Trades, humanities, and the college gender gap

Plus: Keeping the lightning bugs around, a new account of the horrors of jailhouse birth, and more

Good morning! It’s Wednesday, and here are this week’s five items for you.

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1. the rest of the first item

2. lightning bugs

3. a cocktail Substack I recommend

4. some recent work, including my first piece for Mere Orthodoxy

5. a new firsthand account of the horrors of jailhouse birth

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1. A take I haven’t written elsewhere

Trades, humanities, and the college gender gap

(via)

The first time I recall encountering universal post-high school education as a serious, active political agenda was during the Obama administration.

Then-First Lady Michelle Obama spearheaded the Reach Higher initiative, an “effort to inspire every student in America to take charge of their future by completing their education past high school, whether at a professional training program, a community college, or a four-year college or university.” This ran concurrently with then-President Barack Obama’s “‘North Star’ goal—that by 2020, America [would] once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.”

Predictably, that did not happen. The U.S. posts very respectable numbers on this front, and educational attainment is on a long (if gentle) upward trend, but we are not the most college-educated country in the world and won’t be for the foreseeable future.

Still, enthusiasm around college as a universal option remains, and it’s in that context that I’ll share a few thoughts on recent concerns over the loss of skilled trades, the death of humanities departments, and the college gender gap:

1. Maybe the trades situation is starting to turn around? A new Associated Press report gives cause for cautious optimism: