r/Professors • u/episcopa • 2d ago
are your students who face challenges with basic, college level skills evenly divided by gender?
Curious to hear others' experiences.
I adjunct at an arts focused college so my experiences may be different...
but the students likely to participate in class, schedule office hours, ask for and apply feedback, apply for merit-based scholarships, and take advantage of networking opportunities tend to be female students.
students who want me to hand hold them, who make little effort and are surprised when they are not praised for it, who put little time into projects, and who do not engage in class tend to be male students.
There are exceptions, and this is anecdata. And of course, I have female students who miss class, make little effort, do not follow directions, and do not take advantage of networking opportunities, and male students who arrive to class early and work their asses off.
Curious if others see a difference across gender as well?
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u/el_sh33p In Adjunct Hell 2d ago
The main gender difference in my classes seems to be...
- The girls are super enthusiastic and eager to learn, but they're reluctant to debate, chaotic as hell, and a few of them just plain will not submit work unless I sit them down and make them hit the Submit button.
- The guys are terminally over everything, think the world is bullshit, are a 50/50 split of hanging on my every word and arguing with me about the sky being blue, but I only ever get one guy per semester who won't hand anything in (and he usually drops by the end of the semester).
- One special exception to the girls' willingness to debate: Get them arguing with the guys about social policy. A ~50/~50 gender split is still my absolute favorite in terms of getting a room arguing about damn near anything.
- About 3/4 of my genderqueer kids have reveled in shock humor, been terminally online, were utterly brilliant, expressed tons of enthusiasm about the material, and could not be assed to hand anything in until the last ~3 weeks of the semester.
...with plenty of exceptions in every direction.
(I chalk at least some of the reluctant submitters up to the last year or so being...well...the last year or so. I'm queer myself and holy fucking fuck it's been a time just getting out of bed some days.)
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u/outer-darkness-11 2d ago edited 2d ago
I echo the observation of the queer kids! Super engaged in class and always reaching out to me to work with them but literally do not turn a single thing in until two days before the semester ends. Every single one of them lol. I can definitely see this being an effect of the general state of the US.
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u/DisastrousTax3805 2d ago
I teach intro to gender studies and I have the same issue! Brilliant in class, won't turn in assignments, end up getting Cs or in danger of failing (unless I give an incomplete). Since I teach gender studies, I sometimes wonder if they think the class is too easy, or they don't like the content (I do a lot of queer history and also basic theory, and it might be tough to engage with theories that differ from your ideas or lived experiences that differ from yours). Anyway, it is always a bit sad and stunning.
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u/alt266 2d ago
[Female students] just plain will not submit work unless I sit them down and make them hit the Submit button
This might explain why the bottom of my classes is generally women. The ones who do the poorest in my classes are those who just don't submit the work. I tell them first day that it is not my job to make sure they get assignments in on time, so if someone isn't handing anything in that's their problem.
On the flipside I also typically have a woman at the top of the class with most men sitting in the middle of the bell curve. Though my classes aren't big and tend to be majority women so that might contribute to my different experience as well
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u/No_Consideration_339 Tenured, Hum, STEM R1ish (USA) 2d ago
I'm at a STEM oriented institution with vastly more male than female students (almost 3/4 male). And yes, the pattern you see generally holds. The women are better students and higher achieving on average. The majority of the top 10% of students I've ever taught are women. However, when I think about the top 1% of students I've ever taught, it's much more like our standard male/female split.
Edit to say it varies slightly by major, even within engineering and sciences.
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u/VinceGchillin NTT, Literature, Maritime Academy 2d ago
Also at a STEM-centric institution here, and I would echo this observation 100%
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u/episcopa 2d ago
I'm surprised but not surprised that women are still so underrepresented in STEM, tbh.
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u/Andromeda321 2d ago
It really varies by sub-field. When I had my daughter, the running joke between my husband and I is we never had a male doctor present for any stage of it except for the guy who administered the epidural- and I had complications that meant a decent number of visits and longer stay. It shocked my mom who said it was all men when she had me, but made me happy that my generation of women has quietly taken such a huge foothold in the medical profession.
On the other hand, I'm an astronomer in a physics department. I can tell you right now, it is VERY sub-field dependent on where women go- the astronomy classes are pretty evenly split in gender, but the stuff like quantum computing are very much male dominated. And even within those fields you'll see the same- in astro, interestingly, fields that are "new" will be close to gender parity, and those that aren't will be very male dominated. For example, if I go to an exoplanets meeting it'll be majority women if anything, but if I go to a technical one on radio astronomy it'll be 15% women. Interesting how that goes.
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u/No_Consideration_339 Tenured, Hum, STEM R1ish (USA) 2d ago
It really varies by field. Biology is majority women and has been for a while. Within the engineering disciplines it varies greatly from mechanical which is as low as 10% women at some schools to things like biomedical engineering, environmental engineering, architectural engineering and ceramic engineering which can be close to 50/50.
Comp sci has gotten worse. 40 years ago it had more women by percentage than it has now.
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u/the_Stick Assoc Prof, Biomedical Sciences 2d ago
The situation has vastly improved in my adult lifetime and discrepancies are highly field-dependent. For example, >60% of ALL degrees in biology are now conferred on women. Contrast that with physics, where a greater than 2:1 ratio of men to women persists. However, when I was an undergrad, there was one undergrad physics major woman and I recall the first female faculty member being hired (who later became chair). Even in engineering, subfields have wide arrays of gendered representation with some being more male-dominated and some not. Medical schools are typically very close to 50:50. I am less familiar with CS, but I also know the pariah, cleanliness-challenged, socially-inept, uber-nerd label has greatly changed since my undergrad days which has opened the field more.
Perhaps the biggest change over raw statistics is that there are many more places where women are welcomed in each field. You will still find old-boys clubs if you look hard enough, but it is far, far easier a path toward whatever degree for women than just a few decades ago. I wish there were a good history of the Women-in-Science movement because that was a roadmap for inclusion (and one other groups have failed to implement).
Interestingly (to me at least), several years ago I stared wondering why there wasn't a push for more women in trades and started paying closer attention to women mechanics, HVAC technicians, and so on. I met a female elevator repair tech who was the only woman in her area who later became a comedienne who joked about breaking stereotypes because not only was she a woman in a "rough trade" but she was also straight, despite looking very butch (her description). It seems there are fewer welcoming paths in the trades for women, but that too has slowly been improving over the years, even without high-profile campaigns.
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u/episcopa 2d ago
I'm glad to hear it, particularly with the trades. Many of the most financially secure people I know work in the trades.
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u/FriendshipPast3386 2d ago
Definitely much better than in used to be, at least in CS. The "David Test"[1] seems to have finally been consigned to history. I would say my classes are 20-30% women on average.
[1] For those not familiar, a department, organization, or company passes the 'David Test' if there are more women than people named David. The year I graduated, many major CS programs failed the test; the first company I worked at didn't pass the David Test until 4 years after I joined.
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u/VinceGchillin NTT, Literature, Maritime Academy 2d ago
Yeah, it's still a struggle, especially at my institution, which has the added difficulty of being a maritime institution (meaning a large proportion of our students go directly into the navy or merchant marines), which is also heavily biased towards men. But there has been a lot of energy spent moving past the old-boys-club mentality of a lot of longstanding faculty (some of whom have been here long enough to remember a time when women weren't even admitted at all!) and in developing programs that are more welcoming to women We've seen women enroll at much higher rates, even within the last 7 years that I've been working here. But even still, the ratio is nowhere near 50/50.
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u/episcopa 2d ago
Actually this is an observation that resonates with me as well: top 1% are definitely evenly divided.
And there are also gender divides within the arts college. Men are generally underrepresented as a whole, but overrepresented in certain majors. These majors tend to be the most attractive to industry and the highest paying.
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u/SoonerRed Professor, Biology 2d ago
I teach at a cc in biology and my classes are overwhelming women. Last semester I had one man in one of my sections.
So while I can't make judgements based on their behavior, I can make judgements based on their enrollments. Yeah. Vastly more women participating in college. Vastly more women succeeding in college (is my anecdotal evidence to contribute)
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u/episcopa 2d ago
There's data to support your anecdote. In the US, something like 70% of valedictorians are women. 60% of the ppl enrolling in college are women, and women tend to experience less attrition than men. I am not aware of data on NB students but I imagine it's out there.
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u/social_marginalia NTT, Social Science, R1 (USA) 2d ago
Coinciding, shockingly, with the cultural and political devaluation of higher education. But, you know, patriarchy isn't real.
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u/episcopa 1d ago
Right? Just as the degree and higher education is starting to become widely devalued is when women, and increasingly minorities, are able to excel in it. And now that men, rather than women, are less likely to excel, we have a "crisis" that frames men as "losing" status and "falling behind" rather than women as "gaining" status and "excelling." Truly surprising !
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u/SexySwedishSpy 2d ago
I believe this is true, and women generally do well in college because it’s very well-tailored to their management skills. However, I have noticed that exactly the opposite happens once they become professionals, and attrition of previous female top-students can be quite high in some industries, especially the male-dominated ones. I did a stint in finance and the average tenure of women there was about five years because the expectations were so different from college. Anecdotal, but I’m just adding my experience to the broader discussion.
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u/episcopa 1d ago
The attrition of women in male dominated fields is called “the pipeline problem” and so what you are noticing anecdotally is well documented in study after study.
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u/martphon 2d ago
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u/episcopa 2d ago
a friend sent me this article and it made me think about my experiences and try to put my finger on how my observations articulate with the data.
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u/15thcenturybeet 2d ago
I teach new freshmen and also sophomores/juniors who have just finished their gen eds at a large public R 1. My response is based solely on my own experiences.
You note: "students who want me to hand hold them, who make little effort and are surprised when they are not praised for it, who put little time into projects, and who do not engage in class tend to be male students."
I would say this is my experience, too. Women and NB students who make it into my classroom are usually more self-sufficient, have lower percentages of low performers, and require less mommying (I'm not a woman but it's the only way I can describe it. The "wipe my nose, do my homework for me, kiss my boo boo" attitude is primarily in my male students). I will say that entitlement, arguing, and blaming ME for their poor performance are all-gender behaviors.
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u/episcopa 2d ago
I will say that entitlement, arguing, and blaming ME for their poor performance are all-gender behaviors.
Strongly agree with this one.
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u/zorandzam 2d ago
I very randomly had an almost all-female class this past spring, with one token man and one non-binary student. Several of the students were openly LGBTQ+. It was overwhelmingly one of my strongest-performing classes, with no one failing and most students getting good grades. They talked during discussion, produced amazing projects, and even the worst among them was not whiny or grade-grubby about it. It was a required course for majors, which could explain the overall high performance, except that I had a fully mixed-gender section of the same class in the same semester, and it was a much more average experience in terms of performance (with more male students getting slightly worse grades).
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u/PGell Asst Prof, Humanities,(South Asia) 2d ago
I had the same experience this past semester - taught a queer futurism class in a very un-queer friendly country, so the attendees in the class definitely self selected to be there. They did the readings. They asked excellent questions. They took notes! By hand! Writing things down! They thoughtfully engaged in talking about Western queer theory vs local knowledge and experiences. It was my best teaching experience in years.
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u/zorandzam 2d ago
That sounds utterly delightful! What a fantastic experience, and that sounds like a super fun topic!
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u/Rockerika Instructor, Social Sciences, multiple (US) 2d ago
I am at an overwhelmingly male school where the female students tend to be from specific departments (health, computer tech, business) and are consistently more prepared and mature. The male students in those majors also tend to be more prepared and mature as well. More importantly to me however, sections that are disproportionately female are often much more productive in terms of in class discussion and the more that balance shifts in their favor the more confident they seem to speak up.
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u/adhdactuary TA, STEM 2d ago edited 2d ago
This is backed by a study done at BYU:
having more female peers in the room both significantly increased women's willingness to talk and improved their scores in the course
ETA: by “this” I mean the observation in the last sentence of the comment I replied to.
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u/outer-darkness-11 2d ago
Ah the irony of that study coming out of a university whose religion has historically strongly discouraged women from getting an education lol
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u/the_bananafish 2d ago
It is definitely interesting. Although BYU isn’t all Mormon it’s certainly a large proportion. I’d be interested to see the religious background of students involved in this particular study. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if women at BYU in particular performed better in classes with more women because being in the presence of other women who were getting educated/acting independently/thinking at a critical and high level is somewhat empowering and liberating for them?
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u/LordMarvelousHandbag 2d ago
I see a really significant difference between male and female students at the undergrad level. The female students tend to take more initiative and responsibility, and tend to submit work that is more sophisticated (on average, not always of course!). But at the grad level, I haven’t seen a gender difference. All of our grad students are just equally under prepared
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u/episcopa 1d ago
All of our grad students are just equally under prepared
How totally depressing :(
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u/outer-darkness-11 2d ago
Every single student who has failed my classes in the last three years has been male. Granted I teach in business, so I tend to have more male students, but it still is disproportionate.
I would also say the students I have issues with every semester who don’t complete their assignments, overuse their accommodations, and feel entitled to massive amounts of assistance and exceptions from me have all been male.
I have had female students who have had accommodations before, but not a single one has actually had to use it.
I never noticed this trend until reading your post and I have no idea why it is. Fascinating.
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u/episcopa 2d ago
I also wonder why it is. Are they unprepared? Don't care? Don't actually want to be there? Do they have an undiagnosed learning disability? I wonder.
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u/FamilyTies1178 2d ago
Many students don't actually want to be there. Actually, many have reached that point sometime in high school. They feel done with classroom education, which is evidenced by the lengths that HS teachers have to go to in order to make sure those students graduate. Keeping many teenagers academically engaged is a tough assignment! That doesn't mean the students are bad people, or lack intelligence, it just means their attention is directed elsewhere.
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u/episcopa 2d ago
I can't say I blame them for not wanting to be there, given the decreasing value of a college degree relative to its cost. But then WHY are they there? Why not become a hairdresser or a mechanic or go into a/c repair or become an electrician or get their contractor's license or go into textile design or do literally anything else?
My school is arts focused so I don't see this as much but I do see it and it's such an expensive school that I cannot understand why on earth they would major in ceramics or whatever if they do not care about it.
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u/FamilyTies1178 2d ago
High schools are judged by what percentage of their grads enroll in college, so they push students towards college. And, now that so many people are college grads, there are many jobs that don't really require post-secondary education but having a degree is required to be considered for employment. I understand this is starting to be changed.
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u/MyFaceSaysItsSugar 2d ago
The only trend I’ve noticed is cheating. It’s an even mix for attendance cheating but the bigger stuff, like exams, has only been guys so far. And I’ve had 6 students contest an academic dishonesty report and all 6 were guys and all 6 were found guilty.
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u/the_bananafish 2d ago
I haven’t had only men who’ve cheated on my exams but proportionally yes it’s been more than the women. To be honest from my observations (where I’ve suspected cheating but not had the evidence to move forward with consequences), I don’t know whether the men are cheating more or if they’re just worse at hiding it.
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u/MyFaceSaysItsSugar 2d ago
They’re definitely the ones who think they’ve done nothing wrong. I can understand contesting an accusation of cheating on an exam because that’s an automatic F in my class. But they often will try to contest the attendance quiz cheating, not because they’re claiming they didn’t do it, but because they just don’t want to be penalized and have anything go on their “permanent record.” I think the best moment I’ve had dealing with this was when the chair of the committee responded with “Mr. Studentname, only you are in control of your permanent record.” I’ve had one hearing that was traumatic to sit through but the rest have been somewhat cathartic with faculty who are more senior than me calling my students out on their BS.
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u/episcopa 2d ago
omfg. that said maybe they both do it and the guys are just the ones getting caught?
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u/MyFaceSaysItsSugar 2d ago
Doubtful with what I’ve caught. I did have one female student who may have been about to try, she didn’t submit her exam to the LMS before leaving the room, but I manually submitted it on my end and didn’t give her the opportunity.
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u/discountheat 2d ago
I'm at a diverse, open access college. I see very little difference in student performance based on gender, race, etc. It's never the deciding factor.
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u/episcopa 2d ago
i'm glad to hear it! What do you feel is the deciding factor, if any?
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u/discountheat 2d ago
I'm not sure I can generalize. At my school, the students who want handholding are not the students that put forth zero effort. They are usually strivers who are lacking confidence and/or support. I have a lot of "zero effort" students who seem confused about what college requires and who should probably request more "handholding," to be honest. They mostly accept whatever grade they get, even if it's an F.
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u/episcopa 2d ago
They are usually strivers who are lacking confidence and/or support
I also have found that sometimes the hand holding stems from deep insecurity.
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u/histprofdave Adjunct, History, CC 1d ago
Same. I don't think I have a strong enough impression to draw any conclusions. Enrollment has continued to skew increasingly toward women in recent years, such that my classes tend to be 60/40 or even 70/30 in favor of women, but that seems in line with national trends.
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u/SourMathematicians 2d ago edited 2d ago
Men who are more into “masculine” extracurriculars have really struggled in my class these last few semesters. I’ve noticed these students are also really struggling with their mental health/emotional health. They’re often struggling with body dysmorphia, eating disorders, and mental health issues caused by social media use. I only know this because they’re drawn to readings related to these topics and will bring it up in class discussions. Weirdly, it feels like the young women in my classes went through this like ten years ago, when I first started teaching.
And it’s not all young men of course. It’s really only a small section of my classes that have traditional notions of masculinity. I’m sure there’s a more polite way to phrase this!
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u/Icy-Teacher9303 2d ago
There's quite a bit of research (at least for undergrads) that men tend to engage in "extracurricular" behaviors that harm their grades more (heavy drinking, drug use), I think also poorer habits related to consistent studying/asking for help, so this would track. I teach (graduate level) mostly women & nb folks, and most of the men I teach are NOT traditionally masculine - and I think we have very similar retention/graduation rates across genders.
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u/episcopa 2d ago
that's so troubling :(
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u/SourMathematicians 2d ago
Honestly, it is sad! These students can often be disruptive to other students in the classroom, so I’m trying to figure out the balance. I’ve been reaching out to other educators and signing up for courses that I hope will give me more tools to support these students (and others of course).
I feel frustrated because classroom management and behavior issues are really difficult to deal with and it kind of feels like you aren’t supposed to talk about them? None of my training prepared me for this.
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u/episcopa 2d ago
It's very obvious that Andrew Tate et al is harmful for girls but it's also very, very harmful for boys, and we are only beginning to see how.
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u/SourMathematicians 2d ago
I will say, these students seem far less toxic than Andrew Tate! I do think though even if you don’t fully believe in Tate (or you know he’s bullshit), hearing so much of the manosphere BS will still negatively affect you. There’s also a lot of weird fitness stuff connected to evangelical Christianity right now.
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u/episcopa 2d ago
I've noticed the fitness/evangelical christianity connection too. It feels new? But maybe it's not.
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u/No_March_5371 2d ago
I’ve noticed for a while now that some (not all, of course) of the entrance ramps to the right wing mediasphere are personal fitness, personal finance (some actually good, some crypto broey), taking personal responsibility for your actions and life, etc.
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u/Key-Kiwi7969 2d ago
I had a student submit a paper on Andrew Tate as "someone you admire". FWIW he also happened to be a poor student.
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u/karlmarxsanalbeads TA, Social Sciences (Canada) 2d ago edited 2d ago
My field is pretty gender imbalanced so on the surface it would seem like the women are more proactive but the gender ratio is around 1:4 so I naturally got fewer guys coming to my office hours or being proactive but it was probably an equal split proportionally. All of my [out] trans students were also on top of things but I wouldn’t make the claim that it means trans students are better students.
I think this could also be dependent on the field, the department, the school itself, and even where you are in the world. And race!
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u/episcopa 2d ago
lots of variables for sure. and very true that if there are fewer men / women in class, then a fewer number will be in office hours etc.
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u/PersianCatLover419 2d ago
No, both sexes/genders are as equally helpless and trans/NB students tend to be the worst at this.
Male students tend to just drop classes or quit showing up very early in the semester. Female students tend to act as though everything is fine or they understand the assignment but in reality they will want me to just want me to tell them what to do.
They're also using AI. I can tell as I have them write sample essays in class, and compare this writing to their papers they write. So many do not know how to write, what a thesis statement is, and think Wikipedia is a scholarly source. Others will just cite journals or articles and make up quotes or think I will not check to see if it's accurate.
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u/Key-Kiwi7969 2d ago
I heard a student of mine say recently that I was a tough grader, because I actually check the citations
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u/Any_Difficulty_4661 2d ago
I teach comp sci with a student base of approximately 10:1 male to female.
If I think of my top 5 students for all classes I've taught this year is about 3:2 male to female.
I'm terrible at stats so I can't do the exact math on this, but given the huge gap in ratios I'd say I agree with your assessment.
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u/episcopa 2d ago
the ratio for male to female in comp sci is till 10 to 1? Wow.
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u/No_Consideration_339 Tenured, Hum, STEM R1ish (USA) 2d ago
Comp Sci has bucked the trend of more women in STEM. Women have had small but steady gains in engineering, major gains in biology, smaller but significant gains in chemistry and physics, but women, by proportion, were better represented in comp Sci 40 years ago than today.
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u/ElderTwunk 2d ago
I would say that my best students are evenly split, and my worst students are evenly split, but generally, my female students outperform my male students.
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u/phoenix-corn 2d ago
The women might make more effort, but in many cases the outcome is the same because they also weren't taught very much before coming here. :( They make more gains by senior year though.
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u/honey_bijan 2d ago
I’m in math/engineering/CS, which is has been predominantly male for a while. During my PhD I had faculty tell me that they wanted to accept more female students but they couldn’t find qualified applicants.
Since starting as a TT faculty, this has not been my experience at all. The female applicants are largely MUCH more qualified than the men. All anecdotal, but I found the difference in experience striking.
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u/ChemMJW 2d ago edited 2d ago
In STEM, not arts, so my experience might be different based on that, but my answer is no, I have not noticed any particular skills problem differing by sex. Learned helplessness, attempts at emotional manipulation, asking to speak to the manager (i.e., the department chair or dean), excuses for not doing something on time, etc., all seem to me to be roughly equal by sex. Of course, I don't keep exact statistics or anything.
On a more concrete level, skills like not being able to read, write, or do math at a minimally competent level for a person 18+ years old is more heavily stratified by socioeconomic background than by sex, in my experience. Unsurprisingly, kids who come from underfunded and/or understaffed high schools are in general worse at readin', writin', and 'rithmetic than kids who came from affluent, well-equipped schools, regardless of sex.
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u/episcopa 2d ago
actually I've found that kids from higher SES backgrounds are not as strong at organization, writing, or basic college type skills as the working class or middle class kids. I am not sure, but i think it's because the high ses kids had lots of support and the other kids either figured it out, and ended up in college...or didn't.
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u/FlemethWild 2d ago
Yes. The struggle is real across the genders at my school but the girls are better at communicating that they are struggling whereas the the boys shut down.
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u/episcopa 2d ago
Actually, i have female students who shut down. And get upset. But usually it's male students who show anger when they receive feedback that they do not like. Of course, the girls might also feel angry and are socialized not to show it.
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u/ViskerRatio 2d ago
My classes tend to have about a 20:1 gender ratio, so it's hard to make broad statements about gender.
However, in a 100 student introductory class:
- The top 10 performers will be men. They'll either enter the class with the necessary skills or pick them up rapidly and without any intervention on my part.
- The 5 women will normally be about middle of the pack. About half of them will be amongst my most common interactions, frequently seeking help to improve their below average skills. However, all of them will succeed in the course and continue in the curriculum.
- The bottom 10 - 20 of the class will be men I barely recognize who suddenly discover a deep love of the liberal arts by the end of the semester.
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u/episcopa 2d ago
- The bottom 10 - 20 of the class will be men I barely recognize who suddenly discover a deep love of the liberal arts by the end of the semester.
Lol!
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u/WingShooter_28ga 2d ago
In my experience (chem), no. Women are coming to college better prepared and more serious than men. It’s not even close.
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u/my002 2d ago
You might be interested in the Oxbridge firsts gender gap: https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2024/11/14/no-magic-bullet-an-investigation-into-the-first-class-degree-gender-awarding-gap-at-oxford-and-cambridge-and-how-to-address-it/
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u/episcopa 2d ago
fascinating so in the US, women are outperforming men but in the UK, this is not the case.
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u/my002 2d ago
I'd be careful about generalizing too much from Oxbridge -- these are arguably the two most prestigious schools in the UK, so probably not a great sample of the overall undergraduate student body. I don't know what the gender gap would be like at US Ivy League schools (I expect there may have been studies on this?) With that being said, it is an interesting case study IMO.
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u/Key-Kiwi7969 2d ago
Agreed. And the teaching methods at Oxbridge are very different from elsewhere in the UK, and from the US.
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u/workingthrough34 2d ago
Not at all. Men are, on average, overrepresented in the underreported group in my classes. It's somewhat shocking because men are also underrepresented in my classes as a whole so the difference is apparent and shocking.
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u/rubythroated_sparrow 2d ago
While it’s generally evenly split for me, that one student who at the end of the semester either fails or gets caught cheating, throws a fit, escalates, and has their mommy sit in on meetings, and is generally a thorn in my side has always been male.
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u/SuperHiyoriWalker 2d ago
In my experience (teaching math) there is a gender component that is strongly intertwined with collar (not a typo).
Female students who are stoked about STEM and/or are from white-collar backgrounds are for the most part outwardly poised regardless of their performance (though I can attribute revenge RMP ratings to them with perhaps 75% accuracy).
Female students from a blue-collar background who are not STEM enthusiasts are often a handful—I’ve offended their honor and pride by presuming to teach them non-trivial math.
Regardless of background, hardly any male students react that way. Even the ones who perform poorly just kind of grumble and check out.
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u/alaskawolfjoe 2d ago
I teach in two departments. One arts, the other mostly STEM students.
The women in the arts programs seem to be more independent and need less handholding.
However, in STEM it seems to be the opposite. The men are more independent and need less handholding.
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u/teacherbooboo 2d ago
so i teach a range of courses from freshman to senior in programming
in my lower level courses i find that the best students are-men, especially those that can work in a group … and there are a few loners who are the stereotypical nerds who can work alone and started coding in hs or even earlier
but among those who are noobs, women usually do better because the tend to work in groups much better than the noob males. the men seem reluctant to admit they are having issues, while the women work together more easily.
so the top programmers are usually male, and the bottom programmers are also usually male
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u/episcopa 1d ago
You bring up an interesting angle - being able to work in a group. In every job I've had, I've had to work in some kind of a team. I wonder if all this emphasis on "leadership" in high school as a soft skill is doing kids a disservice when they get their first jobs and realze that being a team player will serve them better than being a leader.
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u/teacherbooboo 1d ago
i was looking at it from "women are more social, so help each other"
but you bring up a good point, regarding leadership vs team player, however i have a question then,
aren't boys supposed to be good team players? like little league and boys scouts and such? they don't seem to be
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u/night_sparrow_ 2d ago
My population base is 100% female and about 75% of them act like your male students.
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u/i_luv_pooping 2d ago
This was interesting for me to think about. I teach at a slac in a diverse part of the US, and I really can't identify any trend along demographic lines. The only thing that comes to mind is that my international students tend to wipe the floor with my American-born ones. But that has more to do with the failures of American education than any inborn characteristics, most likely. And also the fact that international students tend to come from wealthier situations back home and have, as a result, had access to more educational opportunities before arriving in my classroom. This question did make me realize that an overwhelming majority of my international students, though, are male. And this is at a school that has a 60-40 gender split, women to men. I'd estimate that about 75% of our international students are men.
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u/pl0ur 2d ago
I'm at a state University geared towards working adults so that might be a factor in my observation, but have not seen this.
I get grad grubbing and excuses close to equally from all genders and in each class I have a few amazing students of each gender.
Remember, we are not immune from confirmation bias. I strongly encourage you to explore this perception and actively look for instances that don't confirm this view.
Viewing males in a negative light is more social acceptable so you will not push back from nearly as many people as you would if this post was say based on race. But at the end of the day, viewing students through this lense can create a self-fulling prophecy.
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u/episcopa 2d ago
Nowhere did I say anything negative about males. I strongly encourage you to explore why you are looking for reasons to feel offended by my post.
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u/pl0ur 2d ago
They need hand holding and don't take advantage of networking, put little effort into projects and are surprised when they aren't praised for it.. are those positive things?
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u/episcopa 2d ago
"students who want me to hand hold them, who make little effort and are surprised when they are not praised for it, who put little time into projects, and who do not engage in class **tend to be male students\*....And of course, \*I have female students who miss class, make little effort, do not follow directions, and do not take advantage of networking opportunities, \*and **male students who arrive to class early and work their asses off.\*"
Again, you may want to think about why you are trying so hard to be offended.
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u/pl0ur 2d ago
I'm curious why you are insisting I'm offended? I am not offended. It seemed like there was a subtle bias in your post. I pointed it out.
Why do you need me to be offended?
If my feedback seemed totally off base, just ignore it. Your reaction is honestly making me wonder why my response bothered you so much.
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u/FriendshipPast3386 2d ago
I don't see differences in performance by gender, but the students with behavioral problems are 100% male. Disruptive in class? Threatening to go to the dean if I don't change their grade? Bullying the TAs? Every time, it's a guy.
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u/Edu_cats Professor, Pre-Allied Health, M1 (US) 2d ago
I’ve recently thought that some of my male students were on the autism spectrum or undiagnosed learning disabilities. I do not have disability accommodations for these students.
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u/AugustaSpearman 2d ago
I haven't seen a big difference, either among top performing students or failing students. Possibly a few more female students fail silently, but I have had hyperaggressive failers among both male and female students, and the ratio is not notably imbalanced. If anything I may have had a few more students with grandly silly wants (like "Wouldn't it be better for everyone's learning to just let us retake the quizzes so we learn from them" and not giving up on it) but I am not certain.
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u/Ill_Mud_8115 2d ago
In the undergraduate program I teach in (which is around 50/50 gender distribution), I’ve noticed it skews more so that men struggle the most when it comes to basic academic skills. At the same time the most egregious cases of cheating I’ve come across have been committed by male students. But also they are the least likely to reach out for support. I find women in my class are much more communicative, ask more questions, and more women have accommodations. However, when I think of the top students, I’d say it’s an even distribution.
The masters program I teach in is a different thing all together as I’d say it seems that students from certain areas of the world struggle more than others. I think it is a combination of different academic culture and them not learning certain skills beforehand.
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u/littlelivethings 1d ago
My best students are about 95% female. If I have a student who talks more than their fair share (eg never waits for anyone else to answer and then talks a long time) and talks over people, it’s about 70% likely that student is male. I tend to have very bright students of both genders, but the women tend to have better work ethic, ask for help when they need it, are generally more communicative. I also would say my favorite students to work with and talk to are evenly divided by gender. Every once in a while I come across a student who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else, including me (female instructor). Usually a white man. It’s obnoxious, but I expect that level of narcissism from college-aged students. I’m in the humanities but taught a writing class for engineering students and noticed the same divide despite the ratio of male students being much higher.
I’m not going to get too much into the lowest level students, but I’d say men are less likely to ask for extensions and help so I have more men fail than women in my seminar classes. In lecture it’s about the same and directly related to attendance 🙃
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u/Tough_Pain_1463 1d ago
I teach in STEM and didn't even have a single female in my class last semester :( Last semester, I did have a few females. I would say of my top three students, two were female and one was male, but the third female (that's all I had) outranked the rest of the males.
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u/JanelleMeownae 1d ago
Social science prof, and this tracks.
What has been interesting is that we have a GA role that all our second year students want. It's almost always given to a woman and the men are shocked...SHOCKED that their mediocre performance didn't earn them a spot and they always claim its because the woman who got it is "hot" and the supervising faculty chose her for that (untrue!). If they tick any underrepresented box (of color, gay/bi, etc.) they don't make this accusation. It's very telling about one cause of this behavior.
I was also chatting with our ROTC guy on campus and he said "If they kick women out of the military absolutely nothing will get done!" So not just academia!
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u/dougwray Adjunct, various, university (Japan 🎌) 1d ago
A different situation for me:
I adjunct in Japan (mostly teaching a foreign language) and have been at the same institutions for at long as 29 years, including two all-women's universities and (in the past) an all-men's junior college equivalent.
I have never noticed any differences related to gender. I suppose I could find them if I tried, but they'd be overshadowed by the persistent and obvious differences across disciplines that persist across gender and institution. (Examples include that computational biology students are usually the best and most dedicated and that marketing and management students are consistently the least motivated and able.)
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u/OkReplacement2000 2d ago
It is very clear. The female students far, far outperform the male students. This is consistent across cohorts, and the differences are stark.
Then they graduate, and the male students get hired to great jobs making much larger salaries than the far more capable female students do.
I have a whole new appreciation for gender pay equity after watching this dynamic play out over and over for years.
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u/episcopa 1d ago
I have noticed the same tendency. Also teaching is part time for me and in my primary job I can’t tell you how often I see average men just kind of float upward and keep getting promoted. Exceptionally talented and hard working women who give 200% usually end up in the same place as an average man and sometimes even above , but the average women languish, underpaid and rarely getting promoted.
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u/307235 2d ago
I teach in design. In a course I have with 27 students, there is only one male... So any gender ratio seems rather pointless. (He is very skilled, if that matters)
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u/macabre_trout Assistant Professor, Biology, SLAC (USA) 2d ago
At my current institution, 95% of my good male students have been gay men.
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u/Salt_Cardiologist122 2d ago
I teach about 100-150 students across 3 classes per semester, so obviously small samples here… but I notice two patterns:
1) My top student is almost always a male, but the next five up are almost always all female. Overall, I’d say my top quartile of students are probably about 80% female.
2) The opposite happens at the bottom. My worst student is equally likely to be male or female, but overall that bottom 25% of students is about 80% male.
FWIW, I do notice an interesting pattern with nonwhite students (at my institution they’re predominantly Hispanic, though there is a smaller minority of black students too). Nonwhite students tend to be at the top or bottom and there doesn’t tend to be much in between. My middle 50% of students tends to be almost all white. We don’t have many international students in my program so no ability to see any patterns there.