Jesse Thomas, 17, knows what he wants to do in life: unlike his
university-bound friends, he’s already working at a job he loves. Jesse is
doing an apprenticeship in motorcycle mechanics at a small garage, and
spending a day a week at college. “Lots of my friends who are doing A-levels
haven’t a clue what they want to do,” he says. “I’m going into something I
enjoy and there’s money in it.”
Jesse is no disaffected youth. He got 11 good GCSEs at Broomfield
comprehensive school in north London. But he wasn’t interested in going on
to A-levels or university. “I thought hands-on was the best way to learn.”
And Jesse is far from alone: the latest application figures show that he is
just one of hundreds of thousands of boys opting not to go to university,
which is frighteningly quickly turning into a girl-dominated arena. Many
commentators are now asking: if the trend continues apace and female
graduates increasingly outnumber boys, what kind of world will we end up
living in?
“Look at those girls go!” exclaimed Boris Johnson, the Tory higher education
spokesman, earlier this month. “This thing is huge . . . and no one seems to
be thinking about the consequences.”
In 1980 only 40% of university students were women. Last year they made up 57%
of graduates and now overwhelm men in most subjects, including maths,
medicine and engineering. If the trend goes on, says Johnson, most doctors
will be women by 2010. Most trainee barristers are women, too. And there’s
no slowing the widening gender gap: nearly 50,000 more girls than boys have
applied so far for university in autumn 2007.
Johnson is worried about the marriageability of all these female graduates and
male nongraduates. Research, he says, shows that “if a man’s IQ rises by 16
points, his chances of marrying increase by 35%; if a woman’s IQ rises by 16
points, her chances of getting hitched decline by the same amount”.
He adds: “It is a gloomy truth that 40% of female graduates born in 1970 are
likely to enter their forties childless.”
Other observers have more academic concerns. Sir Peter Lampl, head of the
educational charity the Sutton Trust, has noticed a dramatic boy-girl divide
in applications to his free one-week summer schools aimed at encouraging
teenagers to start a degree at a top university. “Applications from boys
dropped below 30% last year and this year’s applications do not seem to be
much better,” he says.
Lampl is so worried about the situation he is planning to pay for research
into the reasons behind the underrepresentation of boys taking degrees. “It
matters because by not attracting enough bright boys to British
universities, the country is suffering a loss of talent,” he warns.
So why has this sad state of affairs has come about — and what, if anything,
is being done to address it? Has school become too feminised? Are boys more
worried about top-up fees and getting into debt? Are girls simply more
mature?
Lampl thinks it’s just a worsening of an age-old problem: that for boys being
clever is simply not popular. “Boys are much more self-conscious about their
academic talents. It is not cool for them to seem to be clever or to be seen
to be clever,” he says.
Others point the finger at changes to the education system. They say, quite
simply, that school has become too “girlie”. Today’s exam system and
teaching methods, emphasising regular coursework rather than short, sharp
exams, switch boys, who thrive on competition, right off. Professor Alan
Smithers of Buckingham University confirms that: “Boys tend to be a bit more
cavalier and rely on mugging up at the last minute.”
Translated into exam passes, this means girls do better at GCSE — only 53.3%
of boys aged 15-16 were awarded five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C last
year compared with 63.2% of girls. This in turn means more go on to sit
A-levels, at which they are also more successful than boys.
What is likely to make things even worse, suggests Professor Carol Dyhouse of
Sussex University, is that university is becoming more like school, with
continuous assessment and learning in modules transforming degree courses.
Figures released last week show women are now also getting more first class
and 2:1 degrees than men in every subject.
But the mould is poured much earlier: even before they go to school boys get
less learning at home than their sisters — and when they get to primary they
find nearly every teacher is a woman, meaning no role models and often
little empathy for their rough-and-tumble style of learning.
The bangs and fizzes of the old-fash-ioned science experiments that used to
entrance boys have been greatly curtailed by our risk-averse school culture,
as have many outdoor adventure activities.
But is it really all doom and gloom? Seventeen-year-old Elen Griffiths of
north London looks at the situation from a different angle. Like many
teenage girls, she simply thinks there are more job opportunities for 16 to
18-year-old boys.
“I know one boy who has been offered a job fixing computers on a really good
salary and he’s only 17,” she says. “Then boys can do manual work, like
building and painting and mending cars. For girls our age with no degree
there’s only hairdressing or shop work — even things like nursing now need
degrees. Don’t plumbers earn £70,000 a year — how many female plumbers do
you see?”
And with annual tuition fees of £3,000 looming over the class of 2007, a job
straight from school looks more attractive than ever, particularly since the
earning differential for those with a degree is less clear-cut today. It
depends on subject and which university — a boy with a history degree from a
former polytechnic may not earn much more than if he left school at 16, but
will still have to pay off his university debts.
Will Knight, 17, a former classmate of Jesse Thomas, is not convinced he wants
to read any of his A-level subjects (drama, media studies and critical
thinking) at university. “I don’t want to risk dropping out and having the
debt,” he says.
Instead, he’d rather spend some time following in his dad’s footsteps as a
teacher of English as a second language, which requires a short, three-month
training course. Then he will be able both to travel and earn money.
Of course, there’s another way to look at the situation. It’s not that boys
are falling behind, it’s that girls are forging ahead. “Girls are a big
success story,” says Dyhouse. Now that girls are no longer held back by
expectations that they will leave school early and marry young, they are in
a position to fulfil their academic potential.
Which brings us neatly back to Boris Johnson and his prediction that we will
end up with even more Bridget Jones-type characters struggling to find their
Mr Darcy — unless someone grasps the nettle of what to do about boys.
