Women in Academic Retrenchment: "So What's New?"

I titled this essay Women in Academic Retrenchment: So What's New? because I want to discuss strategies for survival in the years ahead and I do not believe that future survival strategies will be all that different from past ones. Before I do that, however, it is important to assess not only the potential demographic impact for higher education generally in the years ahead, but also women's current status in higher education. Any way the statistics are analyzed, it is clear that those of us in higher education are all employees of a declining industry. That declining industries must contract, must retrench, is also clear. Growth in the sectors of the economy that draw most heavily on college graduates has slowed substantially. The size of the college-age population, the most important factor affecting future college enrollment, will shortly begin to decline. Between 1980 and 1990, the coming decade, the Census Bureau estimates the decrease will be about 18 percent with most of the decline, 11 percent occurring during the next five years. By 1985, the number of eighteen to twenty-one-year-olds will decrease by 1.7 million.[1] Another factor is the rate of college attendance for these eighteen to twenty-one-year-olds and for older students, especially the re-entry women who form the soul of so many women's studies classes. Forecasters disagree as to whether enrollment rates will increase enough to compensate for the decline in college-age population. Most projections, like those of the Census Bureau, call for annual contractions during the first half of the 1980's. Beyond 1985, projections virtually become anybody's guess. The Carnegie Council guesses that although enrollments will be low, will continue to be a modest rate of growth for part-time, older adult and nondegree-credit students,[2] those very students who form the core of women's studies programs. The Council actually predicts that this group will become even more important with about a 3 percent increase-mostly due to the enrollment of women, Blacks, Chicanos/Latinos, and other minorities-while the number of undergraduate enrollees will show a general decline. At any rate, most agree that the next six years through 1985 will be very difficult, that probably the second half of the 1980's will show more modest declines, and that after we survive the austere 1980'sbarring pestilence, war, famine, and nuclear meltdowns-higher education will climb out of the Slough of Despond into a growth period rivaling that of the 1960's. Therefore, I can only conclude that if we can hang in there for the next ten to twelve years, we will probably be in high-demand occupations. Meanwhile, let us look at the status of women professionals in higher education today. I have read in the Chapter of Leviticus in the Old Testament statements which set out formulas for dealing with people and one says that a man shall be paid fifty shekels and a woman thirty shekels. By that measure at least, we have not progressed, for the Department of Labor reports that women in all levels, in all occupations, still earn approximately 60 percent of what men earn. That we are enlightened in higher education though is evidenced by the fact that faculty women earn only 16.1 percent less than their male counterparts! Only 15 percent of university trustees