I recently reviewed Dr. Helen Smith’s new book, Men on Strike: Why Men are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream — and Why It Matters for Legal Insurrection.

Now, I would like to focus on Smith’s chapter, “The College Strike – Where the Boys Aren’t”.  In this section, she takes a look at the feminizing of campuses, often chronicled in College Insurrection.

Smith presents this statistic from the National Center for Education:

Since 1988, the number of females in postbaccalaureate programs has exceeded the number of males. Between 2000 and 2010, the number of male full-time postbaccalaureate students increased by 38 percent, compared with a 62 percent increase in the number of females. Among part-time postbaccalaureate students, the number of males increased by 17 percent and the number of females increased by 26 percent..

Smith has combined in-depth research, quotes from “question sessions” on her popular website , and a professional tone to address the whys behind these numbers.

Conventional wisdom holds that boys have an advantage over girls at school; however, educational trends and policies have actually created a hostile school environment for American males. The “soft” approach that avoids action, competition, and adventure-based stories is counter to how males generally learn most effectively. As a result, new studies show girls are now outperforming boys.

Couple this to the “women are victims” and “men are perpetrators” dogma of many progressive instructors, and it is a perfect storm driving male students away from college campuses.

Minding the Campus has excerpts from Smith’s book, which quote college men and how they handle the hostility.

On my blog, I asked about college experiences– negative or positive–and twenty-five-year-old “Andy” emailed me, saying he attended Wheelock College in Boston, and found the environment hostile: “Once at the school, interactions with the staff got strange. I realized quickly, being a male, how much of a minority at that school I truly was.  Wheelock College definitely had a Men=Bad attitude, and it made [my] time there awkward and difficult at times. I only spent a year there.”

And in the privilege pecking order, it seems gender trumps race:

A commenter named Marcus weighed in on the Minding the Campus article: “As a black male I can testify that this is indeed what is happening on college campuses. White males are at the forefront of the academic sexism but they are definitely coming after all males. Believe it.”

One of the most troubling aspects of the chapter covers Smith’s review of the “guilty until proven innocent” attitude when it comes to bringing male students up on sex-based charges.  Smith quotes a piece by Christina Hoff Sommers that covers the Title XI rules making this situation possible: In Making Campuses Safe for Women, a Travesty of Justice for Men.

Deans at institutions including Yale, Stanford, and Brandeis Universities and the Universities of Georgia and of Oklahoma are already rushing to change their disciplinary procedures to meet the Education Department’s decree. Now, on campuses throughout the country, we face the prospect of academic committees—armed with vague definitions of sexual assault, low standards of proof, and official sanction for the notion that sex under the influence is, ipso facto assault or rape—deciding the fate of students accused of a serious crime.

The new regulations should be seen for what they really are. They are not enlightened new procedures for protecting students from crime. They are a declaration of martial law against men, justified by an imaginary emergency, and a betrayal of the Title IX equity law.

Plainly, Smith has done her homework on the subject most thoroughly. I would suggest a copy of this book paired with Aaron Clarey’s tome, Worthless: The Young Person’s Indispensable Guide to Choosing the Right Major might be a great gift for graduates this June.