I oppose the whole idea of Title IX. It’s reasobable for the Federal Government to run roughshod over the rights of states and of private universities when something of truly national urgency is on the line, like ending Jim Crow or training military officers. However, individual colleges are quite capable of deciding whether to field a field hockey team, to let a tennis team operate, to strike out in favor of softball, or to pass on football.
Sadly. I do not see any way of getting rid of Title IX…
Question: Why is it considered a ‘bad’ thing that x number of college men’s sports are discontinued, so that x number of college women sports can be funded?
Universities have finite amount of funding for such things, why should equal access be a bad thing?
december:However, individual colleges are quite capable of deciding whether to field a field hockey team, to let a tennis team operate, to strike out in favor of softball, or to pass on football.
You sound as though you believe that Title IX legislation is about nothing but college sports teams. As I presume you know, however, if you’ve read the cites you linked to, Title IX is actually a set of legislative acts that prohibit educational institutions that receive federal funds (i.e., practically all educational institutions at every level) from “practicing gender discrimination in educational programs or activities.”
This has been used in a huge range of anti-discrimination efforts, from overturning laws barring women from attending certain colleges in state universities back in the seventies, to opening up high school shop classes and student committees to girls, to equalizing funding for male and female sports teams. So can you tell us exactly what part of Title IX legislation you’re objecting to, and why you feel it doesn’t belong in the general Title IX package forbidding gender discrimination in education?
There’s no “running roughshod” here. Title IX only covers educational institutions that receive federal funds. Personally, if I were to give someone money, I think I’m entitled to set conditions on how that person spends the money ('Course, my conditions would likely be, “you can only spend it on strippers and booze,” but that’s another story. :D)
The whole sports issue admittedly was an unintended consequence of Title IX. But the concept that a female student should have equal opportunity to play the sports her tuition (and the fed’s educational assistance) are paying for seems self-evident. Whether it’s an issue of such import as to warrant federal legislation is, admittedly, a different issue.
As for Will, he’s being his normal Luddite self. “Things are changing. Ack!”
I object to all of Title IX, including every last comma.
First of all, I don’t agree that there was so much gender discrimination when Title IX was enacted in 1972. Long before Title IX was ever conceived of, my wife got as good an education as I did in the early 1960’s. My older sister got an education equal to her husband’s in the late 1950’s. Sports were available to both my wife and sister, although neither of them had any interest.
Whatever the justification for federal intervention may have been 30 years ago, it’s not needed today. There should be as much freedom as possible. Freedom has to be curtailed when there’s an emergency, but there’s no emergency today.
According to George Will, the number of men’s spots lost was 3.4 times the number of womens’ spots created. So, the overall impact of Title IX has been to reduce participation in college athletics. Just what the US needs – more couch potatoes.
“Equal access” is meaningless. If I’m a male squash player, and they shut down the squash team, then I do not have equal access. It doesn’t do me any good that some other men are playing football. So, equal access by gender is not equal for individuals.
Even if one were to agree that equal access between the genders was a good goal, what’s the denominator? Equal percentage of those enrolled? Equal percentage of those who want to participate in college athletics? Do those who want to play two sports count twice? Roll your own ratio.
To you, a woman, “equal access” means accomodating women. To me, “equal access” means accomodating those of us who post under the name of a month of the year.
december please produce cites (not op ed folks) re: # of atheletes (gender break down). I suspect that what you’ll find is that with Title X, some sports for male have gone away, but the number of sports participants has been some what equalized. Thus not a ‘gain’ of couch potatoes.
Equal access doesn’t mean ‘same as I want’ access. YOu have 1000 students participating in sports, what you cannot do is have 900 spaces for male students and 100 for females and claim that you have equal access to activities.
and, frankly your ‘proof’ of ‘not very much gender inequality in the 70’s’ (consisting of a pool of one person) doesn’t really do much for me, sorry.
So sayeth wring who was not allowed to take Shop classes and was forced to take ‘home ec’ instead.
december: *First of all, I don’t agree that there was so much gender discrimination when Title IX was enacted in 1972. Long before Title IX was ever conceived of, my wife got as good an education as I did in the early 1960’s. My older sister got an education equal to her husband’s in the late 1950’s. Sports were available to both my wife and sister, although neither of them had any interest. *
So on the basis of the experiences of two women—your wife and your sister—you’re arguing that gender discrimination in education wasn’t really a problem? I don’t think that counts as adequate evidence.
Whatever the justification for federal intervention may have been 30 years ago, it’s not needed today. There should be as much freedom as possible.
? What is the problem with stating that federal funds are conditional on absence of gender discrimination? After all, federal funds to educational institutions are conditional on a lot of other non-discrimination requirements. Why should the federal government, which supposedly operates on non-discriminatory principles, give schools money to discriminate on grounds like gender or race?
As for cutting funding for men’s teams, I’m not happy about it, of course. But remember that these men’s teams are competing not just with women’s teams, but with other men’s teams like football, which has no female equivalent in importance or funding in most colleges. If the funds have to be divided equally between men’s and women’s teams, and the football team takes the lion’s share of the men’s funding because otherwise the alumni will start spitting fire, then other men’s teams are going to have their funding cut. That’s a shame, but I think the solution is for colleges to examine their expensive commitment to football and figure out ways to redress the imbalance within men’s sports, rather than restoring the imbalance between men’s and women’s sports.
George Will’s assertions in the linked article seem to be based on a few highly dubious assumptions: e.g., that “men and women have different interests, abilities and zeal regarding competition, or that young men have distinctive needs for hierarchy and organized team activities.” Sex-linked differences are always a complicated issue, and we may never know for sure exactly how “sports-minded” women are in comparison to men. But obviously, we can see from the increased level of women’s participation and interest in sports over the past few decades that women are in fact much more “sports-minded” overall than they were thought to be back in your wife’s or sister’s day, or even in my own youth. So I don’t see where George Will gets off thinking that he knows exactly what the “differences” between men’s and women’s “interests, abilities, and zeal” or “distinctive needs” are and that he can therefore decree equal sports funding a bad idea.
december: *Even if one were to agree that equal access between the genders was a good goal, what’s the denominator? Equal percentage of those enrolled? Equal percentage of those who want to participate in college athletics? Do those who want to play two sports count twice? Roll your own ratio. *
Actually, the only requirement for meeting Title IX’s “equal access” standards is compliance with any one of the following three conditions (wring, this also has some statistics on athletes and gender for you, in case you don’t want to wait for december to find some):
So to qualify for federal funding under Title IX, an institution
can provide sports opportunities for women proportionate to the number of women enrolled;
or it can even provide proportionately fewer opportunities for women, as long as most of the women who do want to play sports can do so;
or it can even fail both those conditions, as long as it is evidently trying to increase the sports opportunities for women.
I’m aware that many Canadian female athletes are aware that there are abundant scholarship opportunities available in the States due to Title IX.
It appears that the American universities are having a hard time finding female athletes, due to a lack of interest. As I understand it, In order to qualify for massive taxpayer subsidies from the federal government for general education funding, males and females need to participate in sports in somewhat even numbers regardless of interest or independant revenues that can be generated by most male team sports.
As a Canadian, I welcome the increased opportunities and support for our young female athletes in America, and look forward as they return to play for Canada in the Olympics.
Sure you are. You’re even entitled to set additional requirements as a condition of their accepting your money. (Lawyers call this a “contract.” )
However, it’s different when the federal government gives them money. Since they have to power to tax citizens without limit, there shopuld be limits on what they can require in exchange for returning money back to the citizens.
However, I’m not claiming that Title IX is unconstitutional. I do assert that the federal government ought to not use its power more than it must.
I am opposed to any federal aid to education (even though I personally benefited). I think the founders would have considered federal funding of education to be unconstitutional, but the SCOTUS would not rule so today. Nevertheless, federal education money is more likely to be wasted and to lead to
educational abuse. The power that the money gives to federal regulators leads to further waste and mismanagement of education.
I was in the 9th grade when Sputnik went up. That’s when the federal government started getting involved. Education has declined since then, and I believe federal involvement has done more harm than good.
Sorry, I deal with government bureaucrats regularly. Some are competent, many are incompetent. Some are playing politics. Some want bribes. It’s a bad move to give these people power, unless there’s a crying need.
The typical university is run by a highly committed, highly intelligent group of people. By giving power to a collection of government bureaucrats, people without the same commitment to any particular institution, we’ve diluted the ability of the university administrators and faculty to create the best possible institution.
I don’t love welfare for the rich. I’m irate at Bush and Congress for giving all that money to rich farmers. (BTW you have pointed out another argument against federal aid to education: it’s welfare for the upper middle class.)
Your profit-making point is near and dear to my heart. The educational establishment here in New Jersey has so far been able to keep the for-profit U. of Phoenix out. The U. of Phoenix specializes in night school for adults. I believe that they provide a fine education at a moderate cost, without taking government money. I can imagine schools like the U. of P. taking substantial numbers of students away from the traditional universities, which have now become so much weaker and less efficient due to federal invovlvement.
A. and you believe that U officials are not subjected to the same list of issues? You obviously haven’t been paying attention to the sports news and the NCAA for example.
B. “unless there’s a crying need”. Of course, here’s the problem. To some one who believes as you do, that there was ‘equality’ in education back in the 70’s, as long as they allowed the ‘little women’ in, it was obvious there wasn’t a crying need. Let me assure you, My milage did indeed vary.
Nobody’s perfect. However, my wife cares a lot about the specific university courses she teaches and takes a personal interest in her students. Some administrator in Washington doesn’t know the school or the individual students. The kind of general rule promulgated from so far away is likely to work poorly, at best, and can be a disaster.
I have looked forward to this day for quite a while. CITE!!!
Seriously, my wife went to a women’s college. My sisters and female cousins went to co-ed schools. Even in the 1950’s, when sex discrimination was at a peak, these instititutions provided equal education for women. I got a wonderful math eduation at U.of Chicago. My wife learned just as much at Wellesley. No federal regulations were needed to provide equal education.
When Northerners vacation in Florida, it makes them feel good if the weather back home is terrible. Similarly, it makes liberal reformers feel good to believe that things were just awful before them. In many areas, they’re correct, but not in the area of women’s education.
Economics teaches us that regulation is most needed for monopolistic industries. College is just the opposite. There are hundreds or thousands of institutions competing with each other for students. Competition will do a better job of encouraging quality than regulation will.
you’re seriously asking me for a cite in that case? your position was ‘you felt’ that your sister & wife got ‘comparative’ educations and had essentially equal access. I said that wasn’t my experience. (aka “my mileage vaired”)
but, of course, you yourself linked to the Department of Education’s assesment of Title IX in the OP. Pity you apparently didn’t read further than what you quoted.
Good enough? I especially like the "women faculty members excluded from faculty clubs, and the concept that there was a ‘maximum’ number of females allowed in certain graduate studies.
wring, feminist sources are not noted for truth and accuracy. You’re so young that you don’t know how to evaluate this mishmash. Let Grandpa december tell you how it really was. [sit back on rocker, light pipe]
Signed by Nixon!? It figures.
I have no idea what this means. Most colleges didn’t even have an “entrance” – you just walked onto campus.
This was not true everywhere. Nor is it a big deal.
I doubt this. Many of my female friends went on to medical or law school. None of them expected that getting admitted would be harder for a woman than for a man.
This may have been slightly true in some cases. Is this discrimination? No, the school wanted a certain number of male and female students. More high-quality females applied than high-quality males in some cases. No doubt, the reverse was true in some cases, as well. Certainly, in math and science, the female students lagged well behind their male counterparts.
True. That was considered appropriate in loco parentis care in those days.
It was much worse than this for faculty. There was very little prejudice against women students, but there was terrible prejudice against women faculty. E.g., the math department at UC Berkeley was huge when I was there in 1963 - 68. It even included the unabomber. But, there was only one woman on the entire faculty, Julia Robinson. She was a fine mathematician, but would not have gotten that job head she not been married to Raphael Robinson, an older, established faculty member.
Too bad. Colleges are for education. Nobody should get an athletic scholarship. [/pipe]
Here’s my two cents (and on this issue, that’s about all its worth).
I’m fine with title IX and collegiate sports, as long as it excludes football from the equation. Football is THE problem with title IX. First, there is no football equivilant in female sports. By equivilant, I mean in terms of raw cost (equipment, insurance, etc), numbers of participants (not unusual for schools to carry over 100 players), and POTENTIAL revenue (some programs make money, the vast majority lose money). Football, while I love it, is a monster in this equation. For the men’s sports, it is a giant resource consumer, and it the number of students allowed on the roster create problems for the men’s AND women’s sports. Perhaps my school was unusual, but I know for a fact that my school packed the women’s track team with women who never competed in events, just to inexpensively make up for the number of men in football. Most other schools in my collegiate conference dropped sports like baseball and hockey instead. So what occurs to make up for football is there becomes more choices of sports for women than men, or certain teams get packed with women who will never play. Meanwhile, the options for men’s sports drop, and very viable sports in which many men compete get dropped, like baseball or hockey.
If there was a female sport which offset football on its face, an programs like baseball, and say, softball, were cut, I’d be much more in favor of Title IX. Football is the problem. Most men’s sports options will suffer because of it. But football is the crown jewel of most colleges, and above rapproach. Those politics of football create a strange and uncomfortable balance between the men’s and women’s sports.
