To eliminate the gender wage gap, don’t let women major in sociology

Advice on how to eliminate the gender wage gap from Christina Hoff Sommers:

Talented young women who aspire to be rich and powerful would be advised to major in economics or electrical engineering rather than psychology or social work. They should be prepared to work 60 hours a week at the office rather than combining shorter hours with home, family, and other pursuits they find fulfilling. Those who stick with this course will find that their W-2s are equal to those of their male counterparts.

While some sex discrimination undoubtedly exists, it is does not appear to be the reason for most of the gender wage gap.  The gap mainly arises from the choices women make about their jobs and their families.  Perhaps some women need to be “empowered” to make different decisions, but I suspect most women already exercise free choice.

… But American women today are as independent-minded and self-determining as any in history. It is condescending to suggest that they have been manipulated when they choose home and family over high-octane careers—or to pursue degrees in education rather than engineering.

Related:  The Gender Wage Gap Is Getting Worse (thinkprogress.org)

Missing fathers are at the core of a ‘vicious cycle’ of poverty

Missing fathers are both a cause and an effect of poverty

The decline of two-parent households may be a significant reason for the divergent fortunes of male workers, whose earnings generally declined in recent decades, and female workers, whose earnings generally increased, a prominent labor economist argues in a new survey of existing research.

MIT professor David H. Autor examined the poverty of single-parent families for Third Way, a center-left policy research organization.

In this telling, the economic struggles of male workers are both a cause and an effect of the breakdown of traditional households. Men who are less successful are less attractive as partners, so some women are choosing to raise children by themselves, in turn often producing sons who are less successful and attractive as partners.

“A vicious cycle may ensue,” wrote Professor Autor and his co-author, Melanie Wasserman, a graduate student, “with the poor economic prospects of less educated males creating differentially large disadvantages for their sons, thus potentially reinforcing the development of the gender gap in the next generation.”

Encourage marriage or pump up the economy?  Is it a chicken or egg scenario?

Conservatives have long argued that society should encourage stable parental relationships. A recent report by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia concluded that promoting marriage is the best way “to make family life more stable for children whose parents don’t enjoy the benefit of a college education.”

Liberals have tended to argue that the government should focus instead on improving economic opportunities. Jonathan Cowan, the president of Third Way, said the paper underscored that addressing social problems was a means to improve economic opportunities.

Here’s an idea.

Instead of making marriage more attractive, he said, it might be better for society to help make men more attractive.

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The chance of a child ending up poor declines by 82 percent when raised in a two-parent family.

Although correlation does not imply causation, there’s no doubt that a caring father adds tremendous value to a child’s upbringing.

According to the U.S. census, the poverty rate for single parents with children in the U.S. in 2009 was 37.1 percent. For married families the rate was only 6.8 percent. The chance of a child ending up poor declines by 82 percent when raised in a two-parent family. As the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector reports, “Some of this difference in poverty is due to the fact that single parents tend to have less education than married couples.” Even adjusting for that factor “the married poverty rate will still be more than 75 percent lower.”

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Fathers have been disappearing from homes across America over the last 50 years.

… Fifteen million U.S. children, or 1 in 3, live without a father, and nearly 5 million live without a mother. In 1960, just 11 percent of American children lived in homes without fathers.

America is awash in poverty, crime, drugs and other problems, but more than perhaps anything else, it all comes down to this, said Vincent DiCaro, vice president of the National Fatherhood Initiative: Deal with absent fathers, and the rest follows.

Maybe men are smart to skip college

Percent of U.S. Adults Ages 25-29 With a Bachelor’s Degree or Higher, 1969-2009

Maybe men are avoiding college because it offers them a lower ROI compared to women, at least in the short term.

Men without college degrees face better job prospects than equivalently educated women, at least in the short term. That makes the consequences of dropping out appear smaller for men.

The paper, by sociologists Rachel Dwyer and Randy Hodson of Ohio State University and Laura McCloud of Pacific Lutheran University, used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to look at the educational and employment experiences of more than 6,500 Americans born between 1980 and 1984. Unsurprisingly, going to college boosted earnings for both men and women. But the gap was much wider for women. After controlling for various demographic factors, the researchers found that female graduates earned more than $6,500 more per year than women with just a high school diploma, and more than $4,500 more than women who dropped out of college. Male graduates, by contrast, earned only about $2,700 more than high school graduates, and about the same amount as male college drop-outs.

The findings are consistent with past research, which has showed that jobs are much more gender-segregated in low-education occupations. Female drop-outs tend to concentrate in low-paying service-sector jobs, whereas less-educated men are more likely to find work in better-paying industries such as manufacturing and construction.

“Women experience a much larger immediate economic penalty for not graduating from college than do men,” the authors write. “Female dropouts simply face worse job prospects than do male dropouts.”

This might play a role in motivating women to do well in high school.

“Young men who see high school friends with relatively well-paying jobs may resist taking on debt to gain a degree with uncertain returns,” the authors write. “At the same time, young women who see friends in low-paying female-dominated jobs, such as retail cashier or day care worker, may be spurred to stay in school, even with debt.”

Over the long term, skipping college may not be such a smart move.

… The wage gap between men with and without bachelor’s degrees starts small but grows over time as better-educated men enjoy more opportunities for career advancement. And as the recession showed, those well-paying jobs in construction and manufacturing can disappear quickly and be slow to return….

Related:

• Lack of college-educated men may be a reason for declining marriage numbers (costofcollege.wordpress.com)
• College Graduation Score: Women 30%, Men 22% (businessweek.com)

Lack of college-educated men may be a reason for declining marriage numbers

The lack of college-educated men may signal more problems for the future of marriage.

The importance of marriage is on the rise among women while decreasing among men.

 … According to Pew Research Center, the share of women ages eighteen to thirty-four that say having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in their lives rose nine percentage points since 1997 – from 28 percent to 37 percent. For men, the opposite occurred. The share voicing this opinion dropped, from 35 percent to 29 percent.

Gender imbalance may be creating an obstacle to marriage for college-educated women.

… Across the United States today, young women are much more likely to graduate from college than their male peers, a trend that’s been compounding itself for a few decades now. And because college graduates overwhelmingly tend to date other college graduates, that’s created an enormous imbalance in the national dating pool. In Portland, the situation is particularly dire. According to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, there are 33 percent more women in Portland who are under the age of 35 and have at least a bachelor’s degree in than there are men. That’s on par with New York, which is notorious for its lopsided gender ratio.  

Marriage is on the decline, and the lack of college-educated men suggests a continuation of this trend for highly educated women, a group that has been most resistant to the trend so far.

Where to find college-educated men
Recently I was at local watering hole on one of their ladies’ nights, a practice I mistakenly thought had been ruled illegal.  By the looks of the crowd, I would say that young women looking for college-educated men of marrying age might want to check this place out.  Promoting itself as “definitely worth the 30 minute train ride from” New York City, this establishment might be especially attractive to NYC women who are experiencing the effects of that city’s gender imbalance.  But considering the long-term trend, I wonder if we’ll soon be seeing “men’s nights” at these types of places.

Related:

• College-educated women marry at higher rates (Cost of College)
• College Graduation Score: Women 30%, Men 22% (businessweek.com)
• The Worst Cities for College-Educated Women Trying to Find a Decent Date (The Atlantic)

Quick Links – Title IX for boys; digital learning works better for some; higher funding does not equate with higher graduation rates; more

◊◊◊  Glenn Reynolds suggests we should consider ‘Title IX for our boys’

… If schoolteachers were overwhelmingly male and girls were suffering as a result, there would be a national outcry and Title IX-style gender equity legislation would be touted. Why should we do less when boys are the ones suffering?

◊◊◊  ‘For older students, women and high achievers, the difference between online learning and face-to-face learning is small.’

Digital learning is expanding access to higher education, but may be widening the  achievement gap. Students who have trouble learning in a traditional classroom have even more trouble learning online, concludes a study of community college students in Washington state. For older students, women and high achievers, the difference between online learning and face-to-face learning is small.

Online courses can widen learning gap (Joanne Jacobs)

◊◊◊  Texas comes out looking good in latest Department of Education of Education report.

The Department of Education has just released its first state-by-state comparison of education statistics, and the report has a few surprises. Texas performed extremely well, tying five other states for the third-best graduation rate in the country, at 86 percent.

And Texas isn’t the only high-performing red state: Indiana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Tennessee all place within the top ten as well. Meanwhile, New York, Rhode Island, and California, all of which take a traditional, high-spending, blue model approach to education, are closer to the middle of the pack , with graduation rates in the mid-70s.

This is convincing evidence against the popular notion that we can fix the public education system if only we are willing to spend more money. Not only does Texas do a better job of graduating its students than its blue state competition; it does so at a fraction of the cost per student.

Education reformers should pay close attention to how Texas achieved these results. Clearly, it’s doing something right.

The Texas Education Miracle (Via Media)

◊◊◊  The 10 Colleges Most Likely to Make You a Billionaire (Harvard Is #1) (The Atlantic)

In news that will shock no-one, earning a Crimson pedigree may be the surest-fire way to amass greenbacks. Almost 3,000 graduates of Harvard University are worth more than $30 million (each), according to rankings compiled by market research firm Wealth-X seen by Quartz, and most of them earned the money themselves. That’s more than twice the number of what Wealth-X calls ”ultra-high-net-worth individuals” (UHNWIs) produced by any other institution in the world….

• Of course, the top of the list is rather dense with Ivy. But even among top schools, wealth varies greatly: while the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University graduated a combined 2,390 UHNWIs, Yale, Princeton and Cornell count among them only 1,604, in total.

• Of the US schools in Wealth-X’s Global top 20, just three are public: University of Virginia, the University of Michigan and University of California, Berkeley.

• At least in the US, having a business school probably helps. The top five on the global list–Harvard, Penn, Stanford University, Columbia and New York University, in that order–all have top-flight MBA programs. Of the top 15, only Princeton lacks a B-school. On the non-US list, meanwhile, France’s Insead and LBS are both exclusively graduate business schools.

Quick Links – Obama on education; stereotyping boys; chimps have better working memories than those of humans

◊◊◊  Obama on education in State of Union address (Washington Post)

Universal ‘high-quality’ preschool

Tonight, I propose working with states to make high-quality preschool available to every child in America.  Every dollar we invest in high-quality early education can save more than seven dollars later on – by boosting graduation rates, reducing teen pregnancy, even reducing violent crime.  In states that make it a priority to educate our youngest children, like Georgia or Oklahoma, studies show students grow up more likely to read and do math at grade level, graduate high school, hold a job, and form more stable families of their own.  So let’s do what works, and make sure none of our children start the race of life already behind.  Let’s give our kids that chance.

High-tech curriculum for high schools

…  Tonight, I’m announcing a new challenge to redesign America’s high schools so they better equip graduates for the demands of a high-tech economy.  We’ll reward schools that develop new partnerships with colleges and employers, and create classes that focus on science, technology, engineering, and math – the skills today’s employers are looking for to fill jobs right now and in the future.

Link higher education federal aid with ‘affordability and value’

Tonight, I ask Congress to change the Higher Education Act, so that affordability and value are included in determining which colleges receive certain types of federal aid….

College Scorecard

…  And tomorrow, my Administration will release a new “College Scorecard” that parents and students can use to compare schools based on a simple criteria: where you can get the most bang for your educational buck.

…
◊◊◊  “..the study found that stereotypes seemed to be holding boys back.” (Dr. Helen at PJ Media)

Boys may be suffering from stereotype threat.

The belief that girls are brainier and better behaved is holding boys back at school, research suggests.

A study of British pupils found that, from a young age, children think girls are academically superior.

And, what’s more, they believe that adults think so too….

And by the age of seven, boys shared the belief that they were naughtier and did less well at school. Follow-up questions showed the children thought that adults had similar expectations.

The second part of the study found that stereotypes seemed to be holding boys back…

Study co-author Dr Robbie Sutton said: ‘Our study suggests that by counteracting the stereotypes in the classroom – wherever they might have come from originally – we can help boys do better.’

Noncognitive skills come into play in boys’ poor school performance.

This reminds me of the study I found on girls taking over at college. In it the researchers state:

One source of the persistent female advantage in K–12 school performance and the new female lead in college attainment is the higher incidence of behavioral problems (or lower level of noncognitive skills) among boys. Boys have a much higher incidence than do girls of school disciplinary and behavior problems, and spend far fewer hours doing homework (Jacob, 2002).

Are boys’ poor behavior and low academic performance partly due to low expectations?  Dr. Helen wonders if teachers tend to use grades to punish boys since other discipline options are more limited.  A related aspect is that much of early academic success may hinge on noncognitive and literacy skills, which boys tend to develop later than girls.

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◊◊◊  Working memory of chimpanzees is ‘far better’ than that of humans

Chimpanzees can far outperform humans in some mental tasks, including rapidly memorising and recalling numbers, Japanese scientists have shown.

A good working memory is needed to survive in the wild.

Prof Matsuzawa, who combines the study of wild chimpanzees in west Africa with research using the captive colony in Kyoto, said such a good working memory – the ability to take in an accurate, detailed image of a complex scene or pattern – was an important survival tool in the wild.

For example, the apes can quickly assess and remember the distribution of edible fruit in a forest canopy. Or, when two rival bands of chimpanzees encounter one another, they can assess the strength of the rival group and decide whether to fight or flee.

Memory of chimps ‘far better than human’ (Financial Times)

Even if boys score better than girls on standardized tests, they get lower grades

Boys score as well as or better than girls on most standardized tests, yet they are far less likely to get good grades, take advanced classes or attend college….

The sometimes controversial Christina Hoff Sommers wrote about this problem of “Boys at the back” in our public schools, illustrated in this chart posted by Mark Perry.

Boys score as well as or better than girls on most standardized tests, yet they are far less likely to get good grades, take advanced classes or attend college. Why? A study coming out this week in The Journal of Human Resources gives an important answer. Teachers of classes as early as kindergarten factor good behavior into grades — and girls, as a rule, comport themselves far better than boys.

The study’s authors analyzed data from more than 5,800 students from kindergarten through fifth grade and found that boys across all racial groups and in all major subject areas received lower grades than their test scores would have predicted.

The scholars attributed this “misalignment” to differences in “noncognitive skills”: attentiveness, persistence, eagerness to learn, the ability to sit still and work independently. As most parents know, girls tend to develop these skills earlier and more naturally than boys.

That last sentence, which I’ve highlighted, may hold a key to one reason for the gender gap in school performance.  Girls have the edge over boys not only in earlier development of certain social and organizational skills, but also in reading and writing.  Over time schools have pushed down more rigorous academic and organizational requirements to younger grades, making it more likely for boys to develop early gaps that often persist to the upper grades and college.

A related reason for the gender gap may be what David Brooks called the lack of cultural diversity.

… The education system has become culturally cohesive, rewarding and encouraging a certain sort of person: one who is nurturing, collaborative, disciplined, neat, studious, industrious and ambitious. People who don’t fit this cultural ideal respond by disengaging and rebelling.

Far from all, but many of the people who don’t fit in are boys….

I wrote about this last year.

Brooks is describing what is often called the “feminization” of public schools.  This term is distasteful to some, probably because it reinforces gender stereotypes.  Whatever the label, it does appear that schools have become “culturally homogeneous” in a way that hurts boys more than girls.  It starts in elementary school when an early reader is told that he got the wrong answer because he picked “mad” instead of “sad” to describe how the boy in the story feels after he doesn’t get the bike he wanted for his birthday.*  It continues through high school where group discussions in history class only allow expressions of compassion for victims of war but no praise for brilliant military maneuvers.  The message is clear – only certain types of behaviors and thoughts are welcome in the classroom.

There’s no doubt that students do need to be ”studious and industrious” to perform well academically.  It just seems that public schools are misguided in the methods they use in trying to develop those qualities in all students, particularly in boys.

Suggested reforms

Sommers points out that this gender gap should motivate schools to find ways to promote boys’ academic achievement, as they have done for girls in recent cases when the gender gap has been reversed.  She suggests some changes that the British, the Canadians and the Australians have implemented.

… These include more boy-friendly reading assignments (science fiction, fantasy, sports, espionage, battles); more recess (where boys can engage in rough-and-tumble as a respite from classroom routine); campaigns to encourage male literacy; more single-sex classes; and more male teachers (and female teachers interested in the pedagogical challenges boys pose).

One example of how poor noncognitive skills can create a misalignment between grades and test scores

I know of a case where a middle school boy consistently earned almost perfect test scores in his social studies class and who reached the finals in his state’s geography bee contest.  However, his average grade was significantly lowered by his poor class notes, likely due to a deficit in “noncognitive skills”.  Because of his grades, and because “behavior and work habits” counted so heavily in the admissions process, he was shut out of his high school’s social studies honors track.  If not for his parents’ intervention to override the school’s policies and allow him to enroll in the honors course, he might have languished in courses that were too easy and boring for him.  As it happened, he went on to graduate with honors and enroll in an elite university.

Related:

• Only when women are overrepresented on every educational metric will we have reached the goal of ‘full gender equity’? (Carpe Diem)
• Public schools are not diverse enough for boys (Cost of College)
• Girls make better grades because they’re nicer? (onlineathens.com)

Women, by nature ‘less confrontational and more collaborative’, may never match men in upper ranks at Goldman Sachs

While the number of women rising in the ranks and raking in big bucks as managing directors and partners at Goldman Sachs has increased, it seems unlikely that full gender parity will be achieved any time soon.

Almost one-quarter (23%) of the newly-minted MDs are women, up from 19% a year ago, according to Bloomberg. Just 14% of this year’s partner class is women, although that’s the highest percentage since at least 2006.

The 346 Goldman employees to be named managing director or partner need not worry about reports highlighting a compensation drain on Wall Street. MDs typically make a base salary of around $500,000, with year-end bonuses that can bring their total compensation well into the millions. Partners, meanwhile, take home around a $1 million base with an even more aggressive incentive plan.

When Jordann Weissmann of the Atlantic asked Why Don’t More Women Get Promoted at Goldman Sachs?, he answered his own question by explaining that the main underlying reason is babies.  Mothers with rich husbands are more likely to interrupt their careers to stay home with their children.  Weissmann also concedes that discrimination plays a role.

In the Atlantic, a woman who worked at Goldman Sachs describes the atmosphere there as “a frat on steroids.”

I don’t know, then, what kind of woman is the proper type to succeed at Goldman. Even in benign ways, the place was a giant man-cave. The annual industry citations from Institutional Investor that the analysts strived for were all sports metaphors: making the “All Star” team, or, even better, to be chosen as a Hall of Famer. It seems to me that in order to be the kind of good-humored “team player” that would smilingly go to Scores or on a booze-filled golf retreat, you’d also have to be the kind of person to negate your extra X chromosome, i.e., you’d have to be the kind of person to negate who you really are. What woman, really, could sit in her power suit and convincingly enjoy a pair of breasts swinging in the face while her male colleagues and clients ogle g-strings?

All this sounds familiar to me, having spent many years working in New York City’s financial services sector.  A similar but tamer atmosphere prevailed when I worked in the male-dominated oil business, and apparently some of this exists in high tech companies.

Women tend to dominate support services in some industries.
The woman who wrote the Atlantic article worked in the Goldman Sachs communications department, typically a female-dominated department.  I saw this demarcation between the sexes when I worked in financial services and in the oil business.  Women tended to dominate support services like communications, marketing, and drafting technology.  They sometimes tended to view the male-dominated core departments with some derision, so this writer’s perspective is not surprising.

What do investment bankers do on weekends?

“Goldman brings a massive team,” said Will Dean, the 31-year-old founder of Tough Mudder. “So does Morgan Stanley.

It’s no accident that it’s mainly men (lots of Wall Street types) who participate in activities like the Tough Mudder, “an extreme obstacle course that is becoming the macho sport of choice for Type A men (and some women) who find marathons too easy and triathlons meh”.  During these weekend ordeals, participants have fun crawling in cold mud, swimming in icy water, and competing in other “chest-thumping” races.

And they have their groupies.

As Mr. Cugini crossed the finish line, he was greeted by pretty volunteers who slipped an orange headband over his head and a banana in his hand. A cover band played the White Stripes, and in the dying light, men did pull-ups and drank beer.

Meanwhile, a group of female senators interviewed by ABC News say that because of their nature if women were in charge we would have no fiscal cliff crisis.

Senator Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said by nature women are “less confrontational and more collaborative,” – both traits necessary to reach a deal to avoid the country going over the fiscal cliff.

I don’t doubt that by “nature”, men and women are different.  While full equality of opportunity is desirable, I don’t think we should push for full equality of outcomes between the sexes.  We don’t need an initiative promoting full gender parity among Goldman Sachs partners, for example.

Quick links – reading instruction for low-income students, racially-based academic goals, why boys like videogames

—–  How public schools get it wrong in teaching low-income students

The Education Consumers Foundation analyzed the problem of economically disadvantaged children falling behind in literacy skills.

“The early use of intensive, skill-focused reading instruction could enable the vast majority of at-risk children to reach grade level by third grade, argues ECF, which recommends Direct Instruction.
Poverty vs. 3rd-grade reading (Joanne Jacobs)

…
—–   ‘Florida Passes Plan For Racially-Based Academic Goals’

Palm Beach, Fla. (CBS TAMPA) – The Florida State Board of Education passed a plan that sets goals for students in math and reading based upon their race.

On Tuesday, the board passed a revised strategic plan that says that by 2018, it wants 90 percent of Asian students, 88 percent of white students, 81 percent of Hispanics and 74 percent of black students to be reading at or above grade level. For math, the goals are 92 percent of Asian kids to be proficient, whites at 86 percent, Hispanics at 80 percent and blacks at 74 percent. It also measures by other groupings, such as poverty and disabilities, reported the Palm Beach Post.

The plan has infuriated many community activists in Palm Beach County and across the state.

…
—–  Why teenage boys like videogames so much

The National Institute of Health released a report on “Male/Female Difference Offers Insight into Brain Development” stating “there are gender differences in the trajectory of gray matter maturation in adolescent girls and boys that may have lasting effects on the brain.”…

Perhaps the actual physiology of male and female teens’ brains is most revealing aspect of the studies. The cortex, which contains both gray and white matter,  is the part of the brain responsible for thinking, perceiving, and processing language.  More specifically, the prefrontal cortex, a portion of the brain right behind the forehead, is one of the last areas of the brain to  mature in males. This part of the brain is necessary for “good judgment, controlling impulses, solving problems, setting goals, organizing and planning, and other skills that are essential to adults,” according to “The Amazing Adolescent Brain,” compiled by Dr. Linda Burgess Chamberlain, Ph.D., MPH.

In addition to the physiology of the brain, a teen’s gender and hormones affect his or her developing brain in myriad ways. It may also help you to understand why your son spends hours on videogames that involve more violence than you and your husband have allowed him to see in his short lifetime….

Hormones contribute greatly to the differences in male and female brain development. The hippocampus, which helps to move newly acquired information into long-term storage in the brain, responds to the primary female hormone, estrogen. As a result, the hippocampus grows and matures much faster in teenage girls than in teenage boys. This cerebral advantage allows girls to do better in social settings and causes them to show emotions more freely than boys.

Conversely, the amygdala and the hypothalamus are affected by male sex hormones and, consequently, grow larger in teenage males. Both of these parts of the brain are involved in responding to frightening and/or dangerous situations. These brain functions are exhibited by boys’ greater enjoyment of physically challenging sports and being more aggressive in some settings than females.

It also may, in part, explain their need for excitement, whether literal or virtual. (Hence, those video games.)…

“Compared to teenage girls, teenage males have less developed brain functions in the frontal lobe region, associated with more impulsive behavior and less careful processing of information.”

Unfortunately for males, brain development often continues into the early to mid-20s. This puts them at a higher risk for engaging in dangerous, superfluous behaviors that could cause them to make poor decisions….

Boys need “simple instructions”?

… parents should also remember that because the prefrontal cortex is still developing in male teens, it is wise to give them simple instructions, rather than overwhelming them with information. Also, the information should be given in a step-by-step fashion.

Teenage boys: From sweet sons to narcissistic teens (Washington Times)

Quick links – SAT scores continue to drop, affirmative action questioned, the downside of smartphones, more

—  ’SAT reading scores hit a four-decade low’ (Washington Post)

Reading scores on the SAT for the high school class of 2012 reached a four-decade low, putting a punctuation mark on a gradual decline in the ability of college-bound teens to read passages and answer questions about sentence structure, vocabulary and meaning on the college entrance exam.

Many experts attribute the continued decline to record numbers of students taking the test, including about one-quarter from low-income backgrounds. There are many factors that can affect how well a student scores on the SAT, but few are as strongly correlated as family income.

Scores among every racial group except for those of Asian descent declined from 2006 levels. A majority of test takers — 57 percent — did not score high enough to indicate likely success in college, according to the College Board, the organization that administers the test.

…
—  Critics charge that there is a ‘Research War on Affirmative Action’ (Inside Higher Ed)

Several studies presented Friday at the Brookings Institution suggested that eliminating the consideration of race would not have as dramatic an effect on minority students as some believe, and that the beneficiaries of affirmative action may in fact achieve less academic success than they would otherwise. The studies were criticized by some present for being one-sided.

Criticism was aimed at two studies with controversial conclusions:

1. There seems to be no “chilling effect” as a result of doing away with affirmative action.  The yield rate for minority students who were admitted based on “race-neutral” standards actually increased after the affirmative action ban took effect.
2. Strong evidence was presented for the harmful effects of affirmative action “mismatch” -  the idea “that minority students who are admitted to better institutions because of affirmative action may end up with lower academic achievement as a result”.

The Supreme Court will begin hearing the affirmative action case of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin this month.

…
—  ACT now more popular than the SAT (Boston.com)

…
—  ‘Pack More in a Day By Matching Tasks To the Body’s Energy’ (WSJ)

A growing body of research suggests that paying attention to the body clock, and its effects on energy and alertness, can help pinpoint the different times of day when most of us perform our best at specific tasks, from resolving conflicts to thinking creatively.

This is definitely true for me:

When it comes to doing cognitive work, for example, most adults perform best in the late morning, says Dr. Kay. As body temperature starts to rise just before awakening in the morning and continues to increase through midday, working memory, alertness and concentration gradually improve. Taking a warm morning shower can jump-start the process.

…
—  ‘Why It’s Bad That Smartphones Have Banished Boredom’ (Slashdot)

For one thing, we talk less with people while standing in line.

…
—  Women continue to earn the majority of advanced degrees, but this is apparently not viewed as a problem

Professor Mark J. Perry sees a problem.

… But don’t expect any concern about the fact that men have increasingly become the second sex in higher education.  The concern about gender imbalances will remain extremely selective, and will only focus on cases when women, not men, are underrepresented.