A study of Purdue’s entering freshmen class of 2018 indicated that women freshmen who didn’t get their preferred class on registration were significantly less likely to graduate in four years than were their women counterparts who got their preferred class on registration. (There was no significant effect for that year’s male freshmen, but that’s neither here no there for this post.) Leave aside the various limitations of this study; focus on the particular outcome.

This is a conclusion of one of the study’s authors, Kevin Mumford:

Our estimates suggest that reducing course shutouts, particularly for STEM courses, can be an effective way to improve female-student outcomes[.]

No. Lowering standards—which is what “reducing course shutouts” amounts to, if only through increasing the class sizes of those courses that are in such demand—is not the way to improve women’s graduation rates.

The answer is insultingly wrong, too, suggesting as it does that women students need to be coddled in order to function in college.

What is necessary is to take steps to help these women overcome a disappointment that doesn’t bother men by helping them identify classes that are effective substitutes of their preferred class, classes that cover the same subject with a different professor, or is in a different section under the same professor, or take the preferred class in a subsequent semester, or….