I assume your comment focuses on higher education funding. Putting aside the issues of whether the Federal government should be in the business of funding what some might consider a more private than public good and that final spending depends on both the Administration and Congress, look at the numbers.

Funding for grants (Pell/SEOG/LEAP/Veterans/Others) grew by 37% in the last 5 years of the Clinton administration. Funding for same grants grew by 68% in the first 5 years of the Bush administration. Total Federal aid (grants plus loans plus work study) grew by 48% in the same period under the Clinton administration while aid grew by 71% in the first 5 years of the Bush adminstration. Those figures are in current dollars. Adjusting for inflation (constant dollars), the figures for all aid are 21% under Clinton and 47% under Bush.

If you want to discuss the current budget, you can get a somewhat fairly balanced assessment here —— http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/02/06/edbudget

you can go to collegeboard.com for trends in student aid and crunch the numbers.

At best, your statement is a gross simplification because of the complexities and multiple actors in higher education funding. At worst, your statement is a cheap, uninformed statement that undercuts the notion you suggest.

From an economist standpoint, let me offer a simpler hypothesis. By 2004, women were earning 58 percent of all bachelor’s degrees awarded in the United States. And according to the U.S. Department of Education, this gender gap will only widen in the coming decade. According to Columbia University, the female advantage is particularly apparent among black and Hispanic women, who now respectively claim a staggering 67 percent and 61 percent of all bachelor’s degrees in their racial group. Meanwhile, 57 percent of degrees awarded to whites are earned by women, and 52 percent of undergraduate degrees awarded to Asians are awarded to women. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, females
complete more challenging curricula and earn higher GPAs (than males), (but) they do not perform as well on NAEP as males with the same academic records. Now, since the census shows the population of high school males is slightly larger than females, what you have is a greater competition among females, especially when considering the role of standardized tests in college admission. The higher “price” females have to pay because of the greater competition is reflected in the extra activities necessary to gain admission.

Some of the cultural issues Hugo has blogged about (Martha/Mary) and perhaps inequities in scholarships play a role too, but the disparities in extra curricular activities is not surprising when taking an “economist supply and demand” perspective.

I do find it curious that the number of extra-curricular activities that aren’t sports have such strong female participation. Is it because, to get into college, many boys think sports will be their ticket, while the number of scholarships for female athletes may still not be up to the mark? With the drastic cutting in education funding going on under President-Select Bush, more and more people have to get their via scholarships.

There are a lot of cultural issues going on here and I think that there is still lots of cultural “churn” going on. For me, this issue is an academic one, but I am curious to see how it turns out.

mythago, amen to that. Just because I also played tennis doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy getting muddy and sweaty playing soccer … I would have died and gone to heaven if there’d been any sort of women’s ice hockey team when I was growing up.

Hmmm . . . Why are women and men’s sports segregated at the college level? There aren’t separate white, black, asian, and indigenous teams at colleges. You know what would slay the dragon of gender essentialism? . . . Division I football where women make up half the team. :)

If my high school had a hockey program, I would have been there in a New York minute.

proportionality (the principle that spending on men’s and women’s athletics by colleges should match the percentage of the respective genders in the student body)

That definition of proportionality is not the standard used in Title IX though — percentages of male and female athletes are substantially proportionate to the percentages of male and female students enrolled;

The only area in Title IX with regards to spending in athletics that requires the same dollars be spent proportional to participation is scholarships. Otherwise, male and female student-athletes must receive equitable “treatment” and “benefits” in 11 specified areas.

The Javits Amendment stated that legitimate and justifiable discrepancies for nongender related differences in sports could be taken into account. While that difference may not be great (and quality levels should be equal in spite of equipment differences) across most programs, football and ice hockey (5 to 1 participation boys to girls participation ratio according to the NFSHSA) will always skew spending numbers and make “equal spending” problematic.

If you are in favor of “forcing” cultural shifts, do you support applying a participation proportionality rule to all extra curricular activities? In as much as getting boys into “girl dominated” activities to reduce differences, I would think getting more girls football and hockey programs (even if subsidizing youth programs to build a foundation) going would be equally effective since girls are not “any less competitive, any less interested in getting sweaty and dirty, any less interested in victory.”

Sadly, Chief, even if you don’t, there are plenty of people who are going to try to browbeat her away from things she does want just to satisfy some hairbrained idea of essentialism.

If even she can feel that way…

Sigh.