Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Blueprint brought to you by Brilliant Pathways. I'm your host, Manny Tejeda. In this forward thinking podcast, we explore the evolving challenges and opportunities in preparing students for college and career success.
Offering expert insights, actionable strategies and real life stories to help listeners better support young people as they draw their future.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: So today's topic is very interesting. It's really going to be focusing on our young men and young men who are choosing not to go to college. So the question is why are fewer men choosing to go to college? But to create a little bit of context, you know, as a trend we've seen in the nation, less men going to college. And as a percentage base, 42% of degrees are going to mention only 42%.
So when we think about that, and we got to be talking about how does that change for our society? What impact does that have on the economy in our industries? What are young men doing when they don't have a college degree?
[00:01:06] Speaker C: Right.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: So when we talk about this, we want to make sure we're ensuring that, you know, just because we're focusing on on men, we're not focusing or losing focus on, on young women as well.
We're not trying to do that. It's really about having the tools for everyone to be successful in their future. So as I started off with the question, why are fewer men choosing college? And that's a question we want to dive into today. So with us we have Kyle Dotson here to share a little bit about his insights into the topic. And Kyle, I want to welcome you to the Blueprint.
[00:01:43] Speaker D: Thank you, Manny. It's great to be here. I really appreciate you inviting me on the program.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Program, awesome. Well, so when we lead with that question, can you help us unpack? I mean, there's so many things we can talk about. We only have a set limit of time, so we're not going to go into delve into everything.
But why are fewer men choosing college? And more importantly, who are the people or the men left behind?
[00:02:13] Speaker D: That's a great question, man. I really appreciate that you acknowledge that this is a deep topic with so many angles and we can only cover so much of it today. So I want to riff on and connect with several things you said. One is I think it's really critical to establish that this is not anti young women.
This is something where we're looking for the proverbial win win situation.
And quite frankly, I would argue that to degree that my last time you and I looked at it, but gender breakdown in society. 51 male to 49, female. It's right around 50, 50. So traditional identification and sex at birth. So given that what we want is a thriving society where all youth contribute and produce, that's it. And so if there's a discrepancy, I would hope people could see that that's automatically not a good thing. Right, that, that we would hope for some degree of equity. And we've talked a little bit about this.
A college degree is no longer the ticket that it once was, but it's still very important. And there are jobs which require that. So if some portion of our society is not getting that prerequisite training, then they're not available to fill those jobs. And as we move more deeply into a technological age where engineering and things of that nature are necessary, if part of our population isn't being trained, then that's going to impact all of society. So I think it's really important. That's some of the groundwork, I think, upon what you and I are building our conversation. So, yes, what's going on?
I think one of the biggest things is our society's penchant for pendulum swings.
And the reality is our history is patriarchal. That's not. That's not an opinion. I think that's a fact.
And as a result, there was all sorts of discrimination and oppression of women. And we've worked really hard to address that.
But in the process, I think, of doing the necessary critique, we forget that all those individuals that grow up to be men start out as young boys, and they haven't been constructed yet with societal expectations. They're just this young individual that's wet clay that we can mold any direction we want. And my personal opinion is that in an understandable way, our focus on the negative issues often associated with masculinity and creating this idea of toxic masculinity, we've. We've forgotten that there's a developmental aspect. And we know that people don't develop best under critique. They develop under support and nurturing. Yes, it's hard to nurture a young boy if your perspective is males are toxically masculine only.
[00:05:14] Speaker C: Right.
[00:05:15] Speaker D: And so I think that's kind of where the problem starts.
My opinion, once again, is that that is a construction, that's a setup in our society, is that there's this thing called toxic masculinity that we have to wring out of the boys. We got to wring that toxic masculinity out of them, rather than saying, these are these young people, that if we get our. Our principles and an idea straight we can mold them into productive people who are inclusive and open minded and all the things we'd want human to be.
[00:05:43] Speaker C: Right.
[00:05:44] Speaker B: So when you think about kind of that, that molding that could happen, when we look at stats, obviously less than 3% of pre K and kindergarten teachers are males.
When you look at k through 12, the percentage is not that far off. And then the other thing is when you look at the balance you're looking at white women make up almost two thirds of K through 12 systems.
So it's no surprise, looking at the next set of data which is looking at college enrollment as a national landscape. Looking at, I think it's about 40% of males are going to college. So there's something happening between, you know, K through 12 to college and then this other trend where young men are looking at jobs that perhaps don't require a college degree.
So I want to look at, let's dive a little bit deeper into, into those things and what could we do to kind of turn things around to engage more young men to be at the, at the college level, but more importantly to also support those who want to go elsewhere and can get the right skills that are often developed during your college days.
[00:07:13] Speaker D: Once again, may, there's a lot in that question, but I think I want to start with establishing that if we're talking about going on to college, there are a lot of things at play, only one part of which is the actual academic training.
And it's a necessary part, but sometimes it's actually not the most powerful part. Because if you watch, if you look at the statistics, I'm pretty sure you'll find that if you go to a bachelor degree possessing household, particularly if there's two adults in that household and they both possess that degree, the going on the college rate will blow away the college rate. So quite frankly, that single factor is probably more powerful than the K12 education you have. As important as K to 12 is culture, parental expectation, parental support, network support. When the child grows up in that two college degree possessing household, there's just an expectation. There's the air the child breathes makes it that case. So that's a long story to say I think we need to stop putting disproportionate pressure on the schooling as it relates to whether children, particularly boys, go on to college. It's a, it's an ecosystem and I don't think the ecosystem is all on the same page that this is a crisis and that we can address it. And it's not, once again either or zero sum game. We can. And I'm going to give a picture for brilliant pathways. If you take a pathways approach, it's all about under. Helping young boys understand that this is about skill development, disposition development and the kind of orientation so that when it comes time to want to apply what you have, you actually have something to apply, whether that is plumbing skills or particle physics.
[00:09:17] Speaker C: Right.
[00:09:18] Speaker D: Because there's job pathways, career pathways in both. And our job is to make sure young boys have that right. So. So that's the key. Want to go back? We need to. I was a. My background, I was a principal in a low income, mainly bipoc community.
So I was one of those relatively few males.
And in that situation, one of the pressures we had was since 90 to 95% of our young kids, particularly boys, were black and brown, was to get more black and brown teachers. And I was very clear that we have to do that. But as if not more important, certainly in the near term, is to make sure those white female teachers can do it because they're going to be the ones in the classroom. We're not going to turn it around tomorrow. And there are big dynamics that make it so that it will be hard in many places to have it even be 50, 50.
Because of historical factors, the fact that those of us who are of color, when we do have the access to training and we want to raise a family, we often feel a pressure to go into careers that compensate at a higher level.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:25] Speaker D: Just because of our background, we don't have wealth. We want to take care of our family. There's a lot of macro factors that make it. Even when we're trained to do that, it may not be what we choose.
[00:10:33] Speaker C: Right.
[00:10:33] Speaker D: So we have to continue to create incentives and try to change the gender and racial composition of who's in the classroom. But accept that we got to do stuff today to help those people who will be in the classroom do what we need them to do.
And if that's white women, so be it. Lots of us have been educated by white women who did a great job. So it's possible. Let's make sure those white women who are there can do what needs to be done.
[00:10:58] Speaker C: Right.
[00:10:59] Speaker B: And I think that brings up a good point because I know in previous conversations we've had, but you've had folks in your life who have had those identities who have been very impactful in helping young men kind of really feel part of education.
And I don't, I don't want to share too much because then I'M taking it away from you. But what can you share with the listeners about how do we do that? Because obviously we're not going to change the stats right now. But to your point, what we can do is empower those who are working with students to really help them flip the switch or the script in this.
[00:11:39] Speaker D: In this case, absolutely. Well, I really appreciate that question, man. You're right. I, I do have some experience and I'm also a bit of a junkie as it relates to, excuse me, dealing with this narrative about what can schools do.
So on the junkie front, last night I was listening to a podcast, I Can't Get Enough of It, and it was talking about what's happening in education, AI coming into education, and how do we make sure that we create an education that's appropriate to and geared towards supporting the kids we have today. So the first thing is that this podcast last night talked about how more than less, to a, to a large degree, the education we have today was established in 1892.
[00:12:27] Speaker C: Right.
[00:12:28] Speaker D: And we've tweaked around the edges, but we haven't really completely revamped or transformed education.
And the problem with the education we have is that it doesn't grab the interest too many young people, it does not grab their interest. Which I would argue goes back to a college educated household. I would argue in my household, I've got three boys, very different.
But it was so overwhelmed with the idea that one goes to school and does this, that it was their identity.
So when, you know, we're the Dodson's, Kyle Dodson, when the Dotson boys go to school, they, it was so wrapped up like they were being. Then they were being us. Like they couldn't be us if they didn't do that.
[00:13:11] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:11] Speaker D: That's pretty powerful. Everyone feels driven to be what you're meant to be. And the message in this household was that you were meant to be a highly educated person.
[00:13:19] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:19] Speaker D: That's really powerful. And it got them through. I think my kids were as bored in school as the next kid. But they had this powerful thing that made them persevere, right. And do well. Because that's how they got rewarded. Their identity got reaffirmed. They're like, hey, we're being who we are and that's good. And mom and dad, you know, get happy when we do that. And our, our uncles and aunts and friends and family and community say we're great when we go to school and do well.
If you don't grow up in that environment, which Lots of young people do for a whole bunch of reasons. It's a lot harder slog because school can be really boring.
[00:13:51] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:52] Speaker D: So we need to change that. And I think you might have been referring to stories I've told you. I had a educator, super educated. She was a superstar. And she made it real simple in life, the sometimes the most meaty concepts are really simple at the core. She had this thing called the three Cs.
Every child, I've adapted, every adult, every human wants this, the three Cs. You want to feel capable, you want to feel connected, and you want to feel contributing.
And one can hopefully very easily see that if the instructor, the teacher, gets up in front of the class and lectures at the students and has them fill out worksheets and has them do papers and tests that are disconnected from the realities of life, you may not feel very connected and you might not feel capable because that might not be the only mode in which your intelligence functions and therefore you're not contributing. And now if One of the three Cs aren't there, humans will fill it somehow.
[00:14:52] Speaker C: Right.
[00:14:52] Speaker D: And so if school doesn't find a way to do its best at meeting the three Cs for the youth and you're gonna have disconnected. And the kind of way the 1892 model works, there's a lot of research out there. It generally, there are exceptions. It generally conforms to a way that females tend to be dispositioned to better have more impulse control, to have better attention and focus, to have a better ability to manage their physical body.
And so, so much of school requires that you do those things and that it just suits females more. Although there's females that are all over the map, just like males. But generally if you take large portions, that's the thing. So that was a story to say that this three C's arguably is more important for boys to get them involved.
[00:15:48] Speaker C: Right.
[00:15:48] Speaker D: Not that girls need it too, but without it, boys are climbing the walls and being disruptive and doing all sorts of things that once again, the data out there is pretty conclusive. And so we just need training and an understanding for parents and teachers and PTAs and administration and clergy and coaches. Everyone should be when you're a kid. Once again, my kids had this everywhere they turn. It was the same message.
[00:16:16] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:16] Speaker D: And when you have that, then you start getting the outcomes that we say.
[00:16:20] Speaker C: We want to have. Yeah.
[00:16:22] Speaker B: I think as an organization, that's why we emphasize the essential skills so much, because they're helping you in those three Cs in one way or another.
And I think that it's a really powerful combination. So thank you for sharing that story.
[00:16:35] Speaker D: Sure.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: So are there any other things you would suggest to our audience in terms of strategies? We didn't go into too deep in terms of who are the folks who are kind of left out even more, but I think it's pretty clear when they're not in a household that has two, two parents with a college degree. And you can look at the demographics of who might that be?
The kids who are perhaps bored and not really engaged in classrooms and stuff like that.
So what does that all mean for our society?
[00:17:11] Speaker D: I'm going to try to illustrate this with a story that happens to be part of something that I'm experiencing currently through a book which unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to tell our viewers, listeners what that book is because I read books and I get so interested in the content, I can't remember what the title is. I can tell them about them and I think I can get them there. But the story is, it's about, it's a story of a daring and amazing submarine rescue, military, you know, and a nautical vehicle, the submarine. And it takes place just prior to World War II. But the story is, it's about this one officer named his last Swede Mumpson, forget his first name, but Swede, because I think he's Swedish.
His nickname is Swede Munson. He went to the Naval Academy.
And the reason I think he came from a family that was a military, but he got connected to the sea.
[00:18:10] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:12] Speaker D: Young. And if you are connected to sea, you're probably going to go to the Navy. So he went to Annapolis Naval Academy. But this, the story for this is we've got to find young people's passion because that's the driver. We talk about external looks of control, internal looks, control.
We, we kind of feed the external because that's how it gets started. But unless it moves internal, you're in trouble because when you have that internal, when you're doing it for you, for your passion, you're unstoppable.
[00:18:38] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:39] Speaker D: It's external. That's, that's fleeting. You can lose it. The external stuff's gone.
So this young man gets interested in an article submarine. He changes the Navy. He goes in and he keeps. This is before. Submarines aren't a big thing in World War I. Moving towards World War II. They're critical. I think the Germans were ahead of us. So we're developing this technology. But all the people and all the brass were trained on ships. That's what they care about. So they don't care about this young guy. They're like you and your submarine stuff. But this guy, he's digging in. He's, he's creating ability for submarines to go deeper for the divers that would be necessary for all kinds of things dealing with being beneath the water. It's the beginning of. We don't even have scuba gears pre scuba. It's like the big tank thing. You see a few good men. So that thing's happening and he, he's a, he's a innovator and all that stuff. And then everything comes to fruition because this new submarine in, I don't know, sometime around 1938, 37 goes down. It's on a test run and it goes down. It's laying 243ft below the ocean. And this guy almost single handedly was responsible for all the stuff he did on his passion. He created a vessel that could go down in the water and clamp onto the top of the submarine with no water getting in and let people come from the submarine into the thing which would take that capsule back to the top of the ocean so they don't drown. He created suits, he created the helium, oxygen, all the mix. Long story to say we need to create that opportunity. This is the military. He did go to college, but is not a banker, is not a lawyer, it's not a doctor. He had a career in the military and he distinguished himself in military, I would argue, because he's passionate about something. First thing we have to do as educators, help train you. He had training so that his passion could be applied.
[00:20:26] Speaker C: Right? Right.
[00:20:27] Speaker D: Boom. And then he had an opportunity to show what he had. That's a big opportunity. But basically that could be a job interview, right? Training, compassion. I learned training to do it. And then I'm sitting in front of someone, I want the job and I can convince them that I have the skill to be a plumber, an electrician, a carpenter, a banker, software engineer, whatever it is, and then I go out and I can actually deliver.
[00:20:55] Speaker B: Mm.
[00:20:55] Speaker D: It's just that simple. The devil's in the details. But if we could kind of back backward, design and say this is where we want the kid to get. Here's the things that would be necessary because every employer knows, employer knows what a valuable employee looks. If they back say, what would it have taken to get this young person to the point where they're, they're attractive to me. Then let's do that. Let's just scale that up and do that. I don't think education does that to today, not to scale.
And it's hard because there's politics and money and all kinds of things we need to do. But I would argue the principle is pretty simple because we have examples. When it works, it's so clear when a young person has that opportunity, it almost always works. It's like there's nothing fail safe, but it's pretty darn the batting average of a young person who has that experience of finding the passion, getting skills in the passion, being able to communicate that and then being able to deliver. Those are the people who do well in life.
[00:21:55] Speaker B: It's awesome.
Well, so there, there's no denying this. This is a becoming a crisis in terms of America's opportunity gap for young men in higher education.
But quite frankly, as we discuss it and many, it's not just higher education and it impacts us all. So it's not just about our young men who are left unchecked. As you mentioned, you brought it up. But I'm going to use this opportunity as a shameless plug to remind our audience about what we do at Brilliant Pathways, which is that right? So it's, it's helping every student figure out what is it that kind of, you know, clicks for them and find a, find a mode that makes sense for them, whether it be higher education.
And for many of these opportunities, they would need higher education. And if we have more time, we can dive de deep, even deeper about if you were to choose to go somewhere else that doesn't include higher education, where would you get some of the skills that you might need to be, to be able to be successful and how do you extract that? So at Brilliant Pathways, we created the Young Men of Talent program as you are well aware and you're one of the mentors and those are just one of the ways in which we as an organization, we're helping young men really think about what are areas in which they want to go into and what are areas that they have voids. And we help working together to kind of fill those needs.
So this episode has been an awesome conversation for me. I hope it's been for you as well. And I'm really excited for the audience to kind of dive deeper into this conversation and, and would love to have you back on another episode. So thank you, Kyle.
[00:23:41] Speaker D: Thank you so much, man. If I just have one last word. So yes, it up because people might be confused. This was supposed to be about the crisis with males and we've spent. I spent a lot of time speaking generically. And that is because the crisis with males, in my opinion, is a human crisis.
[00:23:57] Speaker C: Right.
[00:23:57] Speaker D: It just happens to be playing out disproportionately in this population for all sorts of reasons. But the answer, which is what I was trying to deal with today, is a human answer. What makes humans thrive. Whether you're female or male, black or white, wealthy or, you know, modest, humans thrive under certain circumstances. And we just have to maybe put some focus on males because we've missed some things. But the answers, I would argue are universal.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: Thank you so much.
[00:24:25] Speaker D: Thank you.
[00:24:26] Speaker A: Support for this podcast comes from Brilliant Pathways, an organization that had spent over 30 years helping students make opportunities happen.
Connect with us wherever you get your podcasts. And thank you for joining us on on the Blueprint. I'm Manny Tejeda, your host, and I'll see you next time.
