Education Department probing whether Yale discriminates against men

The Education Department is investigating whether Yale University discriminates against men by offering specific programs and scholarships for women.

Inside Higher Ed reported Monday that the department launched the probe last month after a student who is not affiliated with the university filed a Title IX complaint.

Kursat Christoff Pekgoz, a doctoral student at the University of Southern California, claims that women are no longer a minority in higher education and therefore Yale’s programs that specifically benefit women violate federal gender discrimination law.

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Federal data show that women make up 49 percent of undergraduates at Yale. Nationally, more than 56 percent of college students were women as of last fall, according to Inside Higher Ed.

Pekgoz’s complaint initially included Yale’s Women’s Center and its Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, but the department will not investigate them because they are not exclusive to women.

The department did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment. A Yale spokesman told the site that it is “committed to nondiscrimination on the basis of sex in all its programs.”

“Women are an ever-increasing majority in colleges,” Pekgoz wrote in an email to the publication. “Male students are far more likely to drop out. Also, younger men are making less money than women despite working in more hazardous jobs.”

Inside Higher Ed noted that a Census Bureau report from 2016 showed that the median pay for young women is $11,000 less than that for young men.

Title IX complaints generally center around institution’s handling of sexual assault cases or issues surrounding campus athletics. Colleges or universities that are found to have violated Title IX risk losing federal funding, although the penalty is generally not imposed.