Has Feminism Made College a Hostile Educational Environment for Men?
Why does the male/female student ratio keep falling? Only campus climate deniers can ignore this obvious factor.
There is no silver bullet to explain why the male-to-female ratio of college students is on the decline. But reckless and/or intentional male-unfriendliness — making men feel anything but valued, respected, included, protected, heard or welcome — has to be considered.
Meet Jason, a sophomore and a fraternity member at a large midwestern university. He is a diligent student, he always has a smile on his face and he wants to be a Social Worker.
Jason has had a few dates with a student named Jessica and sometimes they study together, but she likes him more than he likes her. He doesn’t intend to date her again. They have never had sex beyond kissing and some light petting.
At a fraternity party, Jessica comes up to him and asks why he hasn’t texted lately. He demurs, not wanting to hurt her feelings. Finally, he says, “Look, Jessica, I’m sorry but I’m really not that into you.” Jessica is visibly disappointed and responds, “Well, I am very, very into you. How about if we say goodbye by letting me give you a nice blow job? No strings attached.” Jason looks at her and says, “No, that doesn’t feel right.” Jessica says, “That’s only because we haven’t started yet. Come on,” she says as she takes his hand and leads him up the staircase to an open bedroom.
Jason lies back on the bed with his eyes closed. Soon he is moaning softly. After a minute, Jessica lifts her skirt, pulls her panties to the side and invaginates him. She rocks and thrusts a few times, but Jason opens his eyes and quickly rolls to the side to get Jessica away from him. She falls off the bed and bangs her elbow against the wall. “Ow!” she screams. “You hurt me!” He hurries out of the room and down the stairs. He says nothing to anyone about what just happened.
By coincidence the next day, a university Title IX officer comes to Jason’s fraternity house and asks Jason and his brothers to take a survey—the Administrator Researcher Campus Climate Collaborative, ARC3 for short—about sexual assault on campus. Unlike most of the brothers, who roll their eyes, Jason takes the survey eagerly and begins to fill it out, flipping back and forth through the pages with great interest. After a few minutes, Jason gets up, rips the survey to shreds, throws it in the trash and heads to class.
When he enters his Social Work classroom with forty-four women and four men he has a thought he has never had before: why is there an effort to achieve gender balance in STEM but none in Social Work?
During class, one of Jason’s classmates launches into a common social science refrain about “The Patriarchy” and male oppression of women. Jason quietly snickers. The instructor stops her lesson and says, “Jason, is something funny?”
Jason looks down at his desk. He sighs. He gets up from his seat and heads for the door. As he walks out he tells the teacher, “No, it’s not funny. It’s bullshit.”
On his way back to the fraternity house Jason passes the Women’s Center. “Man,” he muses, “I sure could use a Men’s Center right now!”
Later that day Jason gets an email from the dean of the School of Social Work. He is suspended until further notice because his teacher and several classmates have said that they do not feel safe in his presence.
Jason stops going to any of his classes. His best fraternity brother friend asks Jason what’s up, but Jason won’t talk.
What Is Wrong With Him?
Jason has a lot on his mind.
He wonders about that whole emphasis on STEM and why there isn’t anything similar for getting more men into fields where they’re under-represented.
He comes up with a male counterpart to STEM. He’s up for a SSWAP. The way he figures it, if there’s a social benefit to getting more women involved in building roads and bridges, then surely there’s a social benefit to getting more men involved in building relationships, families and communities. His idea is that we need more men in Sociology, Social Work and Psychology.
Why is no one talking about this?
He thinks about switching from Social Work to something more about the gender issues of men. He finds his school doesn’t offer a degree, or a certificate nor even a single class about Men’s Issues. But he finds that there are 662 programs on Gender Studies, Women’s Studies and/or Feminist Studies in colleges and universities across the USA.
Jason imagines transferring to one of those programs specifically about sex and gender. But instantly he realizes that if Social Work — which at least has a code of ethics about respecting everyone — is hostile and blaming and demeaning to men, then those 662 women-ish programs are going to be at least as bad. And maybe worse.
“Maybe I’ll quit college. Maybe I’ll be a plumber,” Jason thinks. “It’ll take at least another thirty years before women completely ruin that for men, too.” A few seconds later he imagines, “Maybe this is why patriarchy started.” And then immediately this kind, gentle, egalitarian young man reproaches himself. “Omigod, I can’t believe I’m feeling like this!”
No, he’ll have to stick with Social Work. But the dean has said he can’t come back until he apologizes to his teacher and classmates and takes responsibility for his “threatening and inappropriate behavior.”
But Jason has vowed to himself that he will not apologize to anyone until he receives an apology from the people who started this whole mess.
Here’s what’s wrong, but not with him.
Remember when Jason took that sexual assault survey the morning after Jessica raped him? And remember how he flipped through the survey pages eagerly? And remember how he got up, tore up the survey and left abruptly?
That was because the survey gave him no way to report what had happened to him.
If Jason had a vagina that someone put their penis into without consent, he could easily have reported that. But for someone who has a penis that someone put into their vagina without consent, there was apparently no concern on the part of the so-called campus sexual assault experts.
It also made Jason slightly furious that the survey would not ask Jessica to report her perpetration of raping him and so, as bad as being a mere statistic would have been, he won’t be even that.
So Jason is essentially a dropout. But more accurately we should acknowledge that this good and sensitive and gentle and caring and idealistic young man… is being pushed out.
Jessica raped Jason on March 7, 2019. On March 15, Jason wrote to the chief administrator of the survey he was given and pointed out the problem he had found. That same day, the administrator replied “I will bring your question to everyone’s attention when we meet again to revise the survey.”
As of May 2025, the problem with the survey still has not been fixed.
And so Jason spends a lot of time in his parents basement, waiting for what is sometimes called gender equity, and playing video games.
He laughs bitterly to imagine how quickly the problem with ARC3 would have been addressed and fixed, with abject apologies to all concerned, if the sexes had been reversed.
Mostly he hates that this aggravating realization is etching its way into his outlook: “Scrutiny for men. Impunity for women.”
Jason now feels that college is clearly not for him.
Here is the full and actual correspondence between the administration of the ARC3 survey and me.
Subsequent to these emails I made a new online request for the survey documents on August 28, 2023. I made another on May 4, 2025. I received no response to either.
The 2024 ARC3 Report at the University of Michigan shows that the reckless and now seemingly intentionally flawed ARC3 survey was still in use at least as late as Spring 2024.
How many other such slights and second-class treatments have college men detected on their campuses? What do those mistreatments incline men to think about whether they want to stay in school? What huge effect do little things like this have on what college men say to friends who are thinking about the expense, risk and opportunity costs of college?
Here is the overarching question. How many such unfairnesses and injustices do boys and young men need to experience, hear about, read about, see and suspect before they seriously wonder why they should play the college game, or indeed any future-oriented, delayed-gratification game at all?
And, no, asking young men whether they perceive college as a hostile learning environment is not misogyny. It is showing as much care and concern for young men as we reflexively do for young women. We would be asking what they think and feel.
We always want our young men to honestly express their thoughts and feelings.
Don’t we?
Will ARC3 ever change?
Will we?
Here is a video portrayal of Jason’s ordeal; running time 8:44.
Thanks, Alfreed. And thanks for that graphic you created with the delayed-gratification quote. Okay with you if I post that to my LinkedIn?
Great post that exposes the silent impact of gynocentrism. We are fighting an uphill battle while women's battle is largely downhill. this is, of course, due to gynocentrism.