

The End of Men - Impossible
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/308135/

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ilaksh
This is interesting.

From the standpoint of maintaining the relevance of men, I'm not super worried
about colleges being dominated by women because I don't see college as being a
good way to stay up-to-date with job skills or even to learn more basic
skills. But maybe this is more a comment about the inadequacy of traditional
learning (and my own issues with not finishing college) than it is about the
concept of higher education in general or men and women.

My reasoning is this: I dropped out of college after about two years. I had
finished most of my general education requirements. However, I don't feel as
though the general education information was mainly focused on really relevant
knowledge or skills. Some of it was definitely important, but a lot of it was
either outdated, not particularly relevant or important, or much further in
depth than I needed to go. That also goes for the classes related to computer
science that I took.

I taught myself the most important skills that I have ever acquired in my
life, computer programming, before I entered high school.

I also don't think that the mechanism of learning in college is very
efficient. In other words, here are some books, some lectures, and some tests.
Everyone is expected to go the same pace. I feel that online environments and
self-paced computer based training are much more efficient and useful, and
more practical for obtaining the newest skillsets.

Anyway that is a little bit out of the way of the main topic perhaps, but it
might be more relevant than you think. I think there may be quite a few males
who are taking a path similar to my own which involves more hands on self
training, quite possibly lots of them in technology related fields. I also
think that there may be significantly more men who are inclined to start their
own businesses.

So I guess I am not really worried about becoming irrelevant just yet.

If I get a degree it will mostly be so that people can't hold the lack of it
over my head for the rest of my life, rather than because there is a degree
program that really has value from a learning perspective.

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tsotha
This is two years old and has been discussed into the dirt.

~~~
philwelch
For reference: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1420553>

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philwelch
This is really just an accident of demographics. Women choose more risk-averse
careers, hence female employment is less affected by economic corrections than
male employment. The only reason it seems new is that previous recessions
happened when there weren't nearly as many women in the workforce.

