The joy of gender imbalances on campus

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on the social effects of gender imbalances. As we know, teenage girls are more likely than boys to have their acts together, hence make up a larger and larger percentage of those who attend college. I see this all the time in my intro classes -- a majority of the most organized students are female, and a majority of the least organized are male. Many universities will have to use affirmative action for male applicants in order to preserve 50-50 gender ratios.

Math puzzle: (optional for readers who have trouble with distributions) If most of the least able students are male, and yet men and women perform equally on average (actually this may not be true anymore, but see PISA data :-), what does that imply about the most able students on campus?

Chronicle: American colleges are undergoing a striking gender shift. In 2015 the average college graduating class will be 60-percent female, according to the U.S. Education Department. Some colleges have already reached or passed that threshold, which allows anecdotal insights into how those imbalances affect the pickup culture. What can be seen so far is not encouraging: Stark gender imbalances appear to act as an accelerant on the hookup culture.

...In 2006 I visited James Madison University, a public university with 17,000 students. At the time, women made up 61 percent of the campus population.

...A senior added: "The guys see that there are a lot more girls, and they're not interested in having a relationship longer than the next girl to come along. Men know how to take advantage of that competition. They'll set things up at parties to get girls to do stuff, such as having a slip and slide contest," in which girls strip to their underwear and get wet sliding through water on a plastic sheet.

As a result of the rising gender imbalances, the university has become "female centric." But while women may run the clubs, dominate in classes, and generally define the character of the university, the law of supply and demand rules the social scene. That's why the women are both competitive in seeking men and submissive in lowering their standards.

Men at the university don't dispute what the women say. "Since there's such an overwhelming number of girls, they have such competition between each other to get a guy," a male junior admitted. "The guys here aren't stupid. They're plenty aware of that and know that girls have to get into a fight over them, instead of what's normal with guys courting girls."

I wonder what a FaceBook search on the keywords "slip and slide" brings up?