I think its interesting that girls are being called shallow for wanting a husband in learning. Has Torah become a commodity to be bought and sold now? Apparently it has. Actually, I think its just the Bais Yaakovy circle, the girls who went to BY seminaries and are now teaching/TTI/office jobs who would only marry a learning guy. They have so much of their life circumscribed that they could not fathom standing up and having a creative opinion. There are a very select few girls who have such a burning love for Torah that that is the only thing they want in a husband. For those girls, nothing less than a talmid chochum is what they want and deserve.
For others, the girls who have been exposed to the realities of life, namely the costs of a frum lifestyle, do not want the kollel lifestyle. From what I hear, kollel only lasts a few years and then the husband starts looking for work, with no skills and probably no high school diploma. For this entire time, the girl is supporting and raising a growing family solely on the income of her teaching/office/special ed/speech therapy job.
Some girls, in fact many girls do not want this lifestyle. It’s just not fair to them! If a married woman is raising the children shopping, cooking, laundry, doctors appointments with the kids, PTA….all the while holding down low paying job to cover all the expenses….what is she recieving from her talmid chochum husband? A dvar torah at the shabbos table? Being able to tell her friends that she has a husband in kollel? It gets old fast.
I believe that most girls have seen this path and have chosen not to go down it, instead asking about a learner earner – a man who is a frum, good person, who likes Yiddishkeit and likes to learn but feels a responsibity to provide for his family.
I believe that yes, girls are being shallow and afraid by only wanting to marry a learning guy. I know many girls and believe me, only very few of them truly have this burning love for Torah with the discipline to provide for the home without the physical contributions from her husband.
Girls are shallow, but so is the society we live in. This is just one manifestation of the materialism and externally focused society we live in.
How sad that Torah has become so cheap as to become mere bragging rights.