MALES FILE Title IX Complaints of Discrimination. Data Shows More Females (56.5%) in College. DoED is Listening.
Over the past 15 months, Kursat Pekgoz, a doctoral student in English literature at USC, has filed federal Title IX complaints against three universities, and drafted complaints against three more, alleging that efforts to support female students are no longer necessary and amount to discrimination against male students. Once outnumbered, women now make up about 56.5 percent of students at American universities. Since October 2017, the department’s Office of Civil Rights has received eight complaints from Pekgoz and others alleging that women-only and women-focused scholarships, are inherently prejudicial against male students — and thus violate Title IX, a federal provision that prohibits schools that receive federal funding from discriminating on the basis of sex.
Pekgoz told NBC News that he began thinking about anti-male discrimination on campus after reading “The Myth of Male Power” by Warren Farrell, which disputes the notion that men hold disproportionate power in society. After being accepted to USC, and looking into scholarship opportunities, Pekgoz said he was irritated to discover funding earmarked solely for women.
In 1948, women made up just 28.9 percent of post-secondary students in America. By 1981, women were earning more bachelor’s degrees than men, and they have every year since, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Last year, women also earned 53 percent of Ph.D.s. “A lot of the things we put in place to say, ‘We really have to help women feel more comfortable and more secure’ — the rationale for some of those things has disappeared,” said R. Shep Melnick, professor of American politics at Boston College and author of “The Transformation of Title IX.” “So now, when you look at who is not doing well in education, it’s the guys.”
nbcnews.com By Katie Engelhart
