I'm sorry I'm not trying to turn Thanksgiving 2025 into Thanksgiving: The Gender Controversy, but this "oh, you have to be in the far upper right tail of the math ability distribution to go into engineering" is laughable on its face as soon as you look...
-
I'm sorry I'm not trying to turn Thanksgiving 2025 into Thanksgiving: The Gender Controversy, but this "oh, you have to be in the far upper right tail of the math ability distribution to go into engineering" is laughable on its face as soon as you look at real assessment data at scale
Men at lower-scoring tiers of engineering/math/science majors enjoy THE SAME EARNINGS BENEFITS as men at the upper tiers and women do not!
Again: flashing neon light pointing to "social effects"
-
I'm sorry I'm not trying to turn Thanksgiving 2025 into Thanksgiving: The Gender Controversy, but this "oh, you have to be in the far upper right tail of the math ability distribution to go into engineering" is laughable on its face as soon as you look at real assessment data at scale
Men at lower-scoring tiers of engineering/math/science majors enjoy THE SAME EARNINGS BENEFITS as men at the upper tiers and women do not!
Again: flashing neon light pointing to "social effects"
gender is a social stimulus variable.
-
Besides which, scores of high math ability do not in fact particularly associate with gating an eng/science major for men; the barrier to entry to these majors is quite low for men, achievement-wise.
you have to be willing to roll your sleeves up and truly pore over econ and assessment data at scale to really get this, which I am, and which approximately a billion thinkpieces on this apparently are not
-
Besides which, scores of high math ability do not in fact particularly associate with gating an eng/science major for men; the barrier to entry to these majors is quite low for men, achievement-wise.
you have to be willing to roll your sleeves up and truly pore over econ and assessment data at scale to really get this, which I am, and which approximately a billion thinkpieces on this apparently are not
I link this piece all the time, but: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/math-intensive-fields-have-a-gender-problem-the-men-are-worse-at-math/
-
I link this piece all the time, but: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/math-intensive-fields-have-a-gender-problem-the-men-are-worse-at-math/
I would love to see verbal ability taken as seriously as we fixate on these math tests. Lord but the story of things would be different. And code is made of words! Reading is a huge part of coding! I can't stand how simplistic these stories are
This isn't even touching the problems (which are many) with thinking we've assessed these aptitudes in the first place
My God I'm talking myself into writing yet another piece that would be the social equivalent to walking onto the highway
-
I would love to see verbal ability taken as seriously as we fixate on these math tests. Lord but the story of things would be different. And code is made of words! Reading is a huge part of coding! I can't stand how simplistic these stories are
This isn't even touching the problems (which are many) with thinking we've assessed these aptitudes in the first place
My God I'm talking myself into writing yet another piece that would be the social equivalent to walking onto the highway
Please forgive me if this is obvious. I occasionally think about the guys who would mock people for getting an English degree. Now they’re getting an A.I. to write their code for them. Suddenly, taking care with language and choosing the precise word is “prompt engineering.”
