Chris Reykdal is the Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction. At a meeting of the State Board of Education on November 3, 2022, Mr. Reykdal responded to a question from one of the board members about the gender gap in college enrollment. It is worth understanding his take on this issue by watching Mr. Reykdal’s three-minute response or reading the transcript below. For now, the only commentary we’ll provide are these two observations:
- Mr. Reykdal does not appear to view it as a problem that university campuses across the state have significantly fewer male students than female students. The lack of men at universities does not, in itself, concern him.
- Mr. Reykdal offers no ideas or suggestions that would result in more male students enrolled in bachelor’s, master’s, or doctorate programs.
Note: Washington Initiative for Boys and Men is leading the effort to establish a Washington State Commission on Boys and Men. We are proposing that the commission have five areas of focus, the first of which would be education.
Board member Kevin Wang asks about gender imbalance in college enrollment
Kevin Wang: Over the past couple years there have been studies in the news, social commentary, and community members I have met that raised the question of male college enrollment.
Lots of reports say the gap between men and women has widened significantly. In Fall 2020, just 41% of the students enrolled in post-secondary education were men. For degree completion, and I quote, “About 74 men received a bachelor’s degree for every 100 women. Although women are more likely to graduate college at each level, men are still overrepresented in many fields with high earning potential, such as engineering and computer science.”
I’d love to hear your perspective on this trend.
Superintendent Chris Reykdal responds
Chris Reykdal: Thank you Kevin.
I was just on a panel on civics, and the reason I make that nexus is I’m trying to help people understand this very complex culture war we’re in has all kinds of roots that tap deep into K-12. And one of those roots that’s tapping pretty deep these days is this divide between college-educated and non college-educated. That’s a terribly horrific binary label that’s in the datasets. But it’s starting to play out in our national dialogue and our culture and, quite frankly, in our tensions. You’re seeing increasing voting patterns where college-educated go one way and non college-educated go the other way.
Maybe you’ve already picked up on my obsession with why I don’t like calling things ‘college’ or not. Every student needs a post-secondary opportunity. A high school diploma is rarely going to get it done. But I don’t care what you say — and I’m talking to each of you as individuals and all of us collectively — there is a culture out there that says going through a traditional university system means you’ve got success, and if you went to a trade school it’s because you settled on it. That isn’t how every individual feels, but that’s the collective sense — that there are alternative routes, when the primary route is college.
And yet the economy is sitting there saying we don’t have enough roofers, plumbers, sheet metal workers, long-haul truck drivers, technicians. And a lot of these pay incredibly well. So young people are making really rational decisions to go do those things.
But then we look at our traditional higher education enrollments and we say, ‘My god, 60% of these are female and only 40% are male. Where are the males?’ The males are saying, ‘We’re doing what we did for 100 years, which is going to work. It’s just that we used to drop out after 8th grade and go to work, and no one thought anything about it. Now we complete high school and go to work, and everyone wants to know why we aren’t in traditional universities.’
And, flip that around, and there are still enormous barriers for young women to think about careers in the trades. So they don’t feel like they get access to it as equitably either. So what is their pathway to a postsecondary opportunity? It’s a more traditional higher education 4-year liberal arts approach.
“The Board is committed to academic attainment for every student. This will require access and opportunity gaps to be eliminated in order to narrow academic achievement gaps and eradicate disproportionality and predictability in student outcomes by race, ethnicity, gender identity, caste, and socioeconomics.”
Washington State Board of Education
We are crystallizing historic patterns at faster rates, because we keep using a narrative that one way is the right way to go and the other is an alternative. I would rather look at what percentage of students are getting college-level access, including trades — because those are at the college level — while they’re in high school. And how many students are getting a post-high school credential? When you look at that, you see it looks a whole lot more like 50/50.
We’re going to continue to use these narrow definitions, and I think that’s problematic. I think it’s causing this rift, and I think it’s an ‘othering’ psychology. You’ve got a growing number of young men who say, ‘I’m being treated as somebody who failed because I didn’t go to a university right out of high school. I chose something else.’ — including military service, by the way, which is still totally disproportionate by gender. But these young men count as non-college graduates and non-college participants, even though they get some of the best training in the world when they’re in the military. [End]
A video of the full Board of Education meeting is here. Board member Kevin Wang’s question, followed by Chris Reykdal’s response, begins at the 2 hour 18 minute mark.
WIBM on Education
Check out the headlines of these other pieces we have published that pertain to males and education:
- This aviation-focused high school in Tukwila is one school where boys WANT to be
- Why Kids Need Men in Their Schools – School Resource Officer Rey Reynolds
- When Schools Teach Boys They’re Oppressors
- Is the U.S. Really 46th in Educational Gender Equality, like the Seattle Times Says?
- Brilliant Bob children’s books teach boys positive masculinity
- ‘There Should Be No Discrimination’ Says Ellensburg Councilmember, On Title IX Complaint Against Central Washington University
- Does UW’s Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Program Violate Title IX?
- Inconsistency behind Seattle Public Schools avowed support for Black boys
- Surprising findings of a 1999 study about sexual coercion among University of Washington students
- Coaching Boys Into Men curriculum, used in Washington high schools, has major blind spot
- With its Department of African American Male Achievement, Seattle Public Schools takes a step toward recognizing boys’ disadvantages
- Bellevue College under civil rights investigation for its sex-specific scholarships
