Sex for Tuition in the UK: Is University Worth the Price?

Universities are charging more and more for a product that offers less and less benefit to students and graduates. An out of control expansion of university staff -- a bureaucratic bloat -- is forcing young people to use their bodies as trade goods, just to pay college expenses and pay off ruinous college loan debt.

[College coeds] are taking up pole dancing, escort work and prostitution to help fund their studies as the cost of higher education soars.

The work has been fuelled by an expansion of the lap dancing industry as well as increasing opportunities for anonymous sex work through the internet.

In some cases students are thought to be signing up to a website that connects students with businessmen seeking “discreet adventures” and prepared to pay them for varying levels of sexual intimacy.

Young women can reportedly earn up to £15,000 a year through this work to help fund their studies. _Telegraph

The four year recession (and counting) has closed off opportunites across much of the economy, but the sex industry is doing well. Some opportunites are available in this growing industry for young male students, but most of the available work is for young women.

Research by Teela Sanders and Kate Hardy, of the University of Leeds, found that a quarter of lap dancers had a degree whilst a third of the women they interviewed were using the job to fund new forms of training.

Much of the expansion over the decade was to do with the proliferation of lap dancing clubs. But the internet also threw up a new range of opportunities for anonymous sex work. _Independent

Universities have been allowed to expand staff, salaries, and benefits to the point that the cost to students seems rarely considered in planning sessions. It is as if the point of the university is to provide comfortable lifetime salary and benefits to staff, with affordable education being too far down on the list of university purposes to consider.

And when these students graduate, what will they find? A private sector that is so stricken by bureaucratic bloat and mission bloat of governments, that fewer and fewer productive opportunities in the private sector will be available. Fewer opportunity for jobs and for starting lucrative new businesses that create new jobs. All of this due to the explosion of government, government regulations, taxes, prohibitions, mandates, and more to come.

These bloated bureaucracies create a sense of entitlement, dependency, and a loss of competence in everyone and everything they touch. The destructive expansion of both universities and governments ought to be brought under control before such bureaucratic and often parasitic institutions destroy their host societies.

The only other viable alternative is to build a "shadow society" and a "shadow government." A society based upon communities of dangerous (mature, competent, skilled, independent) children.

And while prostitution would be entirely legal in such a society, no one would be forced to choose that occupation unless she truly wanted to. And while university would be available either free of charge, or at competitive rates, individuals would be judged for their competence -- not for the tonnage of letters after their names.

Hookup Culture: Is It a Dead-End Trap for Women?

This article was originally published on Al Fin, You Sexy Thing!

Men are Hopeless. But Can Women Be Saved?

Even most men will admit that when it comes to sex, men are hopeless. If it wears a skirt, laughs at his jokes, and doesn't smell too bad, he's up for it. The hook-up culture is perfect for the stereotypical hairy farting male.

But most women are looking for something more, a deeper connection than just skin contact. At least, some form of intimacy that didn't require copious quantities of drugs and alcohol as lubricant.

Hookup culture, pro and con:

In her Atlantic article "Boys on the Side" (September 2012), Hanna Rosin argues that the social progress of women depends on the hook-up culture. Women in their 20s and 30s are, for the first time, more successful than their male peers. These alpha females not only outnumber men on college campuses, they have also overtaken men as the majority of the work force. This would not have been possible without sexual liberation, which has let women delay marriage and child-rearing to pursue their educational and career ambitions without worrying about the emotional burdens of a relationship. Women are better off in part because of the hook-up culture, the argument goes.

But are they really?

On most college campuses, the hook-up culture is the norm; there is little to no dating. Various academic studies have found that anywhere between 65 to 75 percent of undergraduates nationwide have participated in the hook-up culture. Part of the reason the culture is so widespread is, as Rosin correctly notes, because women are choosing to have casual sex. But in another respect, they don't have a choice. Women make the hook-up culture possible, but men are the beneficiaries of it.

The feminist sociologist Lisa Wade, based at Occidental College, who did a qualitative study of 44 of her freshman students (33 of them women), found that most of them were "overwhelmingly disappointed with the sex they were having in hook ups. This was true of both men and women, but was felt more intensely by women." College women today, as Wade points out, feel "disempowered instead of empowered by sexual encounters. They didn't feel like equals on the sexual playground, more like jungle gyms." According to a 2010 study by Carolyn Bradshaw of James Madison University, only 2 percent of women strongly prefer the hook-up culture to a dating culture. _Atlantic

Is it truly possible that only 2% of women prefer hookups to dating, relationships, and romance? If true, why is hookup culture the norm on today's college campuses?

Check out thest top 5 sexual fantasies of women, as compiled by a University of Michigan research study:

...what are the top five female sexual fantasies?

1.) Having sex with a stranger.

2.) Being worshipped in bed.

3.) Being ravaged in bed.

4.) Having sex in front of other people who are watching.

5.) Threesomes. _Jezebel

There may be one side of many women that just wants to be treated like an object. We know that men aren't very nice. It is more than possible that most women also have a naughty side.

Another way to look at the question of hookups vs. romance, is to ask what happens in a relationship, when men and women who care about each other come together physically? Is it wild drunken sex all the way, just like in the hookups? Not exactly.

A new study from really smart scientists has found that the chances of a cuddle session leading to sex are only one in six.

Researchers at the University of Michigan looked at the methods, motivations and eventual outcomes of the average couple's cuddling sessions, and the results show it usually only leads to conversation, not copulation.

Over 500 men and women in relationships were asked about the nature of their cuddling, defined as "intimate, physical and loving contact that does not involve sexual behavior and that involves some degree of whole body touching, not just hand to hand or lips to lips."

The researchers found a number of interesting results: The average time of a cuddle session is 47 minutes and 36 seconds. Most couples like to do it on the couch in front of the tv. Most do it at least 8 times a week, and women like it more than men.

However, cuddling doesn't often lead to sex. The study's participants reported stronger feelings of intimacy and relaxation during and after, which tends to lead to conversation. _Your Tango

What happens to a society when most of its women of child-bearing age are forced to settle for hookups, either out of time constraints or because not much else is available?

What can women do, to stop waking up in a stranger's bed with a splitting hangover and no recollection whatsoever of what she may have done the night before? Consider Lysistrata:

In the heat of the Peloponnesian War, Lysistrata gathered the women of various Greek city-states at a meeting and proposed that they withhold sex from their husbands until these men end the war. The women, though reluctant at first, agree. Throughout the play, though they desire sex just like the men do, they resist the temptation to break their oath with Lysistrata. The Athenian and Spartan men eventually become so desperate for sex that they begin peace talks. The women's strategy works.

Lysistrata, a tough and independent woman, understood how the sexual marketplace works, and harnessed that knowledge to get what she wanted. Many men want sex with women. As Lysistrata knew, women have the power to say yes—or no (assuming men respect their wishes, of course. _Atlantic

Is it fair to put the responsibility for the future of the brighter portion of humanity on women? Absolutely not. But then, life has never been fair.

More: Recently published research in the Journal of Adolescent Health makes the claim that the hookup culture is not quite as dominant over college campuses as the author in the Atlantic piece above suggests.

Forty percent reported at least one hookup during the first year of college, though less than 20 percent reported having these casual encounters at a rate of once a month. Meanwhile, 56 percent reported oral and/or vaginal sex with a relationship partner during that first year.

"These findings support what we know about the first year of college: That it is a time when we see increases in sexual behavior and substance use, as young people explore who they want to be and how they want to interact with others — especially romantic partners," Fielder explained in a statement. "It's important that we gain a better understanding of students' sexual behavior, since it can potentially affect both their physical and mental health as well as their academic success."

The research was published online Oct. 29 in the Journal of Adolescent Health. _LS

I suspect that actual proportion of students who avail themselves of the hookup culture will vary, depending upon the institution. But any "culture" that tries to push human nature too far out of its natural orbits is likely to collapse sooner or later. If for no other reason, because all its members have died out.

Birthrates among educated women in western societies are already near rock-bottom. Other than a 100% effective contraceptive in the water supply, it would be difficult to eradicate some western populations at a higher rate than they are eradicating themselves.

The essential foundation of wise action in any circumstance, is to understand what the flock is going on. The problem is, once you have that figured out, you have to make a decision. And decisions can be hard.

More: A woman's perspective on the Atlantic article excerpted above

Sex for Tuition: More on Paying off College Loans

This article was previously published in Al Fin, You Sexy Thing!

Talking to Your Daughter About Paying Off College Debt the Old Fashioned Way

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Let's face it: Paying for college these days is not easy. Tuition rates have skyrocketed much faster than inflation. Total US college debt is over $1 trillion ! Loving parents do not want their children to start their adult lives hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

That is why it is so important to discuss all the options with your child, before she heads off to college. And whether she chooses to sell her eggs, auction off her virginity, or sell her student services for tuition money, she needs to know what to expect.

For those daughters who plan to exchange sex for tuition money, here are several tips provided by concerned mothers of daughters who have walked this path before:

1. "When using sex to pay for college, the most important points that you should stress are include the importance of using a condom to reduce the risk of STI's/STD's and to prevent pregnancy. Discuss options for other forms of birth control if she decides that she wants to use a form of hormonal contraception.

2. "The most important thing in trading sex for tuition money, is that she use protection, and you can even make her an appointment at a Planned Parenthood or her pediatrician, where she can talk to a professional about her options."

3. If she does decide to have sex for tuition, tell to never ever do it without protection - no matter what."

4. "Protection is the key point you want to emphasize. She probably knows about sex but you need to make sure she is practicing safe sex. Slip condoms in with her stuff before she leaves."
 

Sometimes just knowing that she is not alone -- that many other girls are choosing the same resourceful method of paying for college -- can make a student prostitute feel better about herself.

There is no shortage of historical stories of women paying off debt with unusual means. Take the women that worked her way through law school as a stripper or the doctor that made it through medical school as an escort. _Get Out of College Debt

Regular readers of "Al Fin, You Sexy Thing!" will understand that there is a time factor at play. As sex robots become more realistic, there is likely to be less demand for human prostitutes -- even college age girls. It is important that young women take advantage of their assets while they have them, and while the competition remains limited.

Another potential complicating factor is the overall economic situation. In bad economic times -- such as the Obama depression, for example -- more women and girls tend to fall back on instinctive ways of earning income. This means that if the Obama depression continues, college girls are likely to find themselves competing with more and more girls and women -- even high school girls and professional women such as doctors and lawyers.

College students must consider all of their options for paying college debt, and not make hasty decisions or enter into ill conceived contracts. But always remember that the biological clock is ticking. If you plan to "have it all" -- career, family, kids, private jet . . . -- you will need to use your time and your assets wisely.

Obama Takes His Wrecking Ball to US Science & Technology

Since its founding, the US has been a fertile ground for scientific and technological innovation. Increasingly over the past century and a half, the US economy has been driven by scientific and technological discoveries and advances. Still, it would be quite easy for bad government policies to change all of that.

Science and technology are male-dominated areas in the US and in virtually any other nation in the world. There is a good reason for the male preponderance in math, the hard sciences, and the technological occupations. But US feminists are unhappy about this "gender imbalance," and they want President Obama to do something about it.

Quotas limiting the number of male students in science may be imposed by the Education Department in 2013. The White House has promised that “new guidelines will also be issued to grant-receiving universities and colleges” spelling out “Title IX rules in the science, technology, engineering and math fields.” These guidelines will likely echo existing Title IX guidelines that restrict men’s percentage of intercollegiate athletes to their percentage in overall student bodies, thus reducing the overall number of intercollegiate athletes.

Obama hinted that Title IX quotas would soon come to engineering and techology, saying that “Title IX isn’t just about sports,” but also about “inequality in math and science education” and “a much broader range of fields, including engineering and technology. _OpenMarket

In American universities, science, math, and technology departments are relatively free of the leftist indoctrination which pervades most other departments and divisions of modern universities. If feminists can get their man Obama to bring those recalcitrant and untamed departments under control, they will have a virtual lock on all areas of the university -- faculty, staff, and students.

The fact that fewer women than men major in science and engineering is the result of their own voluntary choices, not sexism or sex discrimination by schools, notes researcher John Rosenberg, the proud father of a daughter who got a Ph.D. from CalTech. My daughter is bright, and I’d be happy if she got a graduate degree in engineering (or became a physicist, like her grandfather), but I can’t force her to do that if she doesn’t want to, and a college shouldn’t be deemed liable for sex discrimination against women if women like her don’t want to study engineering.

Gender disparities in a major are not the product of sexism, but rather the differing preferences of men and women. The fact that engineering departments are filled mostly with men does not mean they discriminate against women anymore than the fact that English departments are filled mostly with women proves that English departments discriminate against men. The arts and humanities have well over 60 percent female students, yet no one seems to view that gender disparity as a sign of sexism against men. Deep down, the Obama administration knows this, since it is planning to impose its gender-proportionality rules only on the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math), not other fields that have similarly large gender disparities in the opposite direction. _OpenMarket

Such an overwhelming difference in interests between the sexes, statistically, hints at deeper differences within the biology. Social engineers would be wise to show caution when tinkering with deep biological differences which have evolved over many millions of years.

As Susan Pinker notes, “A mountain of published research stretching back a hundred years shows that women are far more likely than men to be deeply interested in organic subjects—people, plants and animals—than they are to be interested in things and inanimate systems, such as electrical engineering, or computer systems.”

Women are well-represented in scientific fields that involve lots of interaction with people. As The New York Times’ John Tierney noted, “Despite supposed obstacles like “unconscious bias” and a shortage of role models and mentors, women now constitute about half of medical students, 60 percent of biology majors, and 70 percent of psychology Ph.D.’s. They earn the majority of doctorates in both the life sciences and the social sciences.” By contrast, “They remain a minority in the physical sciences and engineering,” which deal more with inanimate objects rather than people.

These gender-based differences are not the product of discrimination, and manifest themselves at a very early age. As a book on the biology of male-female differences notes, “Girl babies in their cribs are especially inclined to stare at images of human faces, whereas infant boys are likely to find inanimate objects every bit as attractive”; “this difference persists into adulthood: when shown images of people as well as things, men tend to remember the things, and women tend to remember the people.” _OpenMarket

Obama intends to enlarge upon his already catastrophic program of experimental social engineering, using US citizens, businesses, and institutions as his experimental mice.

It would be nice if these experimental mice were well informed about Obama's intentions prior to the November US elections.

Should Prostitution Be Legalised to Help Coeds Pay for A College Education?

This article is cross-posted from Al Fin, You Sexy Thing! blog

Mes chères études (2010)

Making ends meet while going to college can be very difficult for young girls, who have often not lived away from home before going to university. California coeds have long discovered the working opportunities available in and around Nevada communities such as Las Vegas and Reno. But in parts of the world where prostitution is less accepted, college girls who utilise their innate assets for raising tuition money are often hassled by law enforcement -- as well as by criminal gangs and pimps.

College aged girls are at the optimum stage of physical development for using their natural charms to entice salary men to part with their money. And as long as the girls use the money to better themselves, who can argue with their choice?

"Over the past few years, the number of college students using our site has exploded," says Brandon Wade, the 41-year-old founder of Seeking Arrangement. Of the site's approximately 800,000 members, Wade estimates that 35 percent are students. "College students are one of the biggest segments of our sugar babies and the numbers are growing all the time." _HP

Several internet sites exist to match college girls with older men with money.

At least one university president is known to have run a large prostitution ring, no doubt using some of his university connections to recruit girls. University professors have been known to recruit girls from their classes to work as strippers and exotic dancers.

The main obstacle to developing this opportunity more widely for college girls, appears to be the legal difficulties. As long as college girls have to operate outside the law to pay for school, they must risk losing everything they have worked so hard for.

If prostitution were legalised, girls could organise for security and protection from all types of predators -- on both sides of the law.

Legal status might also help prevent more girls from falling prey to drug abuse and addiction -- one of the many hazards of the occupation.

There is no denying the allure which college aged girls hold for men of all ages.

Educated, debt-ridden 20-somethings happen to be an age demographic that intersects nicely with Jack's preferences. "I only go out with girls 25 and under," says Jack, whose thick head of white hair and bushy eyebrows form a halo around a red, flushed face. "But I can't walk into a bar and go up to a 25-year-old. They'd think I'm a pervert. So, this is how I go about meeting them."

As he continues, he repeatedly glances over his shoulder to make sure no one is listening.

"Most of these young women have debt from school," says Jack, who finds most young women also carry an average of $8,000 in credit-card debt. "I guess I like the college girls more because I think of their student debt as good debt. At least it seems like I'm helping them out, like I'm helping them to get a better life." _HP

College girls simply have what most men want -- youth, vitality, naivete, and that certain je ne sais quoi, which everyone knows what it is.

We all know that this kind of thing has gone on for ages. In modern times, when US college student debt is over $1 trillion dollars, we all know that those who can find a way to get out from under all that debt will tend to use it -- if they think they can come out unscathed on the other side.

Polite societies have long made activities such as prostitution and gambling illegal. But doing so only seems to drive these activities further underground, where they become the province of criminal -- often violent criminal -- elements.

Of course, the philosophy that everyone should go to college is more than a little insane. But if society is willing to live with that little fiction -- to the tune of $1 trillion in college loan debt -- perhaps society might need to learn to live with a bit of blunt reality in terms of the available choices for paying the debt.

Should society be willing to face that reality, it might make things safer for everyone.

US College Girls: Were You Raped Without Your Knowledge?

According to a report commissioned by Obama's National Institute of Justice, 20% of US college girls have been raped at least once in their lives. And yet, if you were to ask almost all of the girls surveyed for the the report if they had been raped, they would tell you "no." Is it possible the US college girls are being raped without their knowledge?

Imagine that 20 percent of college women were victims of rape or attempted rape — a rate of sexual assault astronomically higher than anything seen in America’s most violent cities (in Detroit, for example, there were 36.8 rapes per 100,000 inhabitants in 2009, a rate of 0.037 percent).

...The White House claims that one in five female students has been victims of sexual assault or attempted sexual assault while at college. Such bogus statistics have been the mainstay of campus-rape-epidemic propaganda for years. They are generated by a variety of clever techniques, but the most important is this: The survey-taker, rather than the female respondent, decides whether the latter has been raped or not. When you ask the girls directly whether they view themselves as victims of rape, the answer overwhelmingly comes in: No. _HeatherMacDonald

More on the government report claiming 1 in 5 college women were sexually assaulted:

...college women were asked about their sexual experiences, on campus and off, and the researchers—not the women themselves—decided whether they had been assaulted. The researchers employed an expansive definition of sexual assault that included "forced kissing" and even "attempted" forced kissing. The survey also asked subjects if they had sexual contact with someone when they were unable to give consent because they were drunk. A "yes" answer was automatically counted as a rape or assault. According to the authors, "an intoxicated person cannot legally consent to sexual contact."

Surely, reasonable people can disagree on that: If sexual intimacy under the influence of alcohol is by definition assault, then a significant percentage of sexual intercourse throughout the world and down the ages qualifies as crime.

The Justice Department stamped a disclaimer on every page of the survey report, advising that it is not a publication of the Justice Department and does not necessarily reflect its positions or policies. Ali [US Asst. Secretary of Education], however, treats it as an official government finding and ignores the controversies and ambiguities surrounding her "one in five" figure.

Deans at institutions including Yale, Stanford, and Brandeis Universities and the Universities of Georgia and of Oklahoma are already rushing to change their disciplinary procedures to meet the Education Department's decree. Now, on campuses throughout the country, we face the prospect of academic committees—armed with vague definitions of sexual assault, low standards of proof, and official sanction for the notion that sex under the influence is, ipso facto assault or rape—deciding the fate of students accused of a serious crime. _AEI

So what we have is a govenment-sponsored hoax on a grand scale, being perpetrated by the US Department of Education, and being used as a pretense to bring about the pall of an inquisitional witch hunt over university campuses across the US. If universities do not adopt the new quasi-fascist rules of judicial process being promoted by the US Department of Education, they risk losing all their federal funding.

Is this truly the kind of government that Americans want to pay for -- to go bankrupt for? Not very likely. What can they do about it? Not much, as long as Obama and his cronies are in charge.

If you plan to send your son to a large university, keep in mind the risk you are taking by sending him into this atmosphere of sexual inquisition and administrative injustice.

More regarding Assistant Secretary of Education Ali's brave new crusade against campus sex crime:

"We will use all of the tools at our disposal including ... withholding federal funds ... to ensure that women are free from sexual violence," Ali told NPR last year. One such tool is the standard of proof that college disciplinary committees use when determining guilt. Many colleges employ a "beyond a reasonable doubt" or a "clear and convincing" standard. (Roughly speaking, "beyond a reasonable doubt" requires a 98-percent certainty of guilt; clear and convincing, an 80-percent certainty.) Ali, however, orders all colleges to adopt the far-less-demanding standard of "preponderance of the evidence." Using that standard, a defendant can be found guilty if members of a disciplinary committee believe there is slightly more than a 50/50 chance that he committed the crime. That standard will make it far easier for disciplinary committees to try, convict, and punish an accused student (almost always a male).

Marching under the banner of Title IX and freed of high standards of proof, campus disciplinary committees, once relatively weak and feckless, will be transformed into powerful instruments of gender justice. At least, that is the fantasy. But here is the reality: Campus disciplinary committees—often a casual mix of professors, students, and an assistant dean or two—are well suited to resolving cases involving purported plagiarism and cheating, and violations of college rules on drugs and alcohol. But no one considers them prepared to adjudicate murder, arson, or kidnapping cases, or criminal assault. They lack the training and the resources to investigate and adjudicate felonies. So why are they expected to determine guilt or innocence in cases of rape? _AEI

The College Imperative and the Coming Idiocracy

More: Now we are learning that as many as 85% of US college graduates are forced by debt to move back in with their parents when they leave college. Perhaps someone should have told their parents this was going to happen, before the fact?

For several decades, American children have been pushed toward a college education as the path to life and career success. More and more children are enrolling in college -- over 70% of American high school graduates enrolled in college over the past decade. Yet there are many reasons to believe that this rush to a college education is not only counter-productive, but may be downright destructive to a society.

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It has been argued persuasively that a rigorous 4 year college degree can only be put to good use by a person at or above the 80th percentile of IQ. Forcing more people into the system requires a dumbing down of admissions, a dumbing down of course work, and a dumbing down of evaluations and credentials.

If 70.1% of high school graduates enroll in a college or university, how does a college degree give you an advantage over the rest of the population? Back in the early 1960s, Americans didn't need to go to college. We were a creditor nation with a strong manufacturing base. With an unemployment rate of only 5%, jobs were available to almost everybody. Less than 50% of American high school graduates enrolled into college. For those who did attend college and graduate with a degree, it was actually something special that made you stand out from the rest of the field, because not everybody had one.

...The current college education bubble is one of the largest bubbles in U.S. history. The college bubble has been fueled by the U.S. government's willingness to give out cheap and easy student loans to anybody who applied for them, regardless of if they will ever have the ability to pay the loans back. Student loan debt in America is now larger than credit card debt, but unlike credit card debt, student loan debt can't be discharged in bankruptcy. _CollegeBubble

The situation is even worse for women. Women who go put all their energies into the higher education bubble and a career, all too often risk dying childless and unloved, and deeply in debt besides. Even so, the proportion of women attending college is growing and approaching 60% as the proportion of men continues to fall toward 40%.

It is the most intelligent and best educated women who are choosing careers over motherhood, while the least intelligent women are bearing the lioness' share of children. Given the choice of sex partners by less intelligent women, it is likely that the average intelligence of newcomers to society is declining -- a dysgenic process leading to Idiocracy.

GNXP
The same trend toward higher proportion of births from low-IQ populations is taking place in nations across the western world -- in no small part due to the push for more children to go to college, particularly women.

Many other potentially catastrophic side effects of the "college imperative" are put on display in the documentary "College Conspiracy." The college bubble is a source of massive capital misallocation and extreme (often frivolous) debt, for youth just beginning their lives. The psychological impact of living under so much debt is incalculable. Many young people must postpone thoughts of marriage and raising a family for many years -- and sometimes indefinitely -- due to massive educational debt. And the problem is only growing worse over time.

Is college a waste of time? No, it is a waste of lives and a waste of human capital. The college imperative is becoming the waste of the future -- the midwifing of the Idiocracy.

Women: Go to College and Die Childless and Unloved

That seems to be one of the messages coming out of the latest US census report. Apparently women who go to college and postpone childbearing are considerably less likely to ever have children.

Fertility researcher Karen Guzzo, an assistant professor of sociology at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, says many women "are probably not choosing never to have children, so much as … they're not forming relationships because they're investing in their education and careers."

...•Women with a college degree are experiencing what the bureau calls a "delayer boom" — they're having babies at later ages than other women and having fewer children overall. _USAToday

Here are other fascinating findings from the census report:

Women with less than a high school education had three times as many births as women with at least a bachelor's degree. Eighty-three percent of women 25 to 34 with less than a high school education had given birth at twice the percentage recorded by women with at least a bachelor's degree (42 percent).

...-- By age 40 to 44, white non-Hispanic women (20.6 percent) were more likely to be childless than Hispanic women (12.4 percent), black women (17.2 percent) and Asian women (15.9 percent). Black women were also more likely to be childless than Hispanic women. Asian women did not differ from black or Hispanic women. _ChicagoTribune

Women who narrow their focus to just their careers often unwittingly fritter away any chance for motherhood they may have had.

I know...that not being a mother means there is a part of me which remains unused, a love that will be forever unexpressed. I know that what any mother describes as the most profound love she has ever known is, to me, a locked door — there is so much love I will never be able to give, wisdom and understanding I cannot share, shelter and solace I cannot provide.

...My regrets will always linger. My life is a poorer place for not having children, and I am less of a woman for not being a mother. There is a vast realm of experience and growth I will never know. _DailyMail

Women who have blindly shut themselves off from motherhood in their fertile youth often try to project an attitude of indifference and lack of regret to the outside world. But inside herself, she must face the truth of the things she will never know, and the love she will never share.

On the larger scale, for the western world this means that too many her most intelligent women will never have children. Less intelligent and uneducated women will take their place in the birthing wards, and less intelligent children will fill the classrooms, playgrounds, and public spaces of the future.

The US has its poor and uneducated Mexican immigrants, Europe has its poor and uneducated immigrants from MENA, SS Africa, and Asia. The demographic displacement plays out sans fanfare or announcement, to general public indifference.

But the longterm fallout will be severe, as the average population IQ sinks below the level necessary for a complex society to sustain its infrastructure.

Taken from a piece published earlier at abu al-fin

Special Note: An earlier Al Fin posting has been "disappeared" by a Blogger glitch in the course of the blog host updating to a new version. Al Fin is lucky to have only lost one posting. Many bloggers lost several articles, and some lost their entire blog -- at least temporarily.

The previously published piece will be re-published when it becomes available, along with comments which are presumably still attached to it.

AF

Sex Differences in Math Ability Real and Important

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The talent required to do mathematics at the level of a Fields Medalist is extraordinary. The pool of competitors spans the adult population of the world not yet turned 40 on January 1 of the year Medals are awarded -- approximately 2 billion....On average, there are three Fields winners per award year, so that the ratio of competitors to slots, N /NS is approximately 7 x 108. From this we estimate the minimum mathematical ability of Fields Medalists to be an incredible 5.8 SD greater than the male population mean. Approximately 1.3 percent of the Medalists will be women. Since the prize is conferred quadrennially, we expect a female Fields Medalist to emerge approximately once every 103 years, that is, every 4/[3(0.013)] years. None has yet surfaced. _SexDifferencesMathAptitude

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A recent study claiming to find "few gender differences in math abilities" is a good example of deception by "science headlines." Published in the most recent "Psychological Bulletin" (an APA publication), the study looked at TIMSS and PISA scores for almost 500,000 students aged 14-16 years, in 69 countries. Although differences in math abilities between boys and girls do not develop most strongly until well into puberty -- around age 16 to 18 -- and grow larger thereafter, the Villanova researchers chose to look at younger students. Even so, the study found consistent differences in math aptitude between boys and girls.

SAT scores in the US consistently show a significant gap of almost 40 points between males and females who take the test.

Sex differences in math and spatial abilities go deep -- to the genes. Billions of dollars have been spent over the past few decades to bring the numbers of female math PhDs and Fields Prize winners into parity with male numbers. To no avail.

Men and women exhibit other behavioral differences which are apparent almost from birth. To some extent they mirror sex-differentiated behavior in animals. Boys are more aggressive, girls more nurturing. Female babies react more to facial expressions, males to moving objects. By adolescence these behaviors have morphed into girls' interest in social relationships, and boys' interest in machines and devices. Obviously, such divergence of interests influences career choices. Girls lean more toward fields like psychology, while similarly talented men incline toward engineering or physical science. A study6 by Lubinski and Benbow followed the careers of mathematically precocious youth from age 13 to 23. All were in the top 1% of mathematical ability. At age 23 less than 1% of the girls were pursuing doctorates in mathematics, engineering, or physical science, while almost 8% of the boys were. Equal aptitude not withstanding, girls pursued doctorates in biology at more than twice the rate of boys, and in the humanities at almost three times the rate of boys. For all these reasons, we should regard 29% as an upper bound to the percentage of women in the technological work force. In practice, their numbers will be significantly less. _Source

Even the relatively few girls who are genetically endowed with superior math talent tend to choose non-mathematical pursuits in life.  In the modern free choice era of education, there can be no doubt that women make these life choices because of their own inner desires.

Of course, there are also innate gender differences that work to the advantage of women.   These differences are celebrated by feminists, not denied. ;-)

While women have been able to approach 50% of math BA's and math MA's, the genetic ceiling seems to be holding down the proportion of math PhDs for women near 25%. (2005 Gallagher, Kauffman) As easy as PhD's can be to get at some institutions-- and as desperately as women are recruited to these programs-- the low level of math PhDs for women suggests either a shortage of interest or a shortage of aptitude.  The same phenomenon is evident in the more math intensive and theoretical areas within physics, chemistry, computer science, and engineering.  And if you look at elite institution PhDs, the differences are even greater.

Denial of innate differencs in aptitude between men and women, and between various ethnic groups, is an important structural support of leftist egalitarian philosophies and politics.  But genuine honest science continues to reveal these important differences.  No amount of leftist resource misallocation  will change the underlying nature of the facts.

Higher Education Bows to Female Future

Mark Perry presents a series of fascinating charts using data from the US Department of Education. These charts show clear trends of female ascendancy and male decline in higher education. The accelerating dominance of women is clearly shown at the undergraduate, the masters, and the doctorate levels of educational attainment.In the hands of feminist professors, ideologues, and educational bureaucrats, this data will no doubt be used to demonstrate that women are not advancing nearly fast enough, due to entrenched sexism in society.But to realistic observers, the charts not only track the rise of women in higher education along with the fall of men, they also track the clear decline in fertility of educated and highly intelligent women in the US and the western world at large. The future human capital of the western world simply does not signify in the calculation.

It is possible for women to have it all. But in order to have it all, a woman must understand her own biology, and understand the totality of her own needs as a woman. Biology puts time limits on a woman's reproductive function. If she doesn't want to have children--if she knows she will never want to have children--she is better off diving into her career and making the most of it. But it is up to her to take her own needs into account--to her feminist professors she is only a statistic that they want to use for their own agenda.

Many of these women will not understand viscerally how they have been shortchanged and sold a shoddy bill of goods, until they have put in twenty years in a job they were told they should do, but never actually liked, only to find that they are no longer fertile when they decide it's time. The story is told so often anymore that it has become a truism.

Eventually, egg freezing and ovarian tissue freezing will provide another option for middle-aged women--the late motherhood option. It will be nice when women have that choice. But they will need to plan ahead.

What about men? What will happen to them as society's resources continue being shunted away from them, toward women? Lionel Tiger has a lot to say about that in Decline of Males. That is another story, but one worth considering.

Somehow, I doubt the Obama administration will bother itself over the problem. Considering the likely efficacy of Obamanation, that might be best.

Gender Jihad: Title 9 in Science, Forced Quotas for Women in Science and Engineering

Why does the US National Science Foundation want to force a gender quota system on one of the few areas of academia that still operates largely as a meritocracy? What will happen to science, if faculty and research positions are based upon gender rather than ability?

The members of Congress and women’s groups who have pushed for science to be “Title Nined” say there is evidence that women face discrimination in certain sciences, but the quality of that evidence is disputed. Critics say there is far better research showing that on average, women’s interest in some fields isn’t the same as men’s.

In this debate, neither side doubts that women can excel in all fields of science. In fact, their growing presence in former male bastions of science is a chief argument against the need for federal intervention.

Despite supposed obstacles like “unconscious bias” and a shortage of role models and mentors, women now constitute about half of medical students, 60 percent of biology majors and 70 percent of psychology Ph.D.’s. They earn the majority of doctorates in both the life sciences and the social sciences. They remain a minority in the physical sciences and engineering. Even though their annual share of doctorates in physics has tripled in recent decades, it’s less than 20 percent. Only 10 percent of physics faculty members are women, a ratio that helped prompt an investigation in 2005 by the American Institute of Physics into the possibility of bias.

...starting at age 12, the girls tended to be better rounded than the boys: they had relatively strong verbal skills in addition to math, and they showed more interest in “organic” subjects involving people and other living things. Despite their mathematical prowess, they were less likely than boys to go into physics or engineering.

But whether they grew up to be biologists or sociologists or lawyers, when they were surveyed in their 30s, these women were as content with their careers as their male counterparts. They also made as much money per hour of work. Dr. Lubinski and Dr. Benbow concluded that adolescents’ interests and balance of abilities — not their sex — were the best predictors of whether they would choose an “inorganic” career like physics.

A similar conclusion comes from a new study of the large gender gap in the computer industry by Joshua Rosenbloom and Ronald Ash of the University of Kansas. By administering vocational psychological tests, the researchers found that information technology workers especially enjoyed manipulating objects and machines, whereas workers in other occupations preferred dealing with people.

Once the researchers controlled for that personality variable, the gender gap shrank to statistical insignificance: women who preferred tinkering with inanimate objects were about as likely to go into computer careers as were men with similar personalities. There just happened to be fewer women than men with those preferences.

....the campaign for gender parity infantilizes women by assuming they don’t know what they want. She interviewed women who abandoned successful careers in science and engineering to work in fields like architecture, law and education — and not because they had faced discrimination in science.

Instead, they complained of being pushed so hard to be scientists and engineers that they ended up in jobs they didn’t enjoy. “The irony was that talent in a male-typical pursuit limited their choices,” Ms. Pinker says. “Once they showed aptitude for math or physical science, there was an assumption that they’d pursue it as a career even if they had other interests or aspirations. And because these women went along with the program and were perceived by parents and teachers as torch bearers, it was so much more difficult for them to come to terms with the fact that the work made them unhappy.” _NYT_via_Slashdot

Why do US government agencies wish to force more women into professions and careers that they would not otherwise choose for themselves? Because the abstract concept of "gender equity"--the perceived need for women to compose at least half the members of any high profile or high prestige group. Whether individual women wish to be part of this "grand gender crusade" or not.

Institutions of science and engineering are being forced into a position where valuable time is diverted to filling out reams of paperwork to satisfy government gender busybodies. But, of course, nothing will ever satisfy them. Until all successful and productive institutions are subjugated to the gender jihad, no one will have peace.

A Woman's Right to Choose: No Means No!

Women are choosing their careers with a freedom like never before, and with their eyes wide open. Female students and professionals are refusing to allow academic bullies such as Donna Shalala, Nancy Hopkins, or Liz Spelke to tell them what they can do with their lives. Because, no means no!

Women make up almost half of today's workforce, yet hold just a fraction of the jobs in certain high-earning, high-qualification fields. They constitute 20 percent of the nation's engineers, fewer than one-third of chemists, and only about a quarter of computer and math professionals.

...A few years ago, Joshua Rosenbloom, an economist at the University of Kansas, became intrigued by a new campaign by the National Science Foundation to root out what it saw as pervasive gender discrimination in science and engineering. The agency was spending $19 million a year to encourage mentoring programs, gender-bias workshops, and cooperative work environments.

...Rosenbloom surveyed hundreds of professionals in information technology, a career in which women are significantly underrepresented. He also surveyed hundreds in comparable careers more evenly balanced between men and women. The study examined work and family history, educational background, and vocational interests.

The results were striking...In general, Rosenbloom's study found, men and women who enjoyed the explicit manipulation of tools or machines were more likely to choose IT careers - and it was mostly men who scored high in this area. Meanwhile, people who enjoyed working with others were less likely to choose IT careers. Women, on average, were more likely to score high in this arena...Personal preference, Rosenbloom and his group concluded, was the single largest determinative factor in whether women went into IT. They calculated that preference accounted for about two-thirds of the gender imbalance in the field.

...[In a different study starting] more than 30 years ago, the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth began following nearly 2,000 mathematically gifted adolescents, boys and girls, tracking their education and careers in ensuing decades. (It has since been expanded to 5,000 participants, many from more recent graduating classes.) Both men and women in the study achieved advanced credentials in about the same numbers. But when it came to their career paths, there was a striking divergence.

Math-precocious men were much more likely to go into engineering or physical sciences than women. Math-precocious women, by contrast, were more likely to go into careers in medicine, biological sciences, humanities, and social sciences. Both sexes scored high on the math SAT, and the data showed the women weren't discouraged from certain career paths.

The survey data showed a notable disparity on one point: That men, relative to women, prefer to work with inorganic materials; women, in general, prefer to work with organic or living things. This gender disparity was apparent very early in life, and it continued to hold steady over the course of the participants' careers. __BostonGlobe

For decades now, women have had the power to choose their career paths. And women are making that choice, loudly and clearly. If the radical busybodies in political gender academics choose not to listen to the clear choices that women are making--and refuse to take the women seriously--then who is to blame here? The tendency of highly political academics to ignore the lessons from research in order to pursue their own disconnected pet policies to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars, is getting quite old.

Let the women (and men) themselves make their choices based upon their own perceived self-interests. By all means provide all students with as much information about their wide range of choices as possible. Do not arbitrarily limit their experience or their choice. But let them choose for themselves.

Why Jenny Flunks Math 55

Math 55 is supposed to be the hardest math course in US higher education. "Honors Calculus and Linear Algebra". Classes meet three hours a week, and class homework requires up to 60 hours a week. Few women take Math 55. Fewer still ever pass.

Math 55 does not look like America. Each year as many as 50 students sign up, but at least half drop out within a few weeks. As one former student told The Crimson newspaper in 2006, “We had 51 students the first day, 31 students the second day, 24 for the next four days, 23 for two more weeks, and then 21 for the rest of the first semester.” Said another student, “I guess you can say it’s an episode of ‘Survivor’ with people voting themselves off.” The final class roster, according to The Crimson: “45 percent Jewish, 18 percent Asian, 100 percent male.”

Why do women avoid classes like Math 55? Why, in fact, are there so few women in the high echelons of academic math and in the physi­cal sciences?

Women now earn 57 percent of bachelors degrees and 59 percent of masters degrees. According to the Survey of Earned Doctorates, 2006 was the fifth year in a row in which the majority of research Ph.D.’s awarded to U.S. citizens went to women. Women earn more Ph.D.’s than men in the humanities, social sciences, education, and life sciences. Women now serve as presidents of Harvard, MIT, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and other leading research universities. But elsewhere, the figures are different. Women comprise just 19 percent of tenure-track professors in math, 11 percent in physics, 10 percent in computer science, and 10 percent in electrical engineering. And the pipeline does not promise statistical parity any time soon: women are now earning 24 percent of the Ph.D.’s in the physical sciences—way up from the 4 percent of the 1960s, but still far behind the rate they are winning doctorates in other fields.

...So why are there so few women in the high echelons of academic math and in the physical sciences? In a recent survey of faculty atti­tudes on social issues, sociologists Neil Gross of Harvard and Solon Simmons of George Mason University asked 1,417 professors what accounts for the relative scarcity of female pro­fessors in math, science, and engineering. Just 1 percent of respondents attributed the scarcity to women’s lack of ability, 24 percent to sexist discrimination, and 74 percent to differences in what characteristically interests men and women.___American__via_SteveSailer

But the truth may be a bit less politically correct. La Griffe du Lion looks at sex differences in mathematics and concludes:

Mathematics is a man's game. A gender gap appears early in life, blossoms with the onset of puberty and reaches full bloom by mid-adolescence. It indelibly shapes women's prospects for doing significant mathematics. In this account of cognitive sex differences, Prodigy shows how sex-differentiated ability in 15 year-olds accounts for the exiguous female representation at the highest levels of mathematical research. A female Fields Medalist is predicted to surface once every 103 years.

Another look at women and minorities in science concludes:

Prospects for women and minority doctoral scientists in engineering and other math-intensive areas are examined. A calculation of the ethnic-gender profile of this segment of the workforce is made for U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Rank ordering on mathematical reasoning ability predicts that women will top off at approximately 27 percent of this market. Similarly, rank ordering predicts almost 99 percent of math-intensive doctoral jobs will go to whites and Asians of primarily Chinese, Japanese, Korean and South Asian descent. Asians will continue to be represented in these fields well beyond their numbers in the general population. A study of the math-intensive academic marketplace predicts that women will top off there at about 22 to 23 percent.

In fact, women are already topping off at roughly 24% in the physical sciences which are more math intensive. If you read the Christina Hoff Sommers article you will find that politically, this lack of gender equity is simply unacceptable. Regardless of how many other academic fields and professions that women may be coming to dominate, if even a few fields remain where male dominance appears unchallenged, political feminists will cry foul. And when that happens, billions of dollars suddenly change hands, department heads and college deans will fall, and congress suddenly shakes a leg to please.

This is simply power politics for high powered feminist heavyweights, such as those mentioned in the article. But for academia, it sounds more like the death knell of minimally politicized science and math. The further entrenching of ideology into every aspect of academic thought and training. Make the world conform to your insular views, at all costs. Regardless of who is finally elected US President in November, there is no doubt who is at the wheel. PC--a cold and killing dogma.

Math and Sex: Aptitude vs. Discrimination

There are far more men who are talented at math, than females who are talented at math. Researchers Camilla Benbow, David Geary, and others have established that claim quite well.

In the 1980s one of us (Benbow), along with the late psychologist Julian C. Stanley, who founded this study at the John Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth, observed sex differences in mathematical reasoning ability among tens of thousands of intellectually talented 12- to 14-year-olds who had taken the SAT several years before the typical age.

Among this elite group, no significant differences were found on the verbal part of the SAT, but the math part revealed sex differences favoring boys. There were twice as many boys as girls with math scores of 500 or higher (out of a possible score of 800), four times as many boys with scores of at least 600, and 13 times as many boys with scores of at least 700 (putting these test takers in the top 0.01 percent of 12- to 14-year-olds nationwide).

...The ratio of boys to girls, first observed at 13 to 1 in the 1980s, has been dropping steadily and is now only about 3 to 1. During the same period the number of women in a few other scientific fields has surged. In the U.S., women now make up half of new medical school graduates and 75 percent of recent veterinary school graduates....This period coincides with a trend of special programs and mentoring to encourage girls to take higher-level math and science courses. And direct evidence exists that specifically targeted training could boost female performance even further. A special course created by engineering professor Sheryl A. Sorby and mathematics education specialist Beverly J. Baartmans at Michigan Technological University, for example, targeted improvement in visuospatial skills.

...Decades of data from studies of different animal species show that hormones can play a role in determining the cognitive abilities that males and females develop. For example, during typical prenatal male development, high levels of hormones such as testosterone masculinize the developing brain and result in male-typical behaviors and probably male patterns of cognitive performance...More recent studies have shown that hormones continue to play a role in cognitive development throughout life. Such changes have been observed in individuals receiving large quantities of male or female hormones in preparation for sex-change surgery. Researchers found, for example, that people undergoing female-to-male hormone treatment show “masculine” changes in their cognitive patterns: improvements in visuospatial processing and decrements in verbal skills.

The human brain is shaped by these hormones, as well as by our genetic inheritance and a lifetime of experiences, so it should not be surprising that numerous differences appear in female and male brains. In general, females have a higher percentage of gray matter brain tissue, areas with closely packed neurons and fast blood flow, whereas males have a higher volume of connecting white matter tissue, nerve fibers that are insulated by a white fatty protein called myelin. Furthermore, men tend to have a higher percentage of gray matter in the left hemisphere, whereas no such asymmetries are significant in females.

Imaging studies assessing brain function support the notion that females perform better on tasks such as language processing that call on more symmetric activation of brain hemispheres, whereas males excel in tasks requiring activation of the visual cortex. Even when men and women perform the same task equally well, studies suggest they sometimes use different parts of their brain to accomplish it.__SciAm_Benbow,Geary, etal

The article above mentioned an improvement in the number of women scoring above 700 on the SAT corresponding to special (and expensive) outreaches to women, to help them improve math and visuo-spatial skills. Other research has shown that when both men and women are provided with the supplemental training, that the gender gap remains unchanged--even widens. Thus, it appears that it may be important to continue to deprive boys and men of special training, while continuing to provide such training to girls and women--if we want to narrow the gap.

Wiser societies would focus upon the need for better scientists and engineers--of whatever gender. But our society appears to be fixated upon the concept of "gender equity", which is unknown to biology and mother nature. If gender equity requires a type of "brain-binding" of males, to achieve equity--or even female superiority--so be it.

It appears that the journal Nature is under attack by gender-equity feminists, for supposedly discriminating against female scientists and/or technologists. For hyper-egalitarians, any statistical inequity is de facto evidence of discrimination. Logically, such hyper-egalitarians are an shaky ground, but in a post-modernist world, logic carries far less weight than it once did.