is going down. The story I offer explains why white men in particular are skipping college.
By the way, you interviewed me for a t-t job a very long time ago. I came in second. At the time, you told me that while I had your support, the department decided to make an affirmative action hire instead.
(1) I did not say that unskilled guy jobs were in some global sense ‘preferable’ to pink-collar jobs. I suggested that they were by many, including women, preferred. There is evidence of this from the natural experiment of WWII when, according to a Woman’s Bureau report at the end of the war over 80% of women who had Rosie Riveter jobs said that they would prefer to keep those jobs if they could—which they couldn’t—and for women who intended to remain in the labor force that figure rose to 93%. There are certainly women, and men, who prefer climate-controlled conditions doing clerical work—and even ‘caring work’. But many women, as these stats suggest, prefer physically strenuous guy jobs to traditional women’s jobs—climate-control notwithstanding.
My explanation also can be extended to explain why white men are skipping college. The more socially privileged you are, the less likely you are to face bias so the fewer academic credentials you need. White men need fewer credentials and less ‘human capital’ to get the same goods as black men—just as they need fewer credentials than women. My mother-in-law, no feminist, when in a nursing home said that she preferred women doctors because they ‘had to be better than men to get where they are’.
I never told you that you came in second in a search but that we had decided to make an affirmative action hire. If you’d like to discuss this further I suggest you email me. Moreover, though long ago when I was hired women were at a significant disadvantage in hiring for academic positions at my college they no longer are at a disadvantage in hiring for faculty positions. I don’t support affirmative action for either women or minorities for faculty positions—or for admission to college or professional programs, where blind review is feasible. I support affirmative action for women and minorities in positions where bias, largely unintentional, persists and blind review isn’t feasible.
Women have made college safe for women. Women have made marriage very dangerous for men! Make college dangerous and marriage safe! Men will be present in droves!
I know I'm not giving a covariate analysis, but my opinion is that difference between white men and hispanic men here is money. According to https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/factsheets/at-a-glance/earnings-men-age-race-ethnicity.html, white men are earning 50% more money than hispanic men. If the message is "hey men, college isn't for you" the ones who would struggle most to afford it will be the first to listen.
Perhaps, but I guess I thought the message in your posting was about the "original sin of whiteness" (especially when coupled with maleness) and not about males broadly speaking. In any event, the data suggests that white male enrollments are dropping at a lower rate than enrollment for men generally. That seems problematic for much of the argument above.
Whites enrollment is down, male enrollment is down. White males are at the intersection of the Venn diagram. Since they are the historical stalwarts of higher ed, it’s worthwhile to ask what changed.
Sure, but since they are showing less than average enrollment drops, it seems unlikely that the enrollment drops are primarily driven by headwinds that specifically target white men. I think you might want to look at what is affecting hispanic men, since that seems to be the strongest effect, and then see whether that effect is also present, in weaker form, for white men.
Maybe the data leads you back to anti-white male sentiment, but that's not where the raw data suggests one should start.
>“patriarchy” is no longer a very good explanatory tool in a country where women fare better on nearly every measure.
Not true, because the patriarchy hurts men as well as women. As things become "female coded" like getting an education, they become devalued among men. Even if it is to their detriment. So female coded professions like teaching and nursing see pay and respect decrease as women come into the field. But you also see a hesitance by men to enter a female coded job like nursing or other non-doctor health care to their detriment because jobs are more abundant and pay is better than for some other fields that may be available with a one or two year degree. The same thing is happening here with college education. Men of color are more willing to cross that threshold because they are already facing the systemic disadvantages of racism.
As an 82-year-old white guy, I can only speak about those in my immediate circle, but I have a question for all those who are afraid of hearing and reading views they don't believe in or accept. "What a bunch of Puss****) It seems that the ladies have more courage than many in my group. If you are fearful of competing views, it means you don't understand what you profess to believe and can't find any arguments to support your point of view. In other words, you are mindlessly parroting what others have told you. Colleges and universities were institutions to teach a person how to think for themselves - they were not for job training, but for learning and expanding one's mind. In my day, stone tablets and chisels were needed for taking notes - now you have phones, you waste time on with social media and gamble on sports. Words of wisdom by Blaise Pascal, "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room, alone."
It was interesting to read the lines: "First, most of what’s taught has little or nothing to do with politics. Chemistry, mathematics, nursing, management, exercise science, accounting, neuroscience, foreign languages—you’d have to try mighty hard to find the indoctrination there."
No, you won't. Academia has been relentlessly "decolonising" subjects like Maths and Physics as well as the liberal arts. I've worked for a Physics institute magazine in the UK and it is obsessively progressive – anti nuclear power, pro trans rights and DEI. There are articles on mental wellbeing and a news agenda that prioritises stories about oppression and anything to do with Trump. Occasionally there is an article about Physics for its own sake and it feels like an oddity.
Maybe academia is not really a male space anymore – and young men can tell. It felt that way to me when I worked there before Covid.
Woke culture is only one variable. Another is the genuine doubt about the long term worth of white collar work vs skilled blue collar work. Your statement that “manufacturing” isn’t coming back is irrelevant—skilled trades offer long term middle class wages that are immune from automation regardless of whether manufacturing returns or not.
But really the most glaring reason you’re missing is laid out in Philip Zimbardo’s, “Man Interrupted.” Men are having a harder time than women with technology addiction. Video games and pornography are hijacking men’s psychology and removing the reasons men traditionally left the house—to seek sex (need met by pornography), friendships (need met by online gaming friendships), and danger (need met by violent video games).
In short, some more disciplined men are avoiding college because they have correctly intuited the long term threat to white collar work posed by AI, and other less disciplined men are pursuing neither college nor trade because they can’t pull their eyes away from the screens long enough to even *want to move out.*
I haven't read the Zimbardo book, but I am quite doubtful that 18-year-old males are sitting down and performing a rational evaluation of the risk of potential AI automation of white collar jobs vs. the stability of (some) blue collar ones.
Why does everyone on Substack write in the first person as if the word 'I' was the most important word in the Oxford Dictionary. The 'I' gender generation, no 'he' or 'she' allowed.
Remember while writing in the 1st person, you are the subject not us the reader.
Do you know what is so sad about this preceding, tedious exchange between Brook and Hales?
It is precisely the sort of nit-picking pedantry and professional logic-chopping that turns even bright undergraduates away from Philosophy.
Moreover, as a heretofore esteemed university discipline, Philosophy is itself in serious full-time hiring and programatic decline across our fair land. And Hales’ correctly concedes that the APA cannot begin to fix this trend, given its obsessive DEI infatuations.
Most important, this above exchange completely ignores Hales’ troubling observation that currently in the USA, young white men are declining to even attempt college. This, compared to women and minorities who are increasingly stepping up to the challenge and, yes, graduating in ever impressive numbers.
Just as the charge of “structural racism” is typically unfalsifiable, so too is the glib demonization of “patriarchy.” So what has gone wrong with young white men, their lack of ambition, their unwillingness to even apply?
Dare I suggest, as Hale has elsewhere hinted, that the rising power of the American matriarchy in our culture may be largely to blame? Young white men in particular do not find college campuses welcoming places anymore. They are increasingly seen, at both elite and mainstream schools, as predatory, toxic, irrelevant. They are covertly or overtly condemned by the tragic sins of their patriarchal fathers, grandfathers, uncles (you know the list: colonialism, slavery, sexism, etc.)
So finally and increasingly, these young white men think: who needs this shit? And they walk away in favor of other more attractive, more respectful, friendlier adventures.
"It is precisely the sort of nit-picking pedantry and professional logic-chopping that turns even bright undergraduates away from Philosophy."
I don't know. I guess if the students are satisfied with a superficial understanding of the world, Philosophy doesn't need them.
Agreed!. Who would expect people to consider examining the problem and trying to find a solution? Let's just walk away and not have our tender sensibilities hurt by trying to understand other points of view. Oh my, college was not welcoming to me; my professors required me to read a textbook, join in with a classroom discussion, and finally take a test.
As someone who basically fits that demographic, I figure it may be worth sharing my perspective as a drop-out myself. To some extent, I can relate to what you're saying, but only in a very vague sense. You are correct in that I became disillusioned with college, but for a different reason. You're also correct in that I took issue with the social aspects, but again for a different reason.
For me, the issue was that college seemed completely unserious and focused more on cultivating a social experience than an academic one. Now, I'm actually a very social person, and I greatly value my friendships, so this shouldn't be interpreted as some sort of anti-social tendency of mine. I made many friends and had a great social life while I was at school. The issue was that I felt the social environment was very coddling. I wanted an experience where I would go to school and also have a life outside of school, in which I socialize, work, etc. I wasn't against having some crossover, i.e. making friends in class that I then saw outside of class, but I didn't like having *everything* be based around the school. Living on campus, clubs and events focused around the campus, everyone you know is from the same school, etc. It felt like a summer camp, not a serious academic environment. You can see that very acutely if you compare it to how university is viewed in other countries: students often live off-campus from the start, choose a major right away, devote themselves to it, and don't base their lives entirely around their school (I know there are probably some schools in the US that take this approach, but by my luck, I didn't happen to find them). There are advantages to requiring general studies before choosing a major, but there are also advantages to allowing students to focus entirely on their major if they know what they want from the beginning. Different strokes.
Overall, I felt these factors contributed to a very diluted academic environment. I wanted something more akin to a conservatory experience. In a conservatory, students are deeply dedicated to their craft despite the low odds of success. They're focused on achieving mastery, not just good grades, and they practice hours and hours each day to achieve that. I wanted that grit, determination, and focus but in an academic environment. That sort of passion is motivating and inspiring. Instead, what I got was an experience that was almost entirely focused on career outcomes and social life. Very few people actually valued their academics outside of the potential for getting a job, and that was very demotivating. I wanted education, not career preparation and networking — or at least an environment where the clear focus wasn't career preparation and networking from the get-go.
So, I relate to and agree with what you're saying here in the sense that I think the issue is optics and how college presents itself. I do realize that my specific desire for an extremely intense academic environment where students completely immerse themselves in rigorous academics is also likely not in line with what most men want. I don't think most people are foregoing college because it's not austere enough. But I think there are some elements that crossover — Jonathan Haidt wrote that book The Coddling of the American Mind, and that sense of coddling was extremely off-putting, and even though I was put off for different reasons, the ultimate issue came down to just not liking the vibe.
It’s too bad that was your experience of college. It definitely sounds to me like you just couldn’t find the right fit. Your story really illustrates the fact that there is such a variety of colleges and universities and that they offer such different experiences. Maybe a Great Books program like St. John’s would have been the sort of thing you were looking for, or the University of Chicago, where the Dean once famously told the students they needed to get out of the library once in awhile and socialize. Most students are here because they want a “good job”, not because of their thirst for knowledge. Also, between phones and Covid, their social skills have atrophied to bed-bound hermit levels. So colleges do a ton of social programming to keep them happy and enrolled. I will say that the conservatory-type environment you were looking for was my experience of grad school, which for me was a Marine boot camp for intellectuals. “Hey stupid, drop and give me 20 pages!”
I agree overall. NYU was my top choice, and I think it would have been a good fit, but it was just far too expensive, and it was especially difficult to justify the cost when I got into other higher-ranked schools that charged less (not great reasoning, but I was 18 at the time). What I liked about NYU was that it was integrated into the city and gave a real sense of independence.
There was definitely a lot of complexity around my college decision, and I knew at the time that I was making the wrong choice with the school that I chose, but I did so for a number of reasons that aren't worth getting into in specific terms. But what is relevant about those reasons is that it indicates to me that one potential solution is encouraging gap years. I think a big part of my trajectory came from wanting to make a careful decision, but being forced into what I viewed as a very rushed one. If it had been more socially acceptable to take a year or two to work before going to school, I think I may have fared better. If more men worked, did a program, or pursued their own projects for a bit before going to school, and especially if they didn't feel they were *expected* to go to school, but that it was just an option available to them, they might feel more like they're choosing it of their own agency. For me, I just felt like I was being funneled into a corporate feeder school out of some general social pressure and was losing my agency in the process.
This was all significantly before Covid, so it is interesting to think how that would affect the environment. Your description of grad school sounds appealing. If only there were some type of more intense option straight from the get-go. I think either Oxford or Cambridge (or both?) are more like that with their tutor model.
I was lucky enough to attend an undergraduate program like this, where I spent most of my time dedicated to my work. The upside is I gained a firm foundation in the skill of learning-to-learn, and I feel confident in my area of study (Computer Science). The downside is I made few long-term friendships with peers, even ones I spent a lot of time working closely with. Maybe this was a personal problem, maybe I could have avoided this had I stayed in closer touch with them, but I graduated 10 years ago and I only have two or three friends from college I speak to with any frequency.
As to the main content of the post, I believe H.B. is absolutely right in their assessment of the situation. I felt the beginnings of this in 2011 and 2015, and ironically it was the experience of confronting these various ideological threads that sparked my original interest in philosophy (basically: why did all the art school girls I liked say such strange and condemning things? What is it they truly believe and how can I relate to those beliefs? The first book I happened to pick up was Foucault's History of Sexuality Vol. 1, for some reason, and by the end I had a moment of realization: "holy shit, he would hate everything about this"). I had taken exactly zero philosophy courses in university, but I felt confident that I could figure it out, and I spent years reading on my own, learning a lot and enjoying discussions with online and irl peers.
I believe a university philosophy degree would have exposed me to more breadth of canon, and there were plenty of experiences I had where a teacher figure would've helped immensely (looking at you, Hegel). But I also enjoyed the freedom of charting my own course, and finding ways to synthesize my philosophical readings with the demands of my career.
I guess what I'm saying is that nobody is stopping you from pursuing the ultimate goal of education with as much rigor as you care to muster. University is not the only path there, and even though I'm into my 30s now, I still enjoy taking classes at local educational institutions, like Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, which was a huge help when I recently chose to tackle Critique of Pure Reason. I don't think I could've made it through that text on my own.
For sure, definitely agree — that's what I've been doing, and that's why I don't have plans to go back to school at the moment. I aim to basically live the life of a monk-scholar, and I'm approaching that, although I'm still pretty far off the goal (I still engage in entertainment and a lot of non-monk activities etc.). But I move in that general direction. I've been lucky enough to find work that supports that lifestyle, but it's precarious, and I may have been in a more stable position had I found a degree program that fit my vision better. Or maybe I would have been worse off, pushed to accept a job in the city and not live surrounded by forest like I do now. Who knows. I just think that there should be clear options available for those who want to pursue a very focused study program, as that's what university purports to do anyhow — so there should be more programs that really fulfill that vision.
"In my opinion the sole practical aim of the APA should be making sure that colleges retain a philosophy major and hire tenure-track philosophers. Several years ago I realized that all the APA was really interested in was diversity initiatives."
I have had the same thoughts for years. Watching my colleagues emphasize woke progressive issues constantly was depressing, because I saw that virtually everyone outside of academia, democrat or republican, hates it and were NOT going to be persuaded any time soon. The woke philosophers were warned that this emphasis would be terrible messaging, long term, and now even standup comics make fun of woke academics and students. When I see academics even today, in this political environment, relentlessly talking about gender and racism, I can't believe how politically clueless they are, despite their education. Many of them genuinely think that moderates and the rest of the left really endorse some of it. They don't, period, and the woke arguments are really bad.
I completely agree. Especially after the left got its ass handed to it in the last election, you’d think this might be a good time for some serious self-reflection. It’s not time to go all in on a losing hand. The faster the left can distance itself from the woke, the faster it will regain power.
Yep. Our woke colleagues must be really bad at poker. We should play them sometime . . . .
More seriously, I suspect that one reason Obama did so well was that he projected a certain kind of masculine strength, dominance, and competence. We can talk all day about what *should* entice voters, but that type of politician gets votes. Even Margaret Thatcher had those three qualities; being female is fine. There are occasional exceptions, but for now, one needs a political candidate like that. And they won't be whining about gender like, at all.
Alright I'll share my thoughts. I'm a white male who got a degree in electrical engineering around 2014 and I'm successfully realized in the field. Here are the reasons why I wouldn't go to college if I had to do it all over again. Literally nothing to do with politics or women.
From the perspective of the highly intelligent, there are really two reasons one might go to college:
1. It's a place to build a network with other highly intelligent
2. It's a repository of knowledge
1. The presence of the highly intelligent is no longer guaranteed in college, since the tests are no longer proxy for IQ. Indeed the average IQ of college attendees has been steadily dropping. I'm fully able to find the people I'm looking for in the industry, so going there as quickly as possible and skipping college entirely is now an incentive.
2. The knowledge that universities offer for a very steep price is already freely available on the internet. In fact I completed my degree using my own research instead of the textbooks offered and found the textbooks significantly lacking. What I used for learning were textbooks from the 1940-50s. if the information universities offer is freely available and in better format, why would someone pay for a worse version of it?
Because of 1 and 2, not having a degree is no longer a problem for anyone aspiring to start working in my field. The industry is well aware of the decline in quality of college education, and these degrees don't hold the value colleges advertise. In fact I've never had a potential employer ask me for my degree. Being part of the recruitment process I can tell you for certainty that if a student takes the curriculum seriously instead of actively following the developments in the industry, he's going to be at a significant disadvantage when he graduates.
I hope that helps. Main issue is really the IQ. It's not the highly intelligent that need colleges, it's the colleges that need the highly intelligent, and they have forgotten it to their own detriment.
Why whites? Probably because statistically whites have the highest population of high IQ men in the West. They've opted out. Others have followed suit.
Besides the possibly higher IQ of the white men demographic (I'm not certain about those numbers), it's likely that women or minorities have been bombarded much more with the message that they *should* go to college e.g. because it's still a relatively recent political victory that they even *can* go to college (or at least elite colleges) and also because they still feel a much higher pressure to prove their value in society by conventional means. If that's the case, there might simply be a lag and the kind of disillusionment of college that this comment describe might attain soon other demographics too.
Yes, women and minorities are status-chasers, that erroniously believe that college provides association with the highly intelligent. It doesn't and as the prestige of the institution continues to decline, they will realize it.
Re. white men attending college: any thought given to the systemic discrimination affirmative action has waged against them for 60 years?
The linch pin to your argument: “The answer is the small but constant, relentless pressure of being told, even by subtle implicature, that you don’t really matter” has been bruited about for decades now. Women were told that for millennia yet they still managed to strive for good grades and, now, go to college. Somehow, they escaped the “relentless pressure.”
A lot of what goes on in colleges today is stupid, to be sure. There used to be different forms of stupidity, more familiar to young white men than performative antiracism. In 50 years, there will be new forms of stupidity and someone’s nose will get out of joint.
Young white men flock to people like Andrew Tate, who tells them they need to man up and take what they want and to Peter Thiel, who tells them that college is a waste and to Joe Rogan, who preys on their insecurities. And they listen to a lot of older white men who can’t stop bitching about feminazis.
The issues facing boys start way before high school, let alone college. Instead of making them feel like victims of leftists, we can try to help them.
> To be clear, I am not claiming that white men are treated unfairly.
The Supreme Court disagrees. Decades of racial bias in admissions made it clear that white men weren't wanted on campus.
I shared this piece with my 20-something son, a graduate of a top state university. (BTW, he thinks you're a poser and not a philosophy prof because there was a grammar error in the post.) He also pointed out something about student literacy and writing, which is that your description fits perfectly what I was seeing in the California State U system in the early 90's, pre-cellphones.
The rest of it sounds believable because it correlates with what I've been reading about public K12. But I have to say, some of this is clearly not consistent across the board. My other kid recently graduated from a small Jesuit college, and the student body there was fabulous. He got an amazing education and made smart, engaged friends who get away from their phones on a regular basis. So there is hope... (just maybe not a *lot* of hope?)...
Finally, I also blame the "college for everyone" movement, which was (I say as a teacher of teenagers) really stupid. College isn't for everyone. College is for those who are ready to use what it has to offer and to work hard. A college can't force an adult student to work—they have to want it. I think a lot of the young people who go to college simply don't want it enough. When I taught in the 90s I saw a fair number of people who had dropped out and were returning. Perhaps there will be a path back for some of these people once they've got their priorities straight.
Hi, Hilarious. I’m new here, I’m not only a longtime member of the APA (I’ve attended at least one meeting a year since puberty) but a proud DEI hire. I was the first woman tenured in my department of 17 and only the second hired. And I had a very, very nasty time. I don’t believe that ‘diversity’ is of any value whatsoever. As a woman I have no special perspective, nothing to contribute that a comparably qualified male wouldn’t contribute. The purpose of affirmative action, from which I benefitted is to ameliorate ongoing discrimination against women and minorities. BTW I regularly team-teach a ‘Women and Work’ course with an economist so the data is very much in my face.
One piece of info that rarely comes up in discussion of why women are now over represented in college is that we play without a net. Before the 1960s/1970s, when women were forced out of the home and into the labor force men outnumbered women in college. Afterwards, when career housewifing was no longer available, women had to go to college to avoid miserable pink-collar shit work outside the home. I speak as a frustrated housewife. If I could have gotten full time career housewifing with guardrails—no divorce or at least alimony and the guarantee that I would never for a single day have to work
Outside the home I would never have gone to college, much less grad school. Women no longer have that option: we are driven through college by the stick, not drawn by the carrot.
Unless women can get into the unisex labor market for jobs in management and the professions that require a college degree or better our job prospects are ghastly intolerable—cashiering, data entry, care for incontinent infants or the elderly. We play without a net. Guys have more mid-range options that don’t require a degree—and I DONT mean the good, skilled plumbing, electrical work, blue collar trades that require an apprenticeship and pay well. I mean that half-assed men’s jobs that guys can get in an informal way—handyman type jobs, laying down carpet, gardening, cleaning upholstery and grout, etc. These aren’t great jobs but they’re a lot getter than standing in a 2’ x 2’ space and scanning groceries all day. So men don’t have to be scared shitless of what will happen to them if they don’t perform academically: they can get good enough if they aren’t especially ambitious, as is the case for most of us. Apart from the minority of highly ambitious guys, men can get good enough without going to college. They aren’t driven by the big stick that drives women.
Just my $.02, Hilarious. As a fellow metaphysician I am of trying to figure out who you are so now that I’ve subscribed I’ll be lurking for clues.
Thanks for your comment, Harriet. Two points: (1) I guess I’m not convinced that that the unskilled jobs available to men who lack a college degree are really that preferable to unskilled jobs available to women who lack a college degree. My (female) department secretary does not have a degree, but works in a climate-controlled office and has health benefits and a retirement plan. That’s better than wrecking your back laying carpet with no benefits. Even taking care of the elderly, which you describe as a female-coded job, is a better deal than manual day laborer. (2) your account does not explain why white college enrollment is going down. The story I offer explains why white men in particular are skipping college.
By the way, you interviewed me for a t-t job a very long time ago. I came in second. At the time, you told me that while I had your support, the department decided to make an affirmative action hire instead.
(1) I did not say that unskilled guy jobs were in some global sense ‘preferable’ to pink-collar jobs. I suggested that they were by many, including women, preferred. There is evidence of this from the natural experiment of WWII when, according to a Woman’s Bureau report at the end of the war over 80% of women who had Rosie Riveter jobs said that they would prefer to keep those jobs if they could—which they couldn’t—and for women who intended to remain in the labor force that figure rose to 93%. There are certainly women, and men, who prefer climate-controlled conditions doing clerical work—and even ‘caring work’. But many women, as these stats suggest, prefer physically strenuous guy jobs to traditional women’s jobs—climate-control notwithstanding.
My explanation also can be extended to explain why white men are skipping college. The more socially privileged you are, the less likely you are to face bias so the fewer academic credentials you need. White men need fewer credentials and less ‘human capital’ to get the same goods as black men—just as they need fewer credentials than women. My mother-in-law, no feminist, when in a nursing home said that she preferred women doctors because they ‘had to be better than men to get where they are’.
I never told you that you came in second in a search but that we had decided to make an affirmative action hire. If you’d like to discuss this further I suggest you email me. Moreover, though long ago when I was hired women were at a significant disadvantage in hiring for academic positions at my college they no longer are at a disadvantage in hiring for faculty positions. I don’t support affirmative action for either women or minorities for faculty positions—or for admission to college or professional programs, where blind review is feasible. I support affirmative action for women and minorities in positions where bias, largely unintentional, persists and blind review isn’t feasible.
Women have made college safe for women. Women have made marriage very dangerous for men! Make college dangerous and marriage safe! Men will be present in droves!
From 2012 to 2022, the overall college enrollment rate for men dropped by 4 points.
From 2012 to 2022, the college enrollment rate for white men dropped by only 2 points.
From 2012 to 2022, the college enrollment rate for hispanic men dropped by 7 points.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cpb/college-enrollment-rate,
I know I'm not giving a covariate analysis, but my opinion is that difference between white men and hispanic men here is money. According to https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/factsheets/at-a-glance/earnings-men-age-race-ethnicity.html, white men are earning 50% more money than hispanic men. If the message is "hey men, college isn't for you" the ones who would struggle most to afford it will be the first to listen.
Perhaps, but I guess I thought the message in your posting was about the "original sin of whiteness" (especially when coupled with maleness) and not about males broadly speaking. In any event, the data suggests that white male enrollments are dropping at a lower rate than enrollment for men generally. That seems problematic for much of the argument above.
Whites enrollment is down, male enrollment is down. White males are at the intersection of the Venn diagram. Since they are the historical stalwarts of higher ed, it’s worthwhile to ask what changed.
Sure, but since they are showing less than average enrollment drops, it seems unlikely that the enrollment drops are primarily driven by headwinds that specifically target white men. I think you might want to look at what is affecting hispanic men, since that seems to be the strongest effect, and then see whether that effect is also present, in weaker form, for white men.
Maybe the data leads you back to anti-white male sentiment, but that's not where the raw data suggests one should start.
>“patriarchy” is no longer a very good explanatory tool in a country where women fare better on nearly every measure.
Not true, because the patriarchy hurts men as well as women. As things become "female coded" like getting an education, they become devalued among men. Even if it is to their detriment. So female coded professions like teaching and nursing see pay and respect decrease as women come into the field. But you also see a hesitance by men to enter a female coded job like nursing or other non-doctor health care to their detriment because jobs are more abundant and pay is better than for some other fields that may be available with a one or two year degree. The same thing is happening here with college education. Men of color are more willing to cross that threshold because they are already facing the systemic disadvantages of racism.
As an 82-year-old white guy, I can only speak about those in my immediate circle, but I have a question for all those who are afraid of hearing and reading views they don't believe in or accept. "What a bunch of Puss****) It seems that the ladies have more courage than many in my group. If you are fearful of competing views, it means you don't understand what you profess to believe and can't find any arguments to support your point of view. In other words, you are mindlessly parroting what others have told you. Colleges and universities were institutions to teach a person how to think for themselves - they were not for job training, but for learning and expanding one's mind. In my day, stone tablets and chisels were needed for taking notes - now you have phones, you waste time on with social media and gamble on sports. Words of wisdom by Blaise Pascal, "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room, alone."
It was interesting to read the lines: "First, most of what’s taught has little or nothing to do with politics. Chemistry, mathematics, nursing, management, exercise science, accounting, neuroscience, foreign languages—you’d have to try mighty hard to find the indoctrination there."
No, you won't. Academia has been relentlessly "decolonising" subjects like Maths and Physics as well as the liberal arts. I've worked for a Physics institute magazine in the UK and it is obsessively progressive – anti nuclear power, pro trans rights and DEI. There are articles on mental wellbeing and a news agenda that prioritises stories about oppression and anything to do with Trump. Occasionally there is an article about Physics for its own sake and it feels like an oddity.
Maybe academia is not really a male space anymore – and young men can tell. It felt that way to me when I worked there before Covid.
Woke culture is only one variable. Another is the genuine doubt about the long term worth of white collar work vs skilled blue collar work. Your statement that “manufacturing” isn’t coming back is irrelevant—skilled trades offer long term middle class wages that are immune from automation regardless of whether manufacturing returns or not.
But really the most glaring reason you’re missing is laid out in Philip Zimbardo’s, “Man Interrupted.” Men are having a harder time than women with technology addiction. Video games and pornography are hijacking men’s psychology and removing the reasons men traditionally left the house—to seek sex (need met by pornography), friendships (need met by online gaming friendships), and danger (need met by violent video games).
In short, some more disciplined men are avoiding college because they have correctly intuited the long term threat to white collar work posed by AI, and other less disciplined men are pursuing neither college nor trade because they can’t pull their eyes away from the screens long enough to even *want to move out.*
I haven't read the Zimbardo book, but I am quite doubtful that 18-year-old males are sitting down and performing a rational evaluation of the risk of potential AI automation of white collar jobs vs. the stability of (some) blue collar ones.
Why does everyone on Substack write in the first person as if the word 'I' was the most important word in the Oxford Dictionary. The 'I' gender generation, no 'he' or 'she' allowed.
Remember while writing in the 1st person, you are the subject not us the reader.