Where the girls are

On Wednesday, USA Today reported that, in May, the Minnesota Office of Higher Education posted statistics that suggested for the first time in history women earned more than half the college degrees granted statewide in every category. This comes at a time when women outnumber men in colleges 57 percent to 43 percent, even though there are more men in the United States between the traditional college ages of 18 to 24. \nGood news, right? Not to some, as there is worry about men going to college. Overreaction is often inevitably the first instinct of policy makers who hypothesize that these statistics will lead down a slippery slope where men will stop attending college. The bottom of the slope is somehow at the end of the world. Some are calling for "affirmative action" programs for men, potentially favoring male applicants over female applicants.\nIt is much too early to make serious judgments about the new data without context and time. This new "trend" is only a year old, hardly enough time to gauge its causes or consequences.\nStill, we have come to embrace a culture that loves to get high on numbers, become intoxicated by statistics, inebriated with conjecture and live for the overdramatic. Statistics can be very effective in determining trends and contributing to policy analysis, but numbers used irresponsibly are often detrimental to society.\nSeveral universities have already begun quota-like programs in response to low male numbers that are intended to provide some sort of educational equilibrium. However, unlike affirmative action, these programs are controversial because they do not serve to redress historical inequities, but to create equal numbers of boys and girls, potentially hindering female success and fostering more inequality.\nIt has only taken women about, let's count, something like a bazillion years to even begin to close the pay, education and social gaps in an American society traditionally dominated by males. Even now a woman still earns 77 cents to every dollar a man makes, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.\nThe purpose of the education system should be to provide equal access to excellent education for both males and females of any race, nationality or creed. Our educational system has more of a problem with economic disparities than anything else. Fix these inequalities, and equal access will become easier to obtain. \nLet's revisit the issue in five to 10 years to accurately see if there is a trend. If the right changes are made to juvenile education, then hopefully we will actually see that no child, boy or girl, will be left behind.