Bullying has been around since the dawn of civilization, but in today’s constantly connected world, students are no longer able to leave it at school. A rash of bullying on social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace has pushed several teens over the edge. Perhaps the most troubling thing about it: teachers, friends, parents, and school officials knew about the bullying and allowed it push these kids to do the unthinkable. Dubbed “cyber-bullying”, this problem needs to be addressed immediately and with harsh consequences.

The Cyber-Bullying of Alexis Pilkington

Alexis was a 17-year-old from West Islip, NY. She was taunted online on a newer social networking site called formspring.me. This young woman was a successful high school soccer player who’d already landed herself a scholarship for her abilities. Her parents are downplaying the role that cyber-bullying had in her suicide, which brings me to my first point:

• This must be taken seriously. Many adults consider social networking sites to be more of a diversion, giving it the kind of weight that they might give to video game violence. The fact of the matter is, though, that these students grew up with these sites. Clearly, the teens who’ve taken their own lives felt strongly about their reputation on these sites. For them, it’s not a matter of simply deleting an account or ignoring emails. Whether or not you agree with how they felt doesn’t matter; anything that can affect someone like this must be taken seriously and dealt with immediately.

Perhaps more horrific than Alexis’ suicide is the fact that the taunting continues after her death. Photoshopped pictures of her with a noose around her neck have been posted to her profile page, and hate-filled messages continue to roll in. The police are monitoring her various pages, but unfortunately, being an evil sociopath isn’t considered criminal activity.

• Where are the parents? It’s true that kids today are more connected than ever before, with the ability to post from any computer, anywhere, but this doesn’t let parents off the hook. No parent wants to be despised for being overbearing, but come on, people, your little monsters are murderers. If you are a parent, check out your kid’s page now and again, read the comments and posts, check out the pictures. Letting your children run wild all over the Internet is like letting them loose in a Lord-of-the-Flies-meets-Clockwork-Orange pornography shop. Your job doesn’t stop when your kid logs on; it’s just getting started.

Phoebe Prince: Nine of Her Peers Are Facing Felony Charges

Phoebe’s family had recently moved from Ireland, which, as one of her fellow students states, was “probably one reason why they chose [her].” And just what was it that they chose her for? The list of felony charges faced by her cruel classmates includes statutory rape, harassment, stalking, and violation of civil rights with bodily injury. Local district attorney, Elizabeth D. Scheibel said that “The investigation revealed relentless activities directed toward Phoebe to make it impossible for her to stay at school,” and that the conduct of those charged, “far exceeded the limits of normal teenage relationship-related quarrels.” The real kicker? Ms. Scheibel noted that “The actions of these students were primarily conducted on school grounds during school hours and while school was in session.”

• Where are the responsible adults? Teachers usually have a pretty good idea of what’s going on at school. The gravity of the situation might now always be apparent, but it’s almost always clear that something is going on. If a teacher finds out that a student is being abused by an adult at home, they are obligated to report it. Why, then, didn’t the teachers involved in these cases feel at the very least morally obligated to put a stop to the bullying? If there’s ever been a good argument for homeschooling, this is it. When educators, the very people we trust to take care of our children while they’re at school, drop the ball like this, it’s offensive, horrific, and should be punishable by law.

After Phoebe’s death, another parent came forward, reporting a similar situation with his daughter and one of the girls being charged in Phoebe’s case, one that went on for three years and, thankfully, did not end in suicide. The school district is awarding the family $50,000 and has issued an apology that came with a promise for increased training, saying that “they should have handled it differently.” Talk about an understatement. That bully should have been expelled and sent to a juvenile detention center. It took the death of one of her victims to finally have something done, and frankly, that makes me sick.

These Are Not Isolated Cases

Jon Carmichael, 13, hanged himself because of bullying at school just last week. In 2007, Megan Meier, 13, hanged herself because a fake online boyfriend created by neighbors turned abusive; the whole thing was done by adults looking for revenge because Megan had stop being friends with their daughter. The list goes on.

In closing, I implore you to do what you can to stop this trend. Whether that means activating parental controls or talking to kids who seem depressed, you can make a difference and help stop this kind of thing from happening again. Our children rely on us; don’t let them down.

Beating out the District of Columbia and 38 other states, Tennessee and Delaware are in line for hefty education grants. At present, Tennessee and Delaware are slotted to get $500 million and $100 million, respectively. This money promises to be a part of some major overhauls in public education for the two states.

Race to the Top Round One Picks: Why TN and DE?

The question on the minds of those states that didn’t perform in the Race to the Top is: why Tennessee and Delaware? U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said that these two states had an amazing amount of support from educators, school districts, and even business leaders, showing that there’s a statewide commitment to excellence in education. These two states produced comprehensive plans to improve public schools and have even written new laws to support these plans.

Because of the emphasis on accountability and student achievement, Tennessee got extra points for their student data tracking system, which, for years, has enabled them to trace student achievement all the way back to individual teachers. Part of the TN proposal is to update and enhance this system in the 2011-2012 school year. Delaware also has a teacher evaluation system that will be getting a shot in the arm with the federal money.

Round Two: More than $3.5 Million Left to Dole Out

In round one, Georgia and Florida came in third and fourth, but they won’t be seeing a dime unless round two treats them better. Every state save the two winners is eligible to submit proposals for round two, which will be due June 1, 2010. With more then $3.5 million left to dole out, this multi-round tactic has states scrambling for the money.

The Department of Education took quite a bit of heat for choosing a full 16 finalists for round one, but I think they’ve handled the whole thing perfectly. Choosing 16 finalists got everyone excited. Rather than being a discouragingly low number of finalists, the choice to announce 16 finalists said to states: you can do it. Picking only two winners for round one followed that up with: but you are really going to have to work for it.

With school reform running rampant and new laws to facilitate it being created across the country, President Obama has even requested and additional $1.3 billion to continue the Race to the Top program into a third round. With that much money to dole out, it looks like we’re going to see a majority of states receiving at least some money. The message, though, remains clear: you won’t see a dime until you earn it.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wrote an article for ESPN proposing to ban college teams that haven’t graduated at least 40 percent of their players from postseason competition and honors. With March Madness ramping up, this article stirred up quite a bit of controversy.

Boosting Graduation Rates and Academic Accountability in the NCAA

Secretary Duncan is calling for a “boost graduation rates for a number of NCAA tournament basketball teams with poor academic records and indefensible disparities in the grad rates of white and black players,” and the numbers he presents in the article are nothing short of compelling. Frankly, his argument just makes sense. If these colleges can’t graduate just two out of every five players on their team, we shouldn’t be deluding ourselves by calling it college ball–something more on the order of “College-Dropout Ball” or “People-with-Basketball-Skills-Who-Are-Currently-Enrolled-in-a-Few-Classes Ball”.

To put the whole thing in perspective, Duncan writes:

In this year’s NCAA tournament, 12 men’s teams–or about one out of five in the field that started play last week — have failed to graduate 40 percent of their players, based on the NCAA’s expansive graduation rate formula. The NCAA formula allows players six years to graduate–and it does not count transfers or players who leave early to go to the pros against a team’s graduation record, as long as the players leave in good academic standing.

And it goes on…

Five men’s teams in the tournament graduated 20 percent or less of their black players. Two teams–Maryland and Cal-Berkeley–have graduated zero percent of their black ballplayers who entered from 1999 through 2002.

And on…

In this year’s Sweet 16, Butler, Duke, Xavier and Cornell all graduate more than 80 percent of their men’s players. At the same time, four teams–Tennessee, Kentucky, Washington and Baylor–graduated less than 40 percent of their players who entered from 1999 through 2002.

With many of the Division I colleges graduating 100 percent of their players , Secretary Duncan is completely justified in calling out these colleges. The tragedy of the whole situation is that people are genuinely upset about his proposition. Some are suggesting that the players themselves should be banned, not the teams. I can see the logic in this, but the statistics Duncan brought to the table make it, for me at least, more than a little obvious that it isn’t simply the players.

Sure, punishing players by taking away their scholarships or banning them from games would negatively impact the teams with low education standards, but it would also make it possible for the colleges, coaches, and athletic programs themselves to shirk much of the responsibility for the failures. After all, they didn’t ban certain extremist athletes from competing in the 2008 Summer Olympics, they banned Iraq. Don’t hate the players; hate the multi-million-dollar industry that stops caring about them once they’ve done well in the game.

If you haven’t gotten your taxes done yet, don’t worry. You’ve still got a few weeks, and you may even be eligible for more deductions and tax credits than you think. Nothing eases tax-season stress like getting your taxes done early, but getting more money back on your tax return is definitely a close second. Learn more about what you can deduct and what credits you have available to you.

Student Loan Tax Deductions: Yes, You Can Write That Off

Nobody likes paying interest on loans. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get that money back at the end of the year? Guess what–you can… sort of. If you’ve taken the student loan out in your own name, writing it off is pretty straightforward. Here’s the cool part: you can write off the interest for loans that your parents paid for if you are legally liable for the loan and you aren’t claimed as a dependent. The IRS treats the money that your parents paid as if they gave you a gift that you used to pay off the loan.

Even if your parents aren’t involved in the financial side of things, you can write off up to $2,500 in student-loan interest.You don’t even have to itemize to take this deduction, making it that much easier.

Tax Credits for Students

Deductions are great, but credits are better. While deductions just reduce the amount you’re taxed on, credits actually cut down what you pay–dollar for dollar.

• Parents going to school (even working parents who aren’t in school) can qualify for a child-care tax credit. From Kiplinger:

If you pay your child-care bills through a reimbursement account at work, it’s easy to overlook the child-care credit. Although only $5,000 in expenses can be paid through a tax-favored reimbursement account, up to $6,000 (for the care of two or more children) can qualify for the credit. So, if you run the maximum through a plan at work but spend even more for work-related child care, you can claim the credit on as much as $1,000 of additional expenses. That would cut your tax bill by at least $200.

• The Hope Credit is in the process of being replaced by the American Opportunity Tax Credit for the 2009 and 2010 tax years. Both of these credits help you get back some of what you spent on books, tuition, and other school fees, and this year you can pick the one that works best for your situation. The $1,800 Hope Credit has been expanded and improved, thanks to the economic stimulus package. With the new American Opportunity Tax Credit, you can qualify for a rebate of up to $2,500 for the first four years of college for qualifying students (a nice change from the Hope Credit’s only covering the first two years of school). There are still some income limits on this credit, but they’ve been raised to $80,000 or less for individuals and $160,000 or less for married couples filing jointly–after that, the credit is reduced or completely eliminated.
• The Lifetime Learning Tax Credit is very similar to the Hope and American Opportunity Credits, but it can be used for nearly any kind of postsecondary education. If you qualify, you may be able to claim $2,000 per tax return–up to $4,000 total. If you’ve already taken advantage of (or don’t qualify for) the aforementioned credits, this one is for you.

Tax Tips for Students

There are a few little things that can help you out when it’s time for taxes.

• For school-related expenses, keep those receipts!
• Get your taxes done now, not later–midterms are way harder when you’ve got taxes looming
• Don’t feel guilty; write it off!
• When in doubt, talk to the professionals

This year in particular, there are plenty of tax credits for students, parents, first-time home buyers, and a host of others. Chances are, you fall into at least two categories, so make sure you do your tax homework before filing.

If you think education reform isn’t a big issue, think again. New data shows that the U.S. is still losing ground. It’s estimated that the average Canadian 15-year-old is more than a year past the average American 15-year-old student in school. In fact, out of the more than 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) “only New Zealand, Spain, Turkey and Mexico now have lower high school completion rates than the U.S.,” according to Andreas Schleicher, a senior OECD education official.

The Big Question: Why Are Our Students Slipping Behind?

Well, it isn’t just our schools, which makes things a bit trickier. The students themselves are more difficult to fix. According to Charles Butt, CEO of a supermarket chain in Texas, who spoke in front of the Senate Education Committee, “Schools are inheriting an overentertained, distracted student.” Tom Harkin, who leads the committee, picked up on those words, saying, “Overentertained and distracted–that’s right. The problem lies with many kids before they get to school, and if we don’t crack that nut, we’re going to continue to patch and fill.”

Short of showing up at homes across America and unplugging the myriad electronic distractions, what are we to do about this? Has anyone thought about a parenting reform initiative? Cutting kids off from their video games, computers, and cell phones can be tough, but, frankly, parents are holding all of the cards here. It still bothers me that we require a full series of tests and licenses for driving, but you don’t even have to fill out a form to make a baby.

Perhaps a series of mandatory parenting classes would help solve some of these issues. It could be like traffic school–your kid gets in trouble or fails a few classes, and you have to complete parenting school. It wouldn’t take much to get an online course up and running to this end. It wouldn’t have to be long, just a reminder that parenting is your duty just like obeying the driving laws. If you don’t want to drive safely, you don’t get to use our roads or highways. If you don’t want to be a good parent, you don’t get to use our public school system. Here’s the clincher: your kid still has to go to school (thank you, truancy laws), but now you have to pay for a private school or learn to love home schooling the monster you created.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan spoke today in Selma, AL. The occasion was the 45th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the day in 1965 when hundreds of voting rights protesters were beaten by state troopers. Sec. Duncan spoke from the bridge that the civil rights protesters had marched across on that tragic day.

His overall plan is to tighten and toughen civil rights enforcement on campuses across the country. Before his speech, Duncan told reporters that “Despite how far we’ve come as a country over the last 45 years, we know there are still ongoing barriers to equal educational opportunity in this country.”

Civil Rights in Education: Why Now?

Hardly a year passes without a major civil rights issue in one of our many schools making the news. This might lead a casual observer to think that we’re doing just fine, as many of these issues are resolved positively. It’s the thousands of unreported civil rights violations we don’t hear about that are the problem. “This is the civil rights issue of our generation,” says Duncan. Some shocking statistics highlighted in the Associated Press article on Duncan’s speech:

• A quarter of all students drop out before their graduation, and half of those come from 12 percent of the nation’s high schools. Those roughly 2,000 schools produce a majority of the dropouts among black and Latino students.
• Black students without disabilities are more than three times as likely to be expelled as white students, and those with disabilities more than twice as likely to be expelled or suspended — numbers which Duncan says testify to racial gaps that are “hard to explain away by reference to the usual suspects.”
• Students from low-income families who graduate from high school scoring in the top testing quartile are no more likely to attend college than the lowest-scoring students from wealthy families.

Clearly, we aren’t doing the best job we could. Russlynn Ali, assistant secretary for civil rights in the Education Department, said, “For us, this is very much about working to meet the president’s goal, that by 2020 we will regain our status in the world as the number one producer of college graduates.” This explains the timing of the new push, and it makes perfect sense. By keeping the disenfranchised youth in school, the Obama administration is beginning the process of stacking the educational-attainment deck in their favor. With more students making through high school, we’ll have more students applying to college–let’s just hope they stay in.

What’s Next for Education Reform?

As higher education suffers from massive budget cuts across the country, hope is springing up in K-12 schools. The Race to the Top competition is nearing its finish, and this new civil rights agenda is promising to say the least. It leaves me wondering what will be next in education reform. Hopefully, we’ll see some funding being dumped into our higher education infrastructure.

The Obama administration has chosen it’s finalists for the Race to the Top competition. This program comes at a time when education reform is hot topic on the news. Between rioting students in California, the mass firing in Rhode Island, and budget cuts across the nation, things are in a bit of a state, and this $4.35 billion program offers a ray of hope.

Race to the Top Finalists: D.C. and 15 States

The District of Columbia made the list of finalists along with these 15 states:

• Colorado
• Delaware
• Florida
• Georgia
• Illinois
• Kentucky
• Louisiana
• Massachusetts
• New York
• North Carolina
• Ohio
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island
• South Carolina
• Tennessee

This list is out of only 41 submitted applications (40 states and D.C.), which has brought some criticism to the competition. From the Wall Street Journal article on the subject:

The size of the finalist list drew fire from some quarters. “I was hoping the administration would send a clear message that you had to be absolutely great to even be in the competition,” said Andrew Smarick, a former George W. Bush administration official who has supported the program. “This is a huge disappointment.”

To these detractors, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said a reassuring, “Most of them will go home losers.” Estimates at this point are that fewer than six of these finalists will be chosen. How will the $4.35 billion be split between these winners? One can only hope that, were New York and, say, Rhode Island both to make the list, the amount that they’d each be given would be based on need. Something tells me that a few of these states need more than others, and that money stretches a bit further in some than it does in others. The only word we’ve got so far is that the money will be divided based on size–whether that’s square footage, population, or student body, we’ll have to wait to find out.

California Misses the List. Coincidence?

Facing a budget crisis to the tune of $20 billion, California didn’t make it on the list. Secretary Duncan and his selection team tried to keep politics out of it, and it seems that, in doing so, they’re upset even more people (people who probably would have been angry either way, mind you). From the aforementioned article:

The list of winners so far could stir unease for other reasons. Only five of the 16 finalists were states that went for Republican Sen. John McCain in the last presidential election. And only one of them, Colorado, was west of the Mississippi–a fact that Mr. Duncan said was “purely a coincidence.”

Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal put out an article on the real value of a college degree, and it’s made a bit of a splash around here. From the private thoughts about the worth of personal student loan debt to the more open denouncements of the data used for the article, people around here are emailing and chatting like mad.

Remembering a Life Lesson: Census Bureau Salary Numbers

The first time that I saw the numbers, which have upset everyone around here by being called into question, I was in a remedial English class at a local high school. It was a few years ago, and I was covering a class for one of my fellow teachers. I didn’t know his students or his student teacher, a fired-up, ex-military type who’d become completely fed up with the students who didn’t care. It was the last period of the day, and he and I had been getting on a student’s case for refusing to work.

I’ve heard some depressing things come from the mouths of babes, as it were. I once heard a 13-year-old lean over and tell her friend that the party was cancelled because she’d “gotten a DUI when [she] crashed [her] dad’s truck”. What the student refusing to work said was not new nor even very shocking. It was something about not caring about school, about not being able to wait until he was old enough to drop out legally.

Mind you, this student had some very blingy bits on (presumably not real), and his big reason for not wanting to go to school was that he wanted to start working and making some money (presumably to buy more blingy bits and fashionably over-sized clothing covered with giant brand names). The student teacher and I had taken turns talking with the student–to no avail. I was trying an “I know how you feel” approach when the student teacher had begun to spout statistics from his laptop’s screen. The one that seemed to actually resonate with the disenfranchised, money-hungry youth? That if he didn’t graduate from high school, he’d make more than $1 million less over his lifetime than his peers walking across the stage at graduation–and almost $2 million less than a college grad.

I never went back to that classroom, and I have no idea what happened to that student. In my heart of hearts, I’d like to think that he got a diploma of some kind and is doing well. I’d put money on this not being the case, but then, I’m a cynic.

Like everyone else, I knew that more education meant more money. I knew it because I’d always been told it, not because I’d ever heard a number. I enjoyed having some governmentally collected data that I could throw in the face of prospective dropouts, which is why I found it so unfortunate when these numbers came into question recently.

What’s a Degree Worth? More Than Money

Now, as a graduate of a liberal arts program–and much to my parents’ chagrin at the time–I had accepted that my degree wasn’t going to make me rich. In fact, I remember explaining to my father that while electrical engineering would make me a lot of money right out of school, I didn’t want to be stuck in a cubicle designing electronic thermostats–I was fine with the prospect of living the life of an ascetic academic, and I’d be better for it. I never finished the electrical engineering degree, so I can’t speak to what my life would have been like, but life with my English degree has been rather pleasant, and I wouldn’t trade it–or the wonderful friends I made in my degree program–for anything but more of the same.

An education is worth more than just that degree. Were it not for the things I experienced during my college years, I’m certain that I’d be a very different person. I won’t continue down this hypothetical path, but I will reiterate that getting a degree has made me a different–and arguably better–person. I read things that I wouldn’t have otherwise picked up, which helped give me a different perspective.

My point here is that, before we dive in to discussing the newest numbers on the worth of a degree, we should remember that the worth of a college degree isn’t necessarily something that should be measured by numbers alone.

Progress. The Master’s Is the New Bachelor’s Degree

It’s my understanding that back in the day you could get a good job without ever graduating from high school. Graduating from high school made you stand out from the pack; it was–again, as I understand it–like earning a bachelor’s degree. Think of it like educational attainment inflation. We’ll come back to this in a moment.

First, a look at the numbers that are troubling everyone. From the Wall Street Journal article:

Dr. Schneider [a vice president of the American Institutes for Research, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington] estimated the actual lifetime-earnings advantage for college graduates is a mere $279,893 in a report he wrote last year. He included tuition payments and discounted earning streams, putting them into present value. He also used actual salary data for graduates 10 years after they completed their degrees to measure incomes. Even among graduates of top-tier institutions, the earnings came in well below the million-dollar mark, he says.

And a little later on…

The $800,000 number, it turns out, was pulled from a footnote of the College Board’s 2007 “Education Pays” report that explained lifetime earnings. The report’s author, Sandy Baum–an emeritus Skidmore College economics professor who didn’t write the promotional text on the Web site–says that $450,000 is actually a more reasonable estimate of the difference in lifetime earnings, something she’s said in interviews for more than a year.

An excellent lesson to learn from this little debacle is that quoting hypothetical numbers will only come back to bite you, so rather than engaging in that particular exercise, I’m simply going to reassure. If you want your resume to stand out, don’t stop at a bachelor’s, particularly if your degree’s acronym ends in an A… for arts. A huge number of fields require at least a master’s degree to be successful–some even require it for entry-level positions.

If you’re in one of these fields, you must, at some point, have discovered this fact. If you stopped at a bachelor’s degree that’s got you making jack and up to your eyes in student debt, perhaps another two years of school is in order. Getting your master’s degree is going to be a rewarding experience, even if it may take a while to reap the monetary part of the rewards.

Your Degree’s ROI

Return on investment (ROI) is important to consider when it comes to education. Take for example the case of the student with a degree in art history. This student only wants to go to school to make more money. When it came time to pick a major, art history sounded great–after all, a degree is a degree, right? The student graduated, but he quickly found that his degree was not actually going to help for a huge number of jobs, and the ones that just required a bachelor’s degree, not a specific one, didn’t actually pay well. Whoops. Now, angry at the world, the student works a dead-end job to pay off students loans. This is an example of a low-ROI degree, but only because the return that the student was looking for was cash. With some research, he would have found the logical disconnect–no work means no money, no matter your degree.

I was once told that the purpose of a Western education was to allow the recipient, upon graduation, to effectively challenge everything s/he was ever told. If this isn’t your goal, for everyone’s sake, go into one of the more monetarily oriented fields. Maximize your ROI with online education, which can often provide you the degree you need for the salary for less in tuition and related costs.

Kids get in trouble all the time. It’s a fact of life. Whether they’re acting out, testing limits, or just being reckless, the fact of the matter is they’re just kids. When you work around them day in and day out, though, things can get a little skewed.

My dad has been a science teacher for over twenty years, and he’s told me that it takes him about two weeks to stop cringing when he hears children laughing and shrieking in delight. I taught middle-school English for a bit, and I can remember more than one occasion when I was totally convinced that I was surrounded by a bunch of little sociopaths. The trouble comes when you start treating kids like completely rational adults, something they clearly are not. I’m not suggesting that we all start patronizing kids, far from it. It’s important to realize that children are works in progress. They are, by definition, not adults. Assuming that have a good, well thought out reason for doing what they’re doing only brings you down to their level–and your brain can’t handle that.

On Their Level: Throwing Common Sense to the Winds in Education

With what we can only assume were good intentions, a few educators have accidentally totally over reacted and ended up making national news because of it.

The first case is of 12-year-old Alexa Gonzalez, who was caught doodling on her desk with a lime green marker. We can only assume, as completely rational adults with all sorts of fun paranoid delusions, that she was scribbling out the latest version of her genocidal manifesto or designing a bomb, right? I mean, when you consider that she was suspended, sentenced to eight hours of community service, and–get this–hauled out of the school in hand cuffs, she must have been doing something far worse than just defacing property.

A punishment like that should be saved for real trouble makers, like Patrick Timoney. Patrick brought a gun to school. Never mind that it was a two-inch-long toy gun (rumor has it that there were action figures involved); this A student was obviously planning on shooting up the place. Did I mention that he’s nine?

These examples have me wondering just how different my life would be right now if, when my friends and I had that squirt gun fight in high school, we’d all been arrested. Just thinking about where my wayward friends and I have ended up because of that sort of behavior makes me wish we had been cuffed and taught a lesson–I mean, two of them are lawyers and one’s finishing up a doctorate in plasma physics; we’re all a bunch of deviants.

At long last, women have surpassed men as the primary breadwinners of many households across America. It’s not an even split yet, which is a touch disheartening, but we’re making progress. Back in 1970, an unmarried man was financially better off than his knot-tying counterpart. No longer! The Pew Research Center has released numbers that show things have changed since the disco decade. Three groups have shown a roughly 60 percent jump in income: married men, married women, and unmarried women. Unmarried men, on the other hand, only saw 16 percent growth in household income.

Bridgin’ the Salary Gap: Number of Educated Women Growing

Perhaps even more noteworthy than the income jump, women with more education than their male spouses are also on the rise. In 1970, 28 percent of men had a higher-level education than their wives, with 20 percent of women beating out their husbands in the schooling category. Today, those numbers have flipped. 28 percent of women in 2007 reported having higher levels of educational attainment than their hubbies, with only 19 percent of husbands claiming the same over their wives.

Growing up, my mother always made more than my dad, something that continues to this day. This puts my parents into the 22 percent of U.S. households in which the woman brings home the majority of the bacon. In 1970, only 4 percent of households held this distinction–showing just how far we’ve come.

Tying the Knot: Sound Financial Advice for Men

I, on the other hand, am sitting in the lonely financial zone by the sea with all of the other unmarried men. Apparently, we’re in a mancession. Men have been losing jobs faster than women in our latest economic debacle, with men accounting for 80 percent of the job loss. Times are tough all around, I know–this isn’t a self-pity post. The mancession issue does, though, bring up the interesting point that it seems to financially behoove men to tie the knot. As the Pew Research Center phrases it:

From an economic perspective, these trends have contributed to a gender role reversal in the gains from marriage. In the past, when relatively few wives worked, marriage enhanced the economic status of women more than that of men. In recent decades, however, the economic gains associated with marriage have been greater for men than for women.

And a little later on…

For unmarried adults at each level of education … men’s household incomes fared worse than those of women. Unmarried women in 2007 had higher household incomes than their 1970 counterparts at each level of education. But unmarried men without any post-secondary education lost ground because their real earnings decreased and they did not have a wife’s wages to buffer that decline.

Working Women–Scientists, Even–Still Doing Twice the Housework?

Another study that’s come out recently highlights the interesting issue of why, exactly, women still choose to associate with men. The Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender and Research at Stanford University has found that female scientists do about twice as much housework than men. The study, Housework Is an Academic Issue by director Londa Schiebinger, found that female scientists do 54 percent of their core housework, like cooking, cleaning, and laundry. The results confused me at first–if women are doing 54 percent, wouldn’t that mean that men are doing 47? Things I didn’t consider: children and paid help. From the Stanford University article: “Schiebinger’s study shows that despite their lower salaries, female assistant professors outsource as much housework as male full professors.” I’ve got to ask, guys, what’s with doing only 28 percent of the housework?

Isn’t academia supposed to be this bastion of equality? Apparently, that belief is just a result of my gender-biased, rose-colored glasses.