Men are in the minority

Monday, March 13, 2006 | 7:17 a.m.

University system regents are investigating a new minority group at Nevada's colleges and universities: Men.

Male enrollment in higher education has been on the decline since the post- World War II boom in the late 1940s, when men made up 70 percent of student bodies nationwide and earned 76 percent of all degrees.

Today, men represent only about 43 percent of total enrollment in higher education nationwide. Nevada's male enrollment has held constant between 45 and 43 percent over the last decade, but actual attainment of degrees has plummeted to 38 percent.

In 1995, women at Nevada institutions earned 900 more degrees and/or certificates than males, according to a report released this month by the Nevada System of Higher Education. In 2005, women earned 2,500 more degrees and/or certificates.

The male decline will be the topic of conversation for the Board of Regents Thursday morning during a meeting of the cultural diversity and security committee at UNR. Regent Doug Hill requested the report because he feared black and Hispanic male students may be the ones dropping out.

The report does show that white males have a higher graduating rate than other minority students at five of the state's seven teaching institutions, but that minority male students actually have a higher graduation rate than white males at UNLV and the Community College of Southern Nevada.

The report does not break out male or female enrollment by race.

Diversity committee chairwoman Linda Howard said regents will be looking at possible reasons for the lack of male enrollment.

Howard said she has no complaints that women are doing better than men, but that the regents "want to make sure we're not losing any particular group and not excluding anyone."

The UNLV Presidential Search Committee voted on Thursday to allow the hired search consultant firm, Academic Search Consultation Service, to draft the leadership profile that will attract possible candidates to the university.

By consensus, committee members decided they'd rather just submit their input and then OK the final version by e-mail. The goal was to save time and allow the nearly 40-person search committee of regents, UNLV representatives and community members to avoid having another meeting.

That makes sense in the private, corporate world but if the search consultants aren't careful, they could create what's known as an illegal "walking quorum" under Nevada's open meeting law.

Regents and committee members can legally submit suggestions to the search consultant, all of which would be public information, without violating the open meeting law, said Neil Rombardo, senior deputy attorney general. What that search consultant cannot do is go back to regents with the suggestions from others and solicit feedback, or have multiple members of the committee editing the final leadership profile.

"It could be a potential problem but as far as right now I don't see any violations," Rombardo said.

Nevada System of Higher Education lawyer Bart Patterson said he also saw the possible conflict and would advise the committee to have another meeting if the search consultant did need clarification.

The UNR search committee spent several hours over the course of three meetings debating the qualities needed for the next Reno president, going through the leadership profile line by line to make sure everyone was satisfied with the wording.

Academic Search is receiving a budget of up to $110,000, including advertising and travel costs for the candidates, to recruit eight to 10 finalists for the open UNLV presidency by April 28. Current President Carol Harter is stepping down June 30 to work for the UNLV Foundation.

And they say UNLV has overcome its reputation as Basketball U.

The UNLV search committee took a short time out Thursday in the middle of a presentation by Chancellor Jim Rogers to get the score of the basketball game between UNLV and New Mexico in the quarterfinals of the Mountain West Conference Tournament in Denver.

Student Senate President Adriel Espinoza was checking the score throughout the meeting on his cell phone, and on demand from Vista Group Developer Mike Saltman, began to fill the committee in on what was happening during the last two minutes of the game. He interrupted Rogers to announce UNLV had won 65-64.

"Now that's a good omen," Rogers said.

Espinoza later advocated for a presidential candidate who would pay more attention to students and athletics and "not be scared to go with that reputation."