Liberal arts colleges tend to discriminate against girls in undergraduate admissions, to avoid having a student body that is two-thirds female. Girls’ grades are so much better than boys’ grades, on average, that if grades alone are used to select a student body, a selective liberal arts college will be two-thirds female.
Engineering schools, by contrast, sometimes discriminate against boys so that they don’t end up with a two-thirds male student body. Boys on average have better mathematical and spatial ability than girls do, as reflected in standardized tests, and more boys are interested in engineering.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), America’s top-ranked engineering school, discriminates in favor of female applicants. Meanwhile, colleges often discriminate against boys in scholarships — there are ten times as many scholarships for girls as for boys.
All of this sex discrimination appears to violate the federal Title IX statute, and probably the constitution as well, judging from the few court rulings on point, such as Johnson v. University of Georgia (2000), which struck down the University of Georgia’s preference for boys in undergraduate admissions. Discrimination is generally illegal whether it’s against boys or against girls.But feminist groups turn a blind eye to this sex discrimination in admissions, as law professors like Gail Heriot have noted.
The College Fix reports on how MIT may soon be sued for violating Title IX through its sex-conscious college admissions:
A group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni are working to prepare a lawsuit against the prestigious school that accuses its leaders of unlawfully rejecting male applicants for less-qualified female ones to advance gender parity.
The alumni have formed a nonprofit called FairAdmissions@MIT and currently seek male plaintiffs rejected by MIT despite “top SAT/ACT scores, great grades, strong recommendations, and substantial extra-curricular activities,” the group’s website states.
“This is about a return to meritocracy,” said a member of the group who asked to remain anonymous for fear of possible retaliation against him for organizing the litigation.
“The entire political center of the institution has shifted so far left, and this is directly correlated,” he said. “The point is to treat applicants as individuals, not as members of an identity group.”
Reached for comment Tuesday, MIT spokesperson Kimberly Allen told The College Fix via email that “MIT’s goal is to admit and enroll the best students from around the world, and we firmly believe that our admissions and financial aid practices comply with all laws.”
FairAdmissions@MIT attorneys plan to follow the same blueprint carved out by Students for Fair Admissions in its ultimately successful case against Harvard University that proved its administrators unlawfully discriminated on the basis of race, said the MIT group’s spokesman Mark Perry.*
Federal law forbids discrimination on the basis of sex, and although there are some exemptions, such as all-female schools, “according to the lawyers, they can make a case this violates Title IX,” Perry told The College Fix in a telephone interview Tuesday.
Perry, an economist and scholar, is well-known for successfully challenging hundreds of Title VI and Title IX violations at universities nationwide.
A news release published this week from FairAdmissions@MIT argues two-plus decades’ worth of admissions data show “female undergraduate applicants to MIT are admitted at twice the rate as male applicants.”
“Even though year after year twice as many males apply as females, every entering MIT class ends up artificially gender balanced,” it states. “…MIT appears to treat applicants differently based on sex, illegally discriminating against men to achieve contrived gender parity.”
Research conducted by FairAdmissions@MIT found most engineering and tech universities have a male-to-female ratio that more accurately reflects applications by gender, with the Rochester Institute of Technology, Illinois Tech and Georgia Tech all maintaining enrollments of 61 to 66 percent male.
“We advocate that MIT’s admissions policy should be sex-blind and based on individual merit, accepting the objectively best applicants rather than assembling a pool of good-enough applicants and then social engineering an entering class such that it collectively conforms to the ideological, political, social, and personal preferences of MIT’s admissions officers,” the group’s website states.
MIT’s admissions office is staffed primarily by women, MIT’s website shows.
