
Single Women: There Aren't Enough College-Educated Men Out There - Futurebot
http://www.vice.com/read/youre-single-because-there-arent-enough-men-253
======
Someone1234
To be frank, if there legitimately are a glut of women who aren't able to find
a "college educated man" (and, frankly, I doubt such a phenomenon exists in
reality) then maybe these people will have to _settle_ for men who are simply
just successful, college educated or not.

However I highly doubt college graduation numbers has much to do with the
women near thirty who are unable to find a partner. I'm sure their standards
are just set in such a way as to reduce the dating pool significantly (and I
suspect more than just academic background is listed).

PS - This interview gets quite sexist and generalising as you go. They give up
even pretending that the numbers are influencing their opinion about halfway
down and then it is just purely an opinion piece on "the problem with men
these days..."

~~~
jcromartie
I really don't understand what college has to do with it. Are well-rounded
interests and a high-paying job not enough to be ahead of the pack anymore?

~~~
krisroadruck
No. They must also be tall. And willing to overlook any sort of weight issues
or flaws on the other parties behalf.

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tomp
After talking with a few friends about this, a kind of a non-consensus emerged
- men say that women only aim "higher", want more successful, taller,
handsome, equally or better educated, "alpha" men; women agree and say that
many _other_ women want this, but not _them_. At the same time, women say that
men "lower", and want a women that earns less, isn't more educated, and is
submissive; men agree and say many _other_ men might think like this, but not
_them_.

I'm not too sure what to make of this, except that each perspective is
necessarily biased. (In the above, "men" and "women" refer to my friends, so a
very small sample. Also, I'm only describing the heterosexual view.)

------
pa12
I think this is because society dictates that men who aren't educated and
earning lots of money are somehow less attractive. They call it dating 'down'.

Firstly we more women in college.

Secondly guys are less likely to judge their mates by whether they do attend
college, so you end up with a dynamic where college educated men are dating
both 'up' and 'down' whereas college educated girls only want to date 'up'.

This mentality of dating 'up' based on societies ideals of what 'up' is
somehow feels like hypocrisy as many of these girls are staunch feminists.

Why are these non college educated guys not good enough? Are they bad people
because they didn't go to college?

Oh well, as a college educated guy, im not complaining.

~~~
Jtsummers
Somewhat related: The way men and women describe themselves on OKCupid [0].
Career/education is more a part of men's "character" than it is for women (or
it appears this way).

[0] [http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/men-
wome...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/men-women-market-
themselves-okcupid/407671/)

~~~
pa12
True, the girls are marketing themselves as 'girly' or 'sassy' \- this is
against the ideals of feminism is it not?

~~~
dragonwriter
Girls being compelled to do so by external expectations of their gender is
against the ideals of feminism.

Girls choosing to do so because that's how they prefer to see themselves and
the image they like to project is not, or at least, the idea that it is would
likely be controversial among self-described feminists.

------
kbenson
The problem is probably exacerbated by college educated men being more willing
to marry women that aren't college graduates. At least, that's something I
think is happening.

This is a supply and demand problem. If the men are in high demand due to low
supply, the women need to adjust, whether than means lowering that specific
standard, doing without a spouse, or putting more work into the relationship
(it's not fair, but I'm talking about reality here, not how we wish things
were).

~~~
Futurebot
The article addresses this, and it's not the case. Men are just as picky in
this area. See my other comment:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10299844](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10299844)

~~~
kbenson
More willing and more likely are not the same thing. Men aren't experiencing
the same level of supply restriction, and you can't use their current behavior
to make a statement about what they would do if they were in that situation.

More specifically, if men and women had the exact same size pool of peers,
would men "date down" more? I suspect they would, but have no need to
currently because demand is in their favor.

------
tokenadult
I know a woman medical doctor (a high school classmate of mine) who is married
to a man who is a carpenter. (He owns a small home remodeling business.) She
seems happy, and she certainly has been married to him for decades now. People
don't always have to be matched in level of schooling completion to be good
matches for love and for forming a family together. Anyone who has been
looking for a spouse for a long time might be well advised to reconsider
whether their spouse search criteria are too stringent to be practical.

------
ckozlowski
Reminds me of these two articles in the Atlantic. Both good reads:

"All The Single Ladies"
[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/all-
the-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/all-the-single-
ladies/308654/)

"The End of Men" [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-
end-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-
men/308135/)

------
DiabloD3
I rarely flag a post on the front page, but this _really_ doesn't belong on
HN. It brings nothing to the HN community, and is largely just a sexist
uneducated highly ignorant rant that just makes women look stupid just for the
hilarity of doing so.

------
chrisabrams
Go to San Francisco.

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d883kd8
Men underperforming women as students has been going on since at least the
nineties. Now those students born in the 90s are adults and can't find men on
their educational level to date, and suddenly it's a problem.

------
tcdent
As a non-college educated man, I am thankful that this subset of the dating
population is not interested in me.

If you make relationship choices based on arbitrary criteria like
certificates-of-education you are in for an interesting experience.

------
Mz
Historically, successful men didn't need great relationship skills. They
married a woman for that. She brought those things to the table as part of her
contribution and he paid the bills. Division of labor.

Women who are college educated, good looking, etc. do not de facto have
awesome relationship skills. In fact, you can sort of bet on the idea that if
they put their career first, they have probably given short shrift to such
things.

The assumption that women who are educated and have successful careers make
"great catches" flips the historical standard that what made a man a great
catch was his career (not just for the money, but also for the kind of
lifestyle that came with the career -- the social circles you run in, among
other things) and in order for this to work, men would need to take over the
role of tending the relationship: the cooking, the cleaning, being supportive
and a good listener, etc.

And that means women would need to start looking for men who invest in that
more than their career. They would need to start marrying down.

In essence, the assumption that a woman is a great catch if she has a serious
career only works if men are willing to take over the role of "wife" by the
droves and the career women are willing to make that deal. Most women still
want men who are their equal or superior in terms of career success and
income, as the article makes clear.

This isn't a shortage of men. It is a legitimately hard problem to solve to
have two career people hook up and also make the personal life part work. A
two career couple with kids and a social life, etc. -- there are only so many
hours in the day. So this tends to not work.

I have read many, many articles wondering how to make this work and, for me, I
think the answer is "My kids are grown adults and I am hitting menopause, so
no more babies for me." That means it gets a lot more realistic for me to have
a career and also a man in my life with a real career. When you are looking to
have a family and make sure all members of the family are properly cared for,
it's wicked hard to also have both parents pursuing a serious career with the
pedal to the metal.

So I would say these women are choosing career over private life and the law
of large numbers mean some of them will just have that career they put
everything into. I get why women make that choice. I get why it is hard to be
financially dependent upon a man, etc. I did the homemaker and full time mom
thing. I know how hard that is. But when push comes to shove, if you just have
other priorities, you simply may not get to this one thing that is lower on
your list of priorities. Duh.

------
boona
I'm going to get flak for this, but I've done a lot of online dating and in my
experience the "educated women" on these sites tend to be third wave
feminists/social justice warriors types who've studied either gender studies,
political science, or some other unmarketable degree. I don't know what
college does to them, but many are borderline undatable. The unshakable
victimhood, the entitlement, the hatred of men makes it nearly impossible to
maintain a functional and balanced relationship.

Men have also reached the peak of their disposability. It use to be that we
would be sent to war, women and children first etc, now we don't even need to
be there as part of the family. Woman can just have a child with male, and
when she's done with him, can leave him and force him to pay for that child
(which he may now rarely see). So what incentives do men have to make
themselves productive members of society if their prospects are so poor.

Not to mention that college campuses have become truly scary places for young
men with the ultra politically correct culture (though white men are open
season) and the indiscriminate sexual harassment charges (which is deeply
unfortunate for those who actually have been harassed since now people are
becoming more skeptical).

------
lwhalen
And when the men turn to social techniques that are proven to increase their
sexual market value (aka 'Game'), they get excoriated in the public sphere as
'creeps', 'weirdos', etc. Then we get snarky articles about how 'boring'
successful (read: technical/IT-career focused) men have become these days.

------
dennisgorelik
I wonder if the interviewer would listen to the interviewee and move to
Silicon Valley.

------
a3voices
Let me rephrase that as "There aren't enough 6'1 college-educated WASP men who
look like football players and are charismatic and extroverted".

~~~
mhurron
Heaven forbid a woman also has their likes and dislikes.

~~~
pa12
Likes and dislikes based on societies arbitrary ideals of what an ideal guy is
like.

Whats wrong with non-college educated men?

~~~
cryoshon
If you asked one of these women, I bet they'd say it's because they want
someone who is as educated as they are, claiming some sort of preference of
higher intelligence.

Of course, the real answer is money. College educated men make more money,
generally.

~~~
mhurron
> Of course, the real answer is money.

Ya that's right, they're really just being gold diggers. No one actually talks
to their SO.

------
chubalub
College is a scam anyway...

------
mildbow
Very few things make me stop reading an article. But, this one won with:

"This isn't China or India where they have a man-made gender imbalance because
of all sorts of horrendous things".

What a way to over-generalize 2.5 billion people.

A snide remark like that in a ultra-shallow article. Yeah, I have myself to
blame but bleh.

