Students in the ivy halls of academe get every opportunity to explore and shape their convictions about justice and equity. But what happens when they graduate? Do they have a way to test and apply their idealism to the demands of real life--especially the demands of earning a living?

College seniors across the country are learning that you don't have to take a vow of poverty and service to make a difference in the world. Many are joining a quiet movement that is called the Graduation Pledge Alliance. Shortly before graduating, they sign a certificate that reads: "I pledge to explore and take into account the social and environmental consequences of any job I consider and will try to improve these aspects of any organizations for which I work." Then, when they begin their job search, they look for information about potential employers that touches--for better or for worse--on the bigger picture. Such as:

Does this organization pollute the air or water? What is its record on health and safety? Does it discriminate in its employment or other business practices? What is its relationship with the surrounding community? Does it respect its workers? What are the wage disparities between people at the top and those lower down the ladder?

The Graduation Pledge Alliance was started at Humboldt State University in 1987, and taken up the next year at Manchester College in Indiana. Since then, more than half of the graduating class there has taken the pledge says Neil Wollman, a professor of psychology who has been coordinating the national campaign since 1996. Last year, thousands of students signed on from institutions of all stripes--MIT, Georgetown, Tufts and the Universities of Maryland, Kansas and Chicago, among others. At Harvard, all of the 271 seniors signing the pledge had to agree to attend at least one panel workshop on topics like, "Making a Difference," "Earning a Living, Sharing the Wealth," and "Building a Career, Building a Community."

All the information necessary to start a similar campaign on your campus can be accessed at http://www.manchester.edu/academic/programs/departments/Peace_Studies/files/gpa.htm.

In the past decade, girls and women have managed to close many of the gender gaps that made headlines in the early '90s. In many educational quarters, there was a shared concern that girls unintentionally were shortchanged in both the attention and resources that were directed at boys.

A new report from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that females have come such a long way in their progress that males might just end up raising a ruckus.

"Trends in Educational Equity of Girls and Women" is a congressionally mandated report that looks at the extent to which males and females have access to the same educational opportunities, how they use them, how they perform and what benefits they receive. In all, the U.S. Department of Education gathered and analyzed data in 44 categories.

The data show that in school and college, females are now doing as well or better than males in many areas. Girls come to school with a slight advantage; at preschool age, they are more literate and have more advanced small motor skills than boys. Girls maintain an edge in reading and writing throughout their school years, although they lag behind boys in math and science. The data show that in 1996 writing achievement tests, male 11th-graders scored at about the same level as female eighth-graders.

More girls also take Advanced Placement courses in high school English and foreign languages, and more score at the level of 3 or above, on a scale of 1 to 5. On the other hand, the results are the opposite for math and science where boys take more AP courses and outscore girls on the tests.

After high school, women have higher aspirations than men when it comes to education (60 percent of females compared to 49 percent of males planned to go on to college); and more females (70 percent) than males (64 percent) actually enroll in college. The undergraduate population of full-time students is 58 percent female.

Women are more likely to complete their degrees than men are, and African-American and Hispanic women are the most likely of all. Women also outnumber men in graduate school. In 1996, women made up 56 percent of full-time graduate students. In 1970, that figure was just 39 percent. Men still lead women in the first-professional student enrollment, but women have made dramatic gains, says the report.

Gender differences in choice of college majors still exist, with women tending to concentrate in lower paying fields. Women with college degrees still continue to earn less than men, but the report does not attempt to examine the factors--many of them not related to education--that affect this reality.

A free copy of the report is available for download as an Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) file:

(www.nces.ed.gov/pubs2000/2000030.pdf).

Adobe files require the Acrobat Reader. 
 
Get it here.

Mirror, mirror on the wall . . .

The United States is no longer the fairest of them all when it comes to international comparisons of college graduation rates, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reports. Where 10 years ago, the U.S. was heads and tails above other industrialized countries with 30 percent of our population graduating from college, today our performance is ho-hum, says Andreas Schleicher, head of the OECD education division. "Every government understands education is key to economic and social success today," he explains in the recent report, "Education at a Glance."

Thus, the U.S. college graduation rate of 33 percent in 1998 (the comparison year for the report) is fourth--trailing behind Norway (37 percent), the United Kingdom (35 percent) and the Netherlands (34.6 percent). The average college graduation rate for all OECD countries is 25 percent.

Other indicators also taint our reflection. More than one-third of American college enrollees don't complete their degrees, compared to under 20 percent in the U.K. and Japan. This statistic must be considered in light of our broad, open-access system, however. Of more concern, the OECD report notes, is the rate at which American high school students receive diplomas--74 percent, which leaves us far behind other industrialized countries.