In 2023, the Supreme Court ended affirmative action for college admissions, a decision that I and many others continue to deeply question. While the case banned the consideration of race alone as a factor in admissions, many other facets of applicants’ identities can still be taken into account.

The landmark case has resulted in one especially interesting side effect: admissions boost for men. Most colleges strive for a student gender balance near 50/50, but many schools’ applicant pools skew toward men or women — while there are a significant number of nonbinary university applicants and students, most data on the topic focuses on only men and women, considering gender in a relatively binary way. 

This means that for schools with more applicants who are men than applicants who are women, the acceptance rate for women might be higher than that for men. The opposite goes for schools with more applicants who are women than men. In a world built on gender equity, this might be a neutral fact of life, but in our unwaveringly sexist society, this poses some problems.

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Throughout their education, women and girls are consistently put down and seen as less innately capable than men and boys, especially in STEM fields. The misogynistic myth that men outperform women in STEM and women outperform men in humanities is false. 

According to a study published in the journal Natural Science, a meta-analysis of over 200 studies shows that girls outperform boys in subjects of all ages, including in STEM subjects. Women are also more likely to apply to and graduate from universities than men, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. For this reason, applicant pools for institutions of higher education are seeing increasing numbers of women and decreasing numbers of men. 

Research from the Brookings Institution suggests that in fields still dominated by men, the disparity can be attributed to “the degree of perceived discrimination against women,” meaning that fewer women choose to enter fields dominated by men not because those fields are inherently better suited to men’s capabilities, but because those fields are perceived as fostering misogyny. 

This discrimination extends beyond higher education. In 2002, the American woman made 80 cents to the American man’s dollar; in the subsequent 20 years, that number increased by only two cents, the Pew Research Center found. Women are significantly more likely to experience other forms of discrimination in the workplace than men, including sexual harassment, isolation and repeated small slights.

Because of this inequity, I am not opposed to higher college admissions rates for women in disciplines dominated by men. The best path toward lowering the sexism that potential applicants fear they will experience in a given field is to increase the gender diversity in that field. 

Given the workplace discrimination and wage disparity that women in disciplines dominated by men will face for the duration of their careers, it is only responsible to remove as many barriers to success as possible.

Now, the trickier argument: the same cannot be said for men.

As women have spent so much of history trying to prove, there exists no innate difference in the intellectual capabilities of men and women. There is no insurmountable reason that men should not succeed academically to the same degree that women do. I believe this can be attributed to social factors. 

Modern notions of masculinity are primarily goal-oriented, promoting performance over effort. These social pressures can feel incredibly real, and yet they are different from the pressures faced by women. These systems of gender norms have been created by men, for men. A man who deviates from these norms is not subject to the same degree of othering and danger as a woman.

A woman who puts in the same effort as a man will spend the duration of her academic and professional life being put down, allowing men to dominate fields. In cases where applicants who are women outnumber applicants who are men, the issue for men is not a lack of opportunity but a lack of effort. 

The bar should not be lowered to accommodate those who choose not to meet it. If more women are graduating high school and applying to colleges than men, and if women’s applications are, on average, stronger than men’s despite facing more institutional barriers to success, it is only logical that more women should be admitted than men. 

It is understandable that colleges would feel more desirable if they boasted higher gender diversity, but ultimately, every college wants the strongest students. Right now, it seems like many of those students are women.