Colleges are good matchmakers. No way can MOOCs do that service ;)

A couple of months ago, I noted here:

When I was relatively new in my Oregon stint, one bright female student, "K," came to talk with me about her law school plans.  I asked her if she was free enough--without any significant other--to go wherever she wanted to.  Her reply was funny then, and is funny now, but is also a reflection of these gender issues.  "K" replied that she hadn't met anybody even her equal, let alone being better than her, and so it was all the more the reason for her to go far away from this part of the world.  I wonder whether she did find her soul-mate in graduate school.

Though on a lighter vein, it was a post on a serious issue that I have been blogging for a long time: how female students are doing wonderfully well, especially when compared with their male peers.  The world of higher education does not resemble in any way, and thankfully so, the bad old days when females were not provided with the opportunities that white males had.  How different are things now?

"A lot has happened since Betty Friedan wrote her book ["The Feminine Mystique"] in 1963," says Claudia Goldin, a Harvard economic historian. "It's amazing." More than 57% of the bachelor's degrees awarded in 2011 went to women,according to the Department of Education. So did 51% of doctorates, 48% of M.D.'s, 47% of law degrees and 45% of master's degrees in business.

It is a phenomenal achievement over a couple of generations.  It is yet another demonstration of what we humans can achieve if we put our minds to it.

This female advancement has also led to drastic changes in male-female relationships.  To quote Hanna Rosin:

Young women in their sexual prime—that is, their 20s and early 30s—are generally better off than young men. They are better educated and earn more money on average. What made this possible is the sexual revolution—the ability to have temporary, intimate relationships that don't derail a career. Or to put it more simply, to have sex without getting married.

This very issue that young women are beginning to be choosy about when to get married, if they want to get married, made an interesting topic of discussion in the online academic world thanks to a mother of two boys, both at Princeton, writing an open letter in the university paper advising the girls to marry!

At your core, you know that there are other things that you need that nobody is addressing. A lifelong friend is one of them. Finding the right man to marry is another.

She set it up well; after all, a Princeton alumna herself.  And then came the blunt advice:

Here’s what nobody is telling you: Find a husband on campus before you graduate.

Why?

Of course, once you graduate, you will meet men who are your intellectual equal — just not that many of them. And, you could choose to marry a man who has other things to recommend him besides a soaring intellect. But ultimately, it will frustrate you to be with a man who just isn’t as smart as you.

What she writes here is a restatement of what that student "K" remarked a few years ago, right?  "K" wanted to improve the odds of finding somebody smarter than her.  This Princeton mom takes that one step further--if not at Princeton, then odds will be against finding a comparable spouse.

To which, a Harvard economist, Edward Glaeser, writes about his own personal experience and suggests:

While I don't feel I can provide advice to young women, I am comfortable, based on both personal experience and the infallible majesty of economic theory, urging young male Princetonians to view your female classmates as prospective long-term friends and spouses (the qualifications for the two roles having much in common), rather than short-term amorous encounters.

I just wish that Glaeser hadn't used such a complicated academic way of writing that sentence ;)

Anyway, he adds this:

The role that colleges can play in forging lifelong friendships, and even marriages, also makes a deeper point. Princeton has nothing to fear from online learning. The face-to-face experience is just too important, not only as a tool for education but for creating the social relationships that are the real stuff of life.

No MOOC can offer this, and residential college-based higher education will be around for a while ;)