Trends

By Hans Johnson

Getting a Sporting Chance

The playing field for women and men in campus athletics continues to level off, according to a recent report from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Based on its latest figures, which cover the 1997–98 school year, the NCAA reports that 59 percent of athletic scholarship dollars went to men and 41 percent to women. This represents a narrowing from the 1992 figures, which pegged the difference at 69 to 31 percent.

Moreover, since the 1992 report, the average number of male participants in sports programs at Division I, II, and III schools fell a few notches in each category, as women gained ground. In Division III, for example, the most recent survey placed the average number of male athletes per school at 199, down from 216 six years earlier. The ranks of female players swelled by a similar amount to 132, up from 116 earlier in the decade.

Meanwhile, another gauge of gender equity—pay for coaches—still gives a disquieting reading. At the biggest campuses, salaries for men’s basketball coaches soared to an average of $165,000, while for women the average was $100,000.

Minority Applicants to Medical Schools Lag

Minority applicants to the nation’s medical schools fell 7 percent in fall 1999, when bids for admission by people of color accounted for only 11 percent of the overall pool. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, whose president, Jordan J. Cohen, announced the figures in November, curbs on affirmative action in some states are a chief culprit in the decline. "I think there’s strong evidence that the anti-affirmative-action backlash has been a strong factor," he says, citing Texas and California as two states where bans on race-conscious remedies for past discrimination in education may be to blame for drops in applications.

The numbers stand as a stark disappointment to efforts by the last two surgeons-general of the United States, Joycelyn Elders and David Satcher, to boost minorities’ pursuit of medical careers. One-time surgeon-general nominee Henry Foster, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Meharry Medical College, highlighted the gap in minority health care that results from the dearth of such doctors at a May 1999 AAUP-sponsored conference on academic medicine.

Foreign No More

The Modern Language Association (MLA) released a survey in October showing a tiny rise in enrollment in foreign-language classes at colleges and universities. The rise of about 55,000 students overall to a total of approximately 1.15 million students in 1998 represents a 5 percent improvement from 1995 levels.

Still, just 7.9 percent of undergraduate students were registered in a modern foreign language course in 1998, up from 7.7 percent in 1995. The report cites Spanish as the leading choice of undergraduates; it accounts for 55 percent of the total foreign-language registrations in higher education.

In commenting on the survey, MLA executive director Phyllis Franklin noted that enrollment patterns reflect trends in business, politics, and foreign affairs. They also, she added, "reflect immigration patterns. The challenge higher education faces is to respond to its students’ changing interests in language study."

For a copy of the survey, call the Modern Language Association at 212-584-5017.

Printer-Friendly Page