population decline

[OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys 2061]

Quote

China’s population could halve within the next 45 years, new study warns

 

• Researchers say previous estimates may have severely underestimated the pace of demographic decline
• Census data says the birth rate was 1.3 children for each woman last year – well below the level needed to stop the population from falling

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/09/03/chinas-population-to-drop-by-half-immigration-helps-us-labor-force/?sh=1e07afaa3d65

 

Quote

Table 1: Projections for Top 10 Countries by Population

Country	2017	2100	Percentage Change
China	1,413 million	732 million	-48%
India	1,381 million	1,093 million	-21%
United States	325 million	336 million	3%
Indonesia	258 million	229 million	-11%
Pakistan	214 million	248 million	-16%
Brazil	212 million	165 million	-22%
Nigeria	206 million	791 million	284%
Bangladesh	157 million	81 million	-48%
Russia	146 million	106 million	-27%
Japan	128 million	60 million	-53%

 

I grew up in a world where everyone was concerned about overpopulation.  It's so weird seeing that it is accepted wisdom now that we are headed the other direction in the developed world.  We're still going up because of third world trajectory, but it is only a matter of time until those countries start on this trajectory too.  It's wild to think about this future.  Will finding housing in China be an absolute joke in 2100?  Which of these many empty apartments do you want? Will the transition stage be marked by abandoned buildings everywhere?  Will the olds everywhere starve as there aren't enough yoots to fund pensions?

[Guest Lobo]

Yeah, these trends are fascinating.  As you said, the trend is already apparent in most developed nations.  But there are are big "throttling down" trends in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Central/East Asia as well.  I think we may see "peak people" by the end of my lifetime, certainly within my children's lifetime.  

There's another interesting, and possibly real dangerous, trend going on the United States right now.  Obviously, white birth rates are declining, and hispanic birth rates are no longer growing as fast as they used to.  And enrollment is colleges is therefore projected to decline in the very near future.  Colleges went from 60/40 male just 30 years ago to 60/40 female now and the gap is widening.  Every 4 years, 1.3 million more women enter college than men.  Men often partner/breed with women who are less educated than they are, but it's very rare to see the opposite (women marrying down in education terms since we're not terribly concerned with hearty breeding stock anymore as a species).  And if you acknowledge the strong correlation between education and earning potential, that means we're gonna have a lot more college educated women having their choice of partners, and a lot more undereducated men sitting at home with few prospects at getting rich or getting laid.  A similar trend is taking place in China and in several other industrialized nations.  That's a dangerous cocktail long-term because lonely men who can't afford hot ass tend to believe crazy shit and act out on it.   There's an Ivy League demographer that gamed this all out, it's fascinating.  

[TKthunder2 4985]

China did it to themselves.  One child policy driven by a patriarchal preference for male children to carry on family traditions and to care for their elderly artificially depressed birth rates for years and limited the amount of females required maintain their population.  While it’s good they repealed the policy, if they were smart they’d be offering mass incentives for women to act as surrogates for all of these single men that have almost no chance of having children, or offering visas and incentives/housing to any women refugees around the world to move to China; however with their traditional values and xenophobia it’s not something their society can just get over in a short period of time…so in summation, they’re fucked.

[52-80 19140]

nigerians puttin in that work tho

[Guest Lobo]

If you gave me 20 guesses, I would have missed this. 

The nation that has by far (4.6%, second place is way back at 3.7%) the fastest population rate increase?

Syria.  

I picture al-Assad standing on top of his Presidential Palace like Slater at the Moontower, "Imagine how people out there are fuckin' right now?  Just going at it!"  

Edited October 1, 2021 by Lobo

[52-80 19140]

16 minutes ago, Lobo said:

 Men often partner/breed with women who are less educated than they are, but it's very rare to see the opposite (women marrying down in education terms since we're not terribly concerned with hearty breeding stock anymore as a species).  And if you acknowledge the strong correlation between education and earning potential, that means we're gonna have a lot more college educated women having their choice of partners, and a lot more undereducated men sitting at home with few prospects at getting rich or getting laid.

When have women not have had their choice of partners?  I imagine a 6'2" farmboy fares better in the grouping department than a 5'7" Econ PHD whos not a millionaire

[Colonel Sanders 1336]

Nigeria is about 30% bigger than Texas, but will have almost 800 million people?  Also, they may want to check the math on Pakistan.

[Guest Lobo]

Yeah, they usually have.  They're still in the same boat, relatively speaking.  His larger concern was all the dudes who can't get good jobs or hot dates, that recipe has been seen hundreds of times throughout history.  It rarely has a happy ending.  Unless you legalize happy endings. 

[52-80 19140]

2 minutes ago, Lobo said:

Yeah, they usually have.  They're still in the same boat, relatively speaking.  His larger concern was all the dudes who can't get good jobs or hot dates, that recipe has been seen hundreds of times throughout history.  It rarely has a happy ending.  Unless you legalize happy endings. 

Women have a stronger imperative to reproduce.  Women have their choice of partner with whom to reproduce.  Men get the short end of the stick.  These 3 things are a steady constant through time and I dont think the relative education or earning power of men will change that dynamics much. 

What will change the overall repro rate then I think is more cultural in terms of women/society consciously prioritizing their careers; maybe having children too late; choosing smaller families; eschewing children altogether; etc.

I gamed this while banging a prostitute at a Holiday Inn Express last night

[DaysOff 7943]

Yeah, these trends are fascinating.  As you said, the trend is already apparent in most developed nations.  But there are are big "throttling down" trends in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Central/East Asia as well.  I think we may see "peak people" by the end of my lifetime, certainly within my children's lifetime.  
There's another interesting, and possibly real dangerous, trend going on the United States right now.  Obviously, white birth rates are declining, and hispanic birth rates are no longer growing as fast as they used to.  And enrollment is colleges is therefore projected to decline in the very near future.  Colleges went from 60/40 male just 30 years ago to 60/40 female now and the gap is widening.  Every 4 years, 1.3 million more women enter college than men.  Men often partner/breed with women who are less educated than they are, but it's very rare to see the opposite (women marrying down in education terms since we're not terribly concerned with hearty breeding stock anymore as a species).  And if you acknowledge the strong correlation between education and earning potential, that means we're gonna have a lot more college educated women having their choice of partners, and a lot more undereducated men sitting at home with few prospects at getting rich or getting laid.  A similar trend is taking place in China and in several other industrialized nations.  That's a dangerous cocktail long-term because lonely men who can't afford hot ass tend to believe crazy shit and act out on it.   There's an Ivy League demographer that gamed this all out, it's fascinating.  

Sounds like a good way for corporate America to keep costs down. Pay chicks 76 cents on the dollar.

[gurt 748]

It's gonna be really bad for China in the next 20-30 years when all the people who were born prior to the one-child policy start retiring.  Especially as their average age of retirement is 54 (they have been talking of raising it for years).  Impossible to fund all those people with a much smaller working cohort.  Who knew that top down, unilateral policy making might have unintended consequences?

[NeverMarryAStripper 21865]

19 minutes ago, Colonel Sanders said:

 Also, they may want to check the math on Pakistan.

Yeah, I'm not sure how much faith I would put in projections that think going from 214 million to 248 million is a 16% decrease

[OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys 2061]

it looks like the women "marrying down" thing is starting to happen now.  it intrigued me so i googled and here's an article on those trends.

 

https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-gender-gap-in-marriages-between-college-educated-partners

 

Quote

Among men overall and in each age category, the percentage with bachelor’s degrees married to a spouse with less education declined steadily and dramatically. For example, as Figure 1 below shows, for those ages 33 to 42, that percentage declined from 54% to 17%, which is more than triple. Married females with such degrees, however, mostly went in the opposite direction, especially in the last three decades, although less dramatically so. Particularly, as older women pass from the scene—barring unexpected changes—the percentages of women with four-year college degrees married to men without them will likely continue to increase. For males, this percentage will likely continue to decrease. 

 

I had to stare at this chart for a while to really grasp what its saying, but i think that information in hidden in the purple bars on the right

 

[Satoshi 129]

This is a reason why immigration is so encouraged in developed countries like the EU and here. In debt based economies you cannot have deflation and aging/shrinking populations are deflationary. 

[Don Johnson 4752]

41 minutes ago, gurt said:

It's gonna be really bad for China in the next 20-30 years when all the people who were born prior to the one-child policy start retiring.  Especially as their average age of retirement is 54 (they have been talking of raising it for years).  Impossible to fund all those people with a much smaller working cohort.  Who knew that top down, unilateral policy making might have unintended consequences?

Maybe that's why they created Covid?  Pretty quick solve.

[52-80 19140]

7 minutes ago, OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys said:

it looks like the women "marrying down" thing is starting to happen now.  it intrigued me so i googled and here's an article on those trends.

 

https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-gender-gap-in-marriages-between-college-educated-partners

 

 

I had to stare at this chart for a while to really grasp what its saying, but i think that information in hidden in the purple bars on the right

 

This really doesnt say anything about preferences - of marrying up or down.  It just expresses the fact that more women are getting college degrees.

Left half:  As more women get degrees, the chance of a man marrying a woman without one goes down over time.

Right half:  The men are the control population.  Hence the numbers do not significantly change over time.

[CHIEF 5075]

11 minutes ago, OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys said:

it looks like the women "marrying down" thing is starting to happen now.  it intrigued me so i googled and here's an article on those trends.

 

https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-gender-gap-in-marriages-between-college-educated-partners

 

 

I had to stare at this chart for a while to really grasp what its saying, but i think that information in hidden in the purple bars on the right

 

You really see that more educated women are willing to marry less educated men in the childbearing years. I believe this is more pronounced in rural areas, especially female school teachers marrying a less educated successful property owner, or business owner. You ask any business owner, in my area, what their wives do, and the answer is usually "a school teacher". School teachers seem to move around less, and want to put down roots, this wasn't really the case when I was in school decades ago. Their income is not the primary income on which they live, it is their less educated spouse that owns an electrical contracting company that is knocking down $250k per year. In the 70's and 80's, it was more of educator/coach would  marry another educator, and they would move from place to place as the coaching gigs and money got better.

CHIEF

[Brisketexan 105041]

2 hours ago, Lobo said:

And if you acknowledge the strong correlation between education and earning potential, that means we're gonna have a lot more college educated women having their choice of partners, and a lot more undereducated men sitting at home with few prospects at getting rich or getting laid.  A similar trend is taking place in China and in several other industrialized nations.  That's a dangerous cocktail long-term because lonely men who can't afford hot ass tend to believe crazy shit and act out on it.   There's an Ivy League demographer that gamed this all out, it's fascinating. 

 

1 hour ago, Lobo said:

Yeah, they usually have.  They're still in the same boat, relatively speaking.  His larger concern was all the dudes who can't get good jobs or hot dates, that recipe has been seen hundreds of times throughout history.  It rarely has a happy ending.  Unless you legalize happy endings. 

This is its own fascinating subject, and probably deserves its own thread.  As a parent of college-aged kids (and we're dear friends with a university president, and have lots of candid, beer-fueled conversations about such things), I'd call this issue a crisis.

I've posited before on this board that our biggest looming question, as tech and AI advances, is "what are we going to do with our morons?"  Maybe a corollary -- and perhaps overlapping -- question is "what are we going to do with our uneducated men?"

Lack of balance is a destabilizer.  Idle men, who aren't great at attracting mates, are a destabilizer.  This is a looming challenge, and maybe even a looming breaking point for many societies.  We need to start dealing with it (and it includes multiple issues -- such as improving our education system so that it doesn't just favor girls, who sit still with their bright and shiny faces, and perhaps also gear some of it to boys, who often learn more kinesthetically).  Lots of stuff to tease out here.

[Surly Bevo 24908]

Seems like historically wars and pandemics kill a lot of uneducated men/morons.  Probably need to workshop that solution a bit.  

[KYHorn 17001]

2 hours ago, Lobo said:

Yeah, they usually have.  They're still in the same boat, relatively speaking.  His larger concern was all the dudes who can't get good jobs or hot dates, that recipe has been seen hundreds of times throughout history.  It rarely has a happy ending.  Unless you legalize happy endings. 

 

42 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

 

This is its own fascinating subject, and probably deserves its own thread.  As a parent of college-aged kids (and we're dear friends with a university president, and have lots of candid, beer-fueled conversations about such things), I'd call this issue a crisis.

I've posited before on this board that our biggest looming question, as tech and AI advances, is "what are we going to do with our morons?"  Maybe a corollary -- and perhaps overlapping -- question is "what are we going to do with our uneducated men?"

Lack of balance is a destabilizer.  Idle men, who aren't great at attracting mates, are a destabilizer.  This is a looming challenge, and maybe even a looming breaking point for many societies.  We need to start dealing with it (and it includes multiple issues -- such as improving our education system so that it doesn't just favor girls, who sit still with their bright and shiny faces, and perhaps also gear some of it to boys, who often learn more kinesthetically).  Lots of stuff to tease out here.

One concern I have is that these trends will lead females to forego marriage and instead form either many short term relationships (serial monogamy) or cohabit instead. In these situations they can either choose not to have children, which furthers the issue of population decline, or have children, who would then be more likely to have negative outcomes due to (among other, often interrelated, factors) their mom's unstable living arrangements and partnerships. Regardless of their choice, it's not a positive outlook. The research is pretty clear that cohabiting relationships, and serial monogamy more broadly, is associated with numerous negative outcomes, including lower academic achievement and income (note the cycle of poverty emerging here), mental health problems, greater risk of divorce/dissolution, etc. That's just for cohabiting relationships- single parenthood is obviously worse. This is what has been happening (among other things, obviously) in African American families. Women aren't able to find suitable marriage partners, so they don't marry, but they often still end up having children and the children are raised in less than ideal situations. 

I read a WSJ article about the male college enrollment problem recently. I thought it was pretty informative and an interesting look behind the curtain:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/college-university-fall-higher-education-men-women-enrollment-admissions-back-to-school-11630948233?mod=e2fb&fbclid=IwAR0vJescBEP9Y-WiEV9kBV4L5fWevH6FIDRBghABQ4oeB8PxZrtwV8WjLyg

Spoiler

A Generation of American Men Give Up on College: ‘I Just Feel Lost’

DOUGLAS BELKIN SEPTEMBER 06, 2021

This education gap, which holds at both two- and four-year colleges, has been slowly widening for 40 years. The divergence increases at graduation: After six years of college, 65% of women in the U.S. who started a four-year university in 2012 received diplomas by 2018 compared with 59% of men during the same period, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

In the next few years, two women will earn a college degree for every man, if the trend continues, said Douglas Shapiro, executive director of the research center at the National Student Clearinghouse.

No reversal is in sight. Women increased their lead over men in college applications for the 2021-22 school year—3,805,978 to 2,815,810—by nearly a percentage point compared with the previous academic year, according to Common Application, a nonprofit that transmits applications to more than 900 schools. Women make up 49% of the college-age population in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau.

“Men are falling behind remarkably fast,” said Thomas Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, which aims to improve educational opportunities for low-income, first-generation and disabled college students.

American colleges, which are embroiled in debates over racial and gender equality, and working on ways to reduce sexual assault and harassment of women on campus, have yet to reach a consensus on what might slow the retreat of men from higher education. Some schools are quietly trying programs to enroll more men, but there is scant campus support for spending resources to boost male attendance and retention.

The gender enrollment disparity among nonprofit colleges is widest at private four-year schools, where the proportion of women during the 2020-21 school year grew to an average of 61%, a record high, Clearinghouse data show. Some of the schools extend offers to a higher percentage of male applicants, trying to get a closer balance of men and women.

“Is there a thumb on the scale for boys? Absolutely,” said Jennifer Delahunty, a college enrollment consultant who previously led the admissions offices at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore. “The question is, is that right or wrong?”

Ms. Delahunty said this kind of tacit affirmative action for boys has become “higher education’s dirty little secret,” practiced but not publicly acknowledged by many private universities where the gender balance has gone off-kilter.

“It’s unfortunate that we’re not giving this issue air and sun so that we can start to address it,” she said.

Jay Wells's high-school graduation photo hangs at his parents’ home in Toledo, Ohio.

Photo: Steve Koss for The Wall Street Journal

Jay Wells, 23, at his parents’ house this summer in Toledo, Ohio.

Photo: Steve Koss for The Wall Street Journal

At Baylor University, where the undergraduate student body is 60% female, the admission rate for men last year was 7 percentage points higher than for women. Every student has to meet Baylor’s admission standards to earn admission, said Jessica King Gereghty, the school’s assistant vice president of enrollment strategy and innovation. Classes, however, are shaped to balance several variables, including gender, she said.

Ms. Gereghty said she found that girls more closely attended to their college applications than boys, for instance making sure transcripts are delivered. Baylor created a “males and moms communication campaign” a few years ago to keep high-school boys on track, she said.

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Among the messages to mothers in the campaign, Ms. Gereghty said: “ ‘At the dinner table tonight, mom, we need you to talk about getting your high school transcripts in.’ ”

Race and gender can’t be considered in admission decisions at California’s public universities. The proportion of male undergraduates at UCLA fell to 41% in the fall semester of 2020 from 45% in fall 2013. Over the same period, undergraduate enrollment expanded by nearly 3,000 students. Of those spots, nine out of 10 went to women.

“We do not see male applicants being less competitive than female applicants,” UCLA Vice Provost Youlonda Copeland-Morgan said, but fewer men apply.

The college gender gap cuts across race, geography and economic background. For the most part, white men—once the predominant group on American campuses—no longer hold a statistical edge in enrollment rates, said Mr. Mortenson, of the Pell Institute. Enrollment rates for poor and working-class white men are lower than those of young Black, Latino and Asian men from the same economic backgrounds, according to an analysis of census data by the Pell Institute for the Journal.

No college wants to tackle the issue under the glare of gender politics, said Ms. Delahunty, the enrollment consultant. The conventional view on campuses, she said, is that “men make more money, men hold higher positions, why should we give them a little shove from high school to college?”

Yet the stakes are too high to ignore, she said. “If you care about our society, one, and, two, if you care about women, you have to care about the boys, too. If you have equally educated numbers of men and women that just makes a better society, and it makes it better for women.”

The pandemic accelerated the trend. Nearly 700,000 fewer students were enrolled in colleges in spring 2021 compared with spring 2019, a Journal analysis found, with 78% fewer men.

The decline in male enrollment during the 2020-21 academic year was highest at two-year community colleges. Family finances are believed to be one cause. Millions of women left jobs to stay home with children when schools closed in the pandemic. Many turned to their sons for help, and some young men quit school to work, said Colleen Coffey, executive director of the College Planning Collaborative at Framingham State University in Massachusetts, a program to keep students in school.

“The guys felt they needed to step in quickly,” Ms. Coffey said.

It isn’t clear how many will return to school after the pandemic.

No plan

Over the course of their working lives, American college graduates earn more than a million dollars beyond those with only a high-school diploma, and a university diploma is required for many jobs as well as most professions, technical work and positions of influence.

Yet skyrocketing education costs have made college more risky today than for past generations, potentially saddling graduates in lower-paying careers—as well as those who drop out—with student loans they can’t repay.

Social science researchers cite distractions and obstacles to education that weigh more on boys and young men, including videogames, pornography, increased fatherlessness and cases of overdiagnosis of boyhood restlessness and related medications.

Men in interviews around the U.S. said they quit school or didn’t enroll because they didn’t see enough value in a college degree for all the effort and expense required to earn one. Many said they wanted to make money after high school.

Daniel Briles, 18 years old, graduated in June from Hastings High School in Hastings, Minn. He decided against college during his senior year, despite earning a 3.5 grade-point average and winning a $2,500 college scholarship from a local veterans organization.

Daniel Briles preparing an audio track at home in Red Wing, Minn. His music is on Spotify under Daniel Envy.

Photo: Tim Gruber for The Wall Street Journal

He took a landscaping job and takes home about $500 a week. Mr. Briles, a musician, also earns some income from creating and selling music through streaming services, he said, and invests in cryptocurrencies. His parents both attended college, and they hope he, too, will eventually apply. So far, they haven’t pressured him, he said.

“If I was going to be a doctor or a lawyer, then obviously those people need a formal education. But there are definitely ways to get around it now,” Mr. Briles said. “There are opportunities that weren’t taught in school that could be a lot more promising than getting a degree.”

Many young men who dropped out of college said they worried about their future but nonetheless quit school with no plan in mind. “I would say I feel hazy,” said 23-year-old Jay Wells, who quit Defiance College in Ohio after a semester. He lives with his mother and delivers pallets of soda for Coca-Cola Co. in Toledo for $20 an hour.

“I’m sort of waiting for a light to come on so I figure out what to do next,” he said.

Jack Bartholomew, 19, started his freshman year at Bowling Green State University during the pandemic, taking his classes online. During the first weeks, he said, he was confused by the course material and grew frustrated. Finally, he quit. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said. “I just feel lost.”

Mr. Bartholomew’s parents and one older sister have college degrees. He was a solid student in high school and was interested in studying graphic design. Yet while working online from his second-floor bedroom, his introductory courses seemed pointless for how much he was paying, he said.

He works 40 hours a week, at $15.50 an hour, packing boxes at an Amazon warehouse not far from his house in Perrysburg, Ohio. It isn’t a long-term job, Mr. Bartholomew said, and he doesn’t know what to do next.

“College seems like, to me at least, the only logical path you can take in America,” he said. But for now, he said, it is too big a struggle, financially and academically.

Jay Wells with the family dog, Reese, at his parents’ home in Toledo, Ohio.

Photo: Steve Koss for The Wall Street Journal

Tomorrow’s leaders

Men dominate top positions in industry, finance, politics and entertainment. They also hold a majority of tenured faculty positions and run most U.S. college campuses. Yet female college students are running laps around their male counterparts.

The University of Vermont is typical. The school president is a man and so are nearly two-thirds of the campus trustees. Women made up about 80% of honors graduates last year in the colleges of arts and sciences.

One student from nearly every high school in Vermont is nominated for a significant scholarship at the campus every year. Most of them are girls, said Jay Jacobs, the university’s provost for enrollment management. It isn’t by design. “We want more men in our pipeline,” Dr. Jacobs said, but boys graduate from high school and enroll in college at lower rates than girls, both in Vermont and nationwide.

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The young men who enroll lag behind. Among University of Vermont undergraduates, about 55% of male students graduate in four years compared with 70% of women. “I see a lot of guys that are here for four years to drink beer, smoke weed, hang out and get a degree,” said Luke Weiss, a civil engineering student and fraternity president of Pi Kappa Alpha at the campus.

Female students in the U.S. benefit from a support system established decades ago, spanning a period when women struggled to gain a foothold on college campuses. There are more than 500 women’s centers at schools nationwide. Most centers host clubs and organizations that work to help female students succeed.

Young women appear eager to take leadership roles, making up 59% of student body presidents in the 2019-20 academic year and 74% of student body vice presidents, according to W.H. “Butch” Oxendine, Jr., executive director of the American Student Government Association.

“Across all types of institutions, particularly two-year institutions, but also extending into public and private four-year institutions, women dominate student government executive boards,” Mr. Oxendine said.

Many young men are hobbled by a lack of guidance, a strain of anti-intellectualism and a growing belief that college degrees don’t pay off, said Ed Grocholski, a senior vice president at Junior Achievement USA, which works with about five million students every year to teach about career paths, financial literacy and entrepreneurship.

“What I see is there is a kind of hope deficit,” Mr. Grocholski said.

The campus of Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio.

Photo: Steve Koss for The Wall Street Journal

Young men get little help, in part, because schools are focused on encouraging historically underrepresented students. Jerlando Jackson, department chair, Education Leadership and Policy Analysis, at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Education, said few campuses have been willing to spend limited funds on male underachievement that would also benefit white men, risking criticism for assisting those who have historically held the biggest educational advantages.

“As a country, we don’t have the tools yet to help white men who find themselves needing help,” Dr. Jackson said. “To be in a time when there are groups of white men that are falling through the cracks, it’s hard.”

Keith E. Smith, a mental-health counselor and men’s outreach coordinator at the University of Vermont, said that when he started working at the school in 2006 he found that men were much more likely to face consequences for the trouble they caused under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

In 2008, Mr. Smith proposed a men’s center to help male students succeed. The proposal drew criticism from women who asked, “Why would you give more resources to the most privileged group on campus,” he said.

Funding wasn’t appropriated, he said, and the center was never built.

The University of Oregon has one of the few college men’s centers, which offers help for mental and physical health. “Men don’t need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” said Kerry Frazee, director of prevention services, who works with the center. “No one can do it all by themselves.”

I thought this was an interesting diagnosis of the problem, though I admittedly haven't researched much on this topic:

"Social science researchers cite distractions and obstacles to education that weigh more on boys and young men, including videogames, pornography, increased fatherlessness and cases of overdiagnosis of boyhood restlessness and related medications.

Men in interviews around the U.S. said they quit school or didn’t enroll because they didn’t see enough value in a college degree for all the effort and expense required to earn one. Many said they wanted to make money after high school."

Edited October 1, 2021 by KYHorn

[Incredulity 11643]

18 minutes ago, Surly Bevo said:

Seems like historically wars and pandemics kill a lot of uneducated men/morons.  Probably need to workshop that solution a bit.  

What would you call the last 18 months?  a game of pick up sticks?

[Bevo 13558]

I'm happy with fewer people

[smuggs 9350]

44 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

I've posited before on this board that our biggest looming question, as tech and AI advances, is "what are we going to do with our morons?"  Maybe a corollary -- and perhaps overlapping -- question is "what are we going to do with our uneducated men?"

 

[Bevo 13558]

52 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

 

This is its own fascinating subject, and probably deserves its own thread.  As a parent of college-aged kids (and we're dear friends with a university president, and have lots of candid, beer-fueled conversations about such things), I'd call this issue a crisis.

I've posited before on this board that our biggest looming question, as tech and AI advances, is "what are we going to do with our morons?"  Maybe a corollary -- and perhaps overlapping -- question is "what are we going to do with our uneducated men?"

Lack of balance is a destabilizer.  Idle men, who aren't great at attracting mates, are a destabilizer.  This is a looming challenge, and maybe even a looming breaking point for many societies.  We need to start dealing with it (and it includes multiple issues -- such as improving our education system so that it doesn't just favor girls, who sit still with their bright and shiny faces, and perhaps also gear some of it to boys, who often learn more kinesthetically).  Lots of stuff to tease out here.

What if the AI beings are morons?

[CHIEF 5075]

28 minutes ago, KYHorn said:

 

One concern I have is that these trends will lead females to forego marriage and instead form either many short term relationships (serial monogamy) or cohabit instead. In these situations they can either choose not to have children, which furthers the issue of population decline, or have children, who would then be more likely to have negative outcomes due to (among other, often interrelated, factors) their mom's unstable living arrangements and partnerships. Regardless of their choice, it's not a positive outlook. The research is pretty clear that cohabiting relationships, and serial monogamy more broadly, is associated with numerous negative outcomes, including lower academic achievement and income (note the cycle of poverty emerging here), mental health problems, greater risk of divorce/dissolution, etc. That's just for cohabiting relationships- single parenthood is obviously worse. This is what has been happening (among other things, obviously) in African American families. Women aren't able to find suitable marriage partners, so they don't marry, but they often still end up having children and the children are raised in less than ideal situations. 

I read a WSJ article about the male college enrollment problem recently. I thought it was pretty informative and an interesting look behind the curtain:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/college-university-fall-higher-education-men-women-enrollment-admissions-back-to-school-11630948233?mod=e2fb&fbclid=IwAR0vJescBEP9Y-WiEV9kBV4L5fWevH6FIDRBghABQ4oeB8PxZrtwV8WjLyg

  Reveal hidden contents

A Generation of American Men Give Up on College: ‘I Just Feel Lost’

DOUGLAS BELKIN SEPTEMBER 06, 2021

This education gap, which holds at both two- and four-year colleges, has been slowly widening for 40 years. The divergence increases at graduation: After six years of college, 65% of women in the U.S. who started a four-year university in 2012 received diplomas by 2018 compared with 59% of men during the same period, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

In the next few years, two women will earn a college degree for every man, if the trend continues, said Douglas Shapiro, executive director of the research center at the National Student Clearinghouse.

No reversal is in sight. Women increased their lead over men in college applications for the 2021-22 school year—3,805,978 to 2,815,810—by nearly a percentage point compared with the previous academic year, according to Common Application, a nonprofit that transmits applications to more than 900 schools. Women make up 49% of the college-age population in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau.

“Men are falling behind remarkably fast,” said Thomas Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, which aims to improve educational opportunities for low-income, first-generation and disabled college students.

American colleges, which are embroiled in debates over racial and gender equality, and working on ways to reduce sexual assault and harassment of women on campus, have yet to reach a consensus on what might slow the retreat of men from higher education. Some schools are quietly trying programs to enroll more men, but there is scant campus support for spending resources to boost male attendance and retention.

The gender enrollment disparity among nonprofit colleges is widest at private four-year schools, where the proportion of women during the 2020-21 school year grew to an average of 61%, a record high, Clearinghouse data show. Some of the schools extend offers to a higher percentage of male applicants, trying to get a closer balance of men and women.

“Is there a thumb on the scale for boys? Absolutely,” said Jennifer Delahunty, a college enrollment consultant who previously led the admissions offices at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore. “The question is, is that right or wrong?”

Ms. Delahunty said this kind of tacit affirmative action for boys has become “higher education’s dirty little secret,” practiced but not publicly acknowledged by many private universities where the gender balance has gone off-kilter.

“It’s unfortunate that we’re not giving this issue air and sun so that we can start to address it,” she said.

Jay Wells's high-school graduation photo hangs at his parents’ home in Toledo, Ohio.

Photo: Steve Koss for The Wall Street Journal

Jay Wells, 23, at his parents’ house this summer in Toledo, Ohio.

Photo: Steve Koss for The Wall Street Journal

At Baylor University, where the undergraduate student body is 60% female, the admission rate for men last year was 7 percentage points higher than for women. Every student has to meet Baylor’s admission standards to earn admission, said Jessica King Gereghty, the school’s assistant vice president of enrollment strategy and innovation. Classes, however, are shaped to balance several variables, including gender, she said.

Ms. Gereghty said she found that girls more closely attended to their college applications than boys, for instance making sure transcripts are delivered. Baylor created a “males and moms communication campaign” a few years ago to keep high-school boys on track, she said.

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Among the messages to mothers in the campaign, Ms. Gereghty said: “ ‘At the dinner table tonight, mom, we need you to talk about getting your high school transcripts in.’ ”

Race and gender can’t be considered in admission decisions at California’s public universities. The proportion of male undergraduates at UCLA fell to 41% in the fall semester of 2020 from 45% in fall 2013. Over the same period, undergraduate enrollment expanded by nearly 3,000 students. Of those spots, nine out of 10 went to women.

“We do not see male applicants being less competitive than female applicants,” UCLA Vice Provost Youlonda Copeland-Morgan said, but fewer men apply.

The college gender gap cuts across race, geography and economic background. For the most part, white men—once the predominant group on American campuses—no longer hold a statistical edge in enrollment rates, said Mr. Mortenson, of the Pell Institute. Enrollment rates for poor and working-class white men are lower than those of young Black, Latino and Asian men from the same economic backgrounds, according to an analysis of census data by the Pell Institute for the Journal.

No college wants to tackle the issue under the glare of gender politics, said Ms. Delahunty, the enrollment consultant. The conventional view on campuses, she said, is that “men make more money, men hold higher positions, why should we give them a little shove from high school to college?”

Yet the stakes are too high to ignore, she said. “If you care about our society, one, and, two, if you care about women, you have to care about the boys, too. If you have equally educated numbers of men and women that just makes a better society, and it makes it better for women.”

The pandemic accelerated the trend. Nearly 700,000 fewer students were enrolled in colleges in spring 2021 compared with spring 2019, a Journal analysis found, with 78% fewer men.

The decline in male enrollment during the 2020-21 academic year was highest at two-year community colleges. Family finances are believed to be one cause. Millions of women left jobs to stay home with children when schools closed in the pandemic. Many turned to their sons for help, and some young men quit school to work, said Colleen Coffey, executive director of the College Planning Collaborative at Framingham State University in Massachusetts, a program to keep students in school.

“The guys felt they needed to step in quickly,” Ms. Coffey said.

It isn’t clear how many will return to school after the pandemic.

No plan

Over the course of their working lives, American college graduates earn more than a million dollars beyond those with only a high-school diploma, and a university diploma is required for many jobs as well as most professions, technical work and positions of influence.

Yet skyrocketing education costs have made college more risky today than for past generations, potentially saddling graduates in lower-paying careers—as well as those who drop out—with student loans they can’t repay.

Social science researchers cite distractions and obstacles to education that weigh more on boys and young men, including videogames, pornography, increased fatherlessness and cases of overdiagnosis of boyhood restlessness and related medications.

Men in interviews around the U.S. said they quit school or didn’t enroll because they didn’t see enough value in a college degree for all the effort and expense required to earn one. Many said they wanted to make money after high school.

Daniel Briles, 18 years old, graduated in June from Hastings High School in Hastings, Minn. He decided against college during his senior year, despite earning a 3.5 grade-point average and winning a $2,500 college scholarship from a local veterans organization.

Daniel Briles preparing an audio track at home in Red Wing, Minn. His music is on Spotify under Daniel Envy.

Photo: Tim Gruber for The Wall Street Journal

He took a landscaping job and takes home about $500 a week. Mr. Briles, a musician, also earns some income from creating and selling music through streaming services, he said, and invests in cryptocurrencies. His parents both attended college, and they hope he, too, will eventually apply. So far, they haven’t pressured him, he said.

“If I was going to be a doctor or a lawyer, then obviously those people need a formal education. But there are definitely ways to get around it now,” Mr. Briles said. “There are opportunities that weren’t taught in school that could be a lot more promising than getting a degree.”

Many young men who dropped out of college said they worried about their future but nonetheless quit school with no plan in mind. “I would say I feel hazy,” said 23-year-old Jay Wells, who quit Defiance College in Ohio after a semester. He lives with his mother and delivers pallets of soda for Coca-Cola Co. in Toledo for $20 an hour.

“I’m sort of waiting for a light to come on so I figure out what to do next,” he said.

Jack Bartholomew, 19, started his freshman year at Bowling Green State University during the pandemic, taking his classes online. During the first weeks, he said, he was confused by the course material and grew frustrated. Finally, he quit. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said. “I just feel lost.”

Mr. Bartholomew’s parents and one older sister have college degrees. He was a solid student in high school and was interested in studying graphic design. Yet while working online from his second-floor bedroom, his introductory courses seemed pointless for how much he was paying, he said.

He works 40 hours a week, at $15.50 an hour, packing boxes at an Amazon warehouse not far from his house in Perrysburg, Ohio. It isn’t a long-term job, Mr. Bartholomew said, and he doesn’t know what to do next.

“College seems like, to me at least, the only logical path you can take in America,” he said. But for now, he said, it is too big a struggle, financially and academically.

Jay Wells with the family dog, Reese, at his parents’ home in Toledo, Ohio.

Photo: Steve Koss for The Wall Street Journal

Tomorrow’s leaders

Men dominate top positions in industry, finance, politics and entertainment. They also hold a majority of tenured faculty positions and run most U.S. college campuses. Yet female college students are running laps around their male counterparts.

The University of Vermont is typical. The school president is a man and so are nearly two-thirds of the campus trustees. Women made up about 80% of honors graduates last year in the colleges of arts and sciences.

One student from nearly every high school in Vermont is nominated for a significant scholarship at the campus every year. Most of them are girls, said Jay Jacobs, the university’s provost for enrollment management. It isn’t by design. “We want more men in our pipeline,” Dr. Jacobs said, but boys graduate from high school and enroll in college at lower rates than girls, both in Vermont and nationwide.

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The young men who enroll lag behind. Among University of Vermont undergraduates, about 55% of male students graduate in four years compared with 70% of women. “I see a lot of guys that are here for four years to drink beer, smoke weed, hang out and get a degree,” said Luke Weiss, a civil engineering student and fraternity president of Pi Kappa Alpha at the campus.

Female students in the U.S. benefit from a support system established decades ago, spanning a period when women struggled to gain a foothold on college campuses. There are more than 500 women’s centers at schools nationwide. Most centers host clubs and organizations that work to help female students succeed.

Young women appear eager to take leadership roles, making up 59% of student body presidents in the 2019-20 academic year and 74% of student body vice presidents, according to W.H. “Butch” Oxendine, Jr., executive director of the American Student Government Association.

“Across all types of institutions, particularly two-year institutions, but also extending into public and private four-year institutions, women dominate student government executive boards,” Mr. Oxendine said.

Many young men are hobbled by a lack of guidance, a strain of anti-intellectualism and a growing belief that college degrees don’t pay off, said Ed Grocholski, a senior vice president at Junior Achievement USA, which works with about five million students every year to teach about career paths, financial literacy and entrepreneurship.

“What I see is there is a kind of hope deficit,” Mr. Grocholski said.

The campus of Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio.

Photo: Steve Koss for The Wall Street Journal

Young men get little help, in part, because schools are focused on encouraging historically underrepresented students. Jerlando Jackson, department chair, Education Leadership and Policy Analysis, at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Education, said few campuses have been willing to spend limited funds on male underachievement that would also benefit white men, risking criticism for assisting those who have historically held the biggest educational advantages.

“As a country, we don’t have the tools yet to help white men who find themselves needing help,” Dr. Jackson said. “To be in a time when there are groups of white men that are falling through the cracks, it’s hard.”

Keith E. Smith, a mental-health counselor and men’s outreach coordinator at the University of Vermont, said that when he started working at the school in 2006 he found that men were much more likely to face consequences for the trouble they caused under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

In 2008, Mr. Smith proposed a men’s center to help male students succeed. The proposal drew criticism from women who asked, “Why would you give more resources to the most privileged group on campus,” he said.

Funding wasn’t appropriated, he said, and the center was never built.

The University of Oregon has one of the few college men’s centers, which offers help for mental and physical health. “Men don’t need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” said Kerry Frazee, director of prevention services, who works with the center. “No one can do it all by themselves.”

I thought this was an interesting diagnosis of the problem, though I admittedly haven't researched much on this topic:

"Social science researchers cite distractions and obstacles to education that weigh more on boys and young men, including videogames, pornography, increased fatherlessness and cases of overdiagnosis of boyhood restlessness and related medications.

Men in interviews around the U.S. said they quit school or didn’t enroll because they didn’t see enough value in a college degree for all the effort and expense required to earn one. Many said they wanted to make money after high school."

If you look at Trade Schools, TSTC for example:

https://www.collegetuitioncompare.com/edu/487320/texas-state-technical-college/enrollment/

The student body is overwhelmingly male. Outside of legal, accounting, and STEM degrees, what degrees are available that males would want to work in, that will provide a greater income than what they can get at a trade school in 12-18 months? What gender makes up the bulk of social work, nursing, and education degrees?

One of my best friends dropped out of a four year university, and went to TSTC to get an associates in automation engineering. He has automated every Chemlime plant over the last 30 years. He has been making over $200k for at least 25 years, and who knows how much now. His wife has a Masters in Medical Records and has always made about half as much as he has.

The number one thing all women want is financial security, that trumps education. You show me someone that is successful, educated or not, and an educated women will find something that interests them. Be it grit and determination, ability to think outside the box, money management. If he is decent looking, she will overlook his lack of a four year degree. 

This kinda went off on a tangent, but yeah, China is fucked.

CHIEF

Edited October 1, 2021 by CHIEF
Fuck China

[AUS-97HORN 11756]

1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

 

This is its own fascinating subject, and probably deserves its own thread.

I've posited before on this board that our biggest looming question, as tech and AI advances, is "what are we going to do with our morons?" 

men, who aren't great at attracting mates, are a destabilizer. 

and yet, you managed to find your way to Surly   AND procreate...

[Celery Man 20929]

2 hours ago, 52-80 said:

Women have a stronger imperative to reproduce.  Women have their choice of partner with whom to reproduce.  Men get the short end of the stick.  These 3 things are a steady constant through time and I dont think the relative education or earning power of men will change that dynamics much. 

on you maybe

[HouTex 1866]

Disunited Nations by Zeihan covers this issue with China and other nations as well.  It's an interesting view of what might happen in the world in the not too distant future.

[Surly Bevo 24908]

34 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

What would you call the last 18 months?  a game of pick up sticks?

Or a missed opportunity?  The Rona didn't target the right folks. Be better next time Wuhan Bats and or Institute of Virology

And yes I realize this is fucking cold-blooded to say and I'm not sure I really believe it but nature does sometimes have a way of....working things out.  

[Brisketexan 105041]

50 minutes ago, AUS-97HORN said:

and yet, you managed to find your way to Surly   AND procreate...

What I lack in looks and brains I make up for in irresistible charm.  True fact.  I've been coasting on the strength of that for years now.

[Samson's Wig 3189]

16 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

What I lack in looks and brains I make up for in irresistible charm.  True fact.  I've been coasting on the strength of that for years now.

Hold on as best you can.  With age often comes a sharp decline in charm.  There are clouds to yell at and what not.

[Goredho 17394]

2 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

 

This is its own fascinating subject, and probably deserves its own thread.  As a parent of college-aged kids (and we're dear friends with a university president, and have lots of candid, beer-fueled conversations about such things), I'd call this issue a crisis.

I've posited before on this board that our biggest looming question, as tech and AI advances, is "what are we going to do with our morons?"  Maybe a corollary -- and perhaps overlapping -- question is "what are we going to do with our uneducated men?"

Lack of balance is a destabilizer.  Idle men, who aren't great at attracting mates, are a destabilizer.  This is a looming challenge, and maybe even a looming breaking point for many societies.  We need to start dealing with it (and it includes multiple issues -- such as improving our education system so that it doesn't just favor girls, who sit still with their bright and shiny faces, and perhaps also gear some of it to boys, who often learn more kinesthetically).  Lots of stuff to tease out here.

AI sexbots to satisfy the blooming population of undereducated incels.  Next problem.

[Guest Lobo]

I don't know how to embed this:

https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2021/09/25/college-gender-cap-women-outnumber-men-60-40.cnn

So yeah, women getting to select from many potential partners is nothing new.  But his research (go to his written works, the interview is too short for him to really explain the extrapolated maths) suggests it's gonna be way different this time around.  We've gone from a roughly even split in college educated men versus women and we're heading for 2 female graduates for every 1 male graduate by the time my youngest is done with college.  

I think more men should pursue trade schools or professional certifications of some kind.  But again, unless you're the owner and not one of the 20 employees...your income will not be that alluring, nor will you be running in those social circles where attractive, educated women tend to gravitate.  We'll still be a 51/49 nation female:male, but there will huge swaths of educated women who will just never run into non-college men in the dating pool.  Maybe some app will solve for that, but by the third drunken hookup, education and job are gonna come up.  They always do, even after an orgy.  I don't quite have the alarmist view this NYU guy does that they're all gonna be radicalized.  

As stated above, this also will have massive, tectonic effects on procreation.  More and more women will wait longer and longer to have children with more career demands.  Meaning fewer children, that's just biology.  The fastest growing segment of those women taking over college campuses, are Hispanic/Latina.  Meaning white women's birth rates will have an even more accelerated decline and Hispanic female birth rates will probably curve down to where white's are now. 

So yeah, AI sex bots and we're gonna have to legalize prostitution which is gonna piss off a bunch of Texans but it'll also get their annoying sons outta the house for a few hours.  

[TKthunder2 4985]

Not to go boudin or CR here but has the unbalanced female/male ratio in higher ed been brought up as a title IX issue?

[OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys 2061]

4 minutes ago, TKthunder2 said:

Not to go boudin or CR here but has the unbalanced female/male ratio in higher ed been brought up as a title IX issue?

Maybe, but what’s funny is that Baylor article up thread says the opposite is the case now as we are trying to fix.  Thumb is on the scale for guys right now. 7% higher admission rate to help balance things out.  

[elfenix 34221]

6 hours ago, gurt said:

It's gonna be really bad for China in the next 20-30 years when all the people who were born prior to the one-child policy start retiring.  Especially as their average age of retirement is 54 (they have been talking of raising it for years).  Impossible to fund all those people with a much smaller working cohort.  Who knew that top down, unilateral policy making might have unintended consequences?

there's still a shit ton of people doing not particularly productive things in china so productivity increases could well outweigh decline in the working population. 

[Guest Lobo]

Good question on the Title IX thing.

I didn't go an Ivy League school or anything, but I have a working understanding of irony.  A chunk of our country is shouting out that the White Male is being unfairly discriminated against, and yet we have universities all around the country tilting admissions requirements to be more favorable for that same demographic to "balance the scales" (as stated above).  Once this practice becomes more commonplace and more aggressive, then we'll have a new wave of Title IX issues on our hands.  And around and around we go, with the only constant being declining birth rates in the very groups already worried about their grip on the majority.  

All I really know is I'm on campus right now and if you're one of the 40% of the student population who identifies as male.....you got it made in the shade.  Our female population has never been more diverse, more beautiful, more intelligent, more confident, more lightly dressed.  For you young men who don't end up disgruntled, uneducated, incels---you are about to enter a golden age.  Nothing but 4.0GPAs walking around in tennis skirts.  

[maninblack 7974]

3 hours ago, Bevo said:

I'm happy with fewer people

Everyone says this but when the tiniest virus comes along and knocks off a few the "overpopulation" crowd freak out like pussies.

[Brisketexan 105041]

19 minutes ago, Lobo said:

All I really know is I'm on campus right now and if you're one of the 40% of the student population who identifies as male.....you got it made in the shade.  Our female population has never been more diverse, more beautiful, more intelligent, more confident, more lightly dressed.  For you young men who don't end up disgruntled, uneducated, incels---you are about to enter a golden age.  Nothing but 4.0GPAs walking around in tennis skirts.  

And yes, I have shared this observation with my son.  He is entering school with a decided advantage in the romantic pursuits department.

[Foosters 17820]

 

I have no idea how they arrived at these numbers, but they are on the internet, so...

[Guest Lobo]

I heard Niamey just got a Shake Shack, so that explains the 50x growth trajectory.  What the fuck?  That list can't be right.  I know those cities are still exploding in growth rates, but c'mon.  

[Nice Guy Eddie 13506]

7 hours ago, Lobo said:

And if you acknowledge the strong correlation between education and earning potential, that means we're gonna have a lot more college educated women having their choice of partners

I see it working in the opposite direction. If women make up more of the highly educated and high incomes, most of them will not have their choice. Most women do not want a husband that makes less than them. There are exceptions but it's that, an exception.  There's a reason the stereotype exists that women want 6 foot tall, a few years older and earning more. Going for a guy earning half of her income is settling. Really settling.

Colleges are starting to give preferential treatment to young men in an attempt to even out the numbers. The guys still have to qualify but women have to have higher scores for admission.

[Guest Lobo]

I agree.  And I think that's where you get this growing segment of tens of millions of dudes with no degree, a dead-end job, and no prospects for hot, intelligent ass (which is kinda my jam).  That's the NYU guy's real concern.  Women won't marry down.  They'll either marry parallel or up, or become serial daters which will further decline our birthrates.  

I've noticed just in admissions and scholarships at UT, we've been seeing a marked shift towards more females.  But I never really extrapolated out what that means for society in the long term.  The gap will be measured in the tens of millions within my children's lifetime.  That's an insane imbalance.  And if the alternative for the growing segment of highly educated women is not enough adequate male partners of equal/greater stature, I guess they have to look at compromising/settling.  But for millions of women, they'd rather go childless than have to make introductions to their parents like, "Mom, Dad.  This is Doug.  He's trying to get his van repair business off the ground, I guess I love him, and we're pregnant."  

[Surly Bevo 24908]

So it seems we have a Clevon problem.

[Guest Lobo]

2 minutes ago, Surly Bevo said:

So it seems we have a Clevon problem.

I think it's actually a great way to slow down the Clevon problem we were headed for earlier.  Of all the prospective female mating partners Clevon had to choose from, more and more are deciding that college, a career, and a smaller family down the line are more in line with that they want out of life.  Bad news is there's gonna more Clevons than we thought, but he'll have a harder time making little Clevons when Tammy Lynn leaves for the big school in the fancy city.  Good news though is those girls see there's another life for them then staying back in town to make babies and care for Ma and Pa.  I think for idiocracy procreation purposes, this is a net good thing.  However, lotta blue-balled Clevons hanging back in their hometown with bubbling rage.  

The Empowered Stupidity that has taken the reigns the last few years, it's just a teaser of what's to come down the road.  These guys are idiots, violent, and  disgruntled at make-believe enemies.  But at least their rage was tempered by being happily married and getting some ass on the regular.  You take that last element away, and there's a brewing shitstorm that makes all of our other demographic issues look like fucking jokes.  

[Surly Bevo 24908]

1 minute ago, Lobo said:

The Empowered Stupidity that has taken the reigns the last few years, it's just a teaser of what's to come down the road.  These guys are idiots, violent, and  disgruntled at make-believe enemies.  But at least their rage was tempered by being happily married and getting some ass on the regular.  You take that last element away, and there's a brewing shitstorm that makes all of our other demographic issues look like fucking jokes.  

It's the Arab world that brews terrorism.  Young men with no prospects, no job and steady income, sexually repressed and lacking AC will follow anybody into anything.  At least we got AC.....so that's nice.  

[Grade of D as in David 13253]

59 minutes ago, Lobo said:

Good question on the Title IX thing.

I didn't go an Ivy League school or anything, but I have a working understanding of irony.  A chunk of our country is shouting out that the White Male is being unfairly discriminated against, and yet we have universities all around the country tilting admissions requirements to be more favorable for that same demographic to "balance the scales" (as stated above).  Once this practice becomes more commonplace and more aggressive, then we'll have a new wave of Title IX issues on our hands.  And around and around we go, with the only constant being declining birth rates in the very groups already worried about their grip on the majority.  

All I really know is I'm on campus right now and if you're one of the 40% of the student population who identifies as male.....you got it made in the shade.  Our female population has never been more diverse, more beautiful, more intelligent, more confident, more lightly dressed.  For you young men who don't end up disgruntled, uneducated, incels---you are about to enter a golden age.  Nothing but 4.0GPAs walking around in tennis skirts.  

What's UT's continuing education policy?

[Guest Lobo]

"And in education news today, the University of Texas at Austin announced a record 3,000 adult men have enrolled in a continuing education course entitled, 'Surly Media and Gender Studies.'  It will meet on campus every day from 4-6pm.  KXAN obtained a copy of the syllabus which reads only, 'Bring beer and post pics when you can.'  And a 'Professor Lobo' told us he plans to hold classes outside, perhaps including long walks through the campus, particularly in the Autumn and Spring for 'research purposes.'  The course seeks to address the gender imbalance on college campuses by infusing the landscape with thousands of middle-aged men for rigorous coursework and community engagement, says Lobo.  Stay tuned to KXAN.com for as the story develops."  

[Schulz2.0 28950]

17 minutes ago, Surly Bevo said:

It's the Arab world that brews terrorism.  Young men with no prospects, no job and steady income, sexually repressed and lacking AC will follow anybody into anything.  At least we got AC.....so that's nice.  

[Celery Man 20929]

18 minutes ago, Surly Bevo said:

It's the Arab world that brews terrorism.  Young men with no prospects, no job and steady income, sexually repressed and lacking AC will follow anybody into anything.  At least we got AC.....so that's nice.  

So what you’re saying is that if the ac goes out, we’re fucked