The higher ed gender gap is widening, reports Richard Fry for the Pew Research Center. Fewer young men are pursuing degrees, especially at four-year colleges and universities.
College enrollment has been declining for all students over the past decade, he writes, but the fall is steeper for males. "Today, men represent only 42% of students ages 18 to 24 at four-year schools, down from 47% in 2011."
Thirty-nine percent of male high school graduates are enrolled in college now, down from 47 percent in 2011, Fry reports. Forty-eight percent of female high school graduates are enrolled in college, down from 52 percent.
The gender gap in college-going is widest for white high school graduates, Pew reports.
After 12 years of public education where boys and young men are pressured to become "good little girls," I suspect many of them decide to get out of that stupid game.
Men are publicly villainized and openly discriminated on high school and college campuses. Of course fewer men are exposing themselves to that. The trades and various IT certifications are replacing college as men's entry to good paying jobs. Colleges are skewing heavily liberal arts, with a growing number of low employable degree fields such as gender or ethnic studies. College environment and education are changing ahead of the student demographics.
Life long debt and indoctrination? Men say "meh" to that? And just as most of what college offers is going to be taken over by AI?
In the book "Parenting to a Degree" the authors discussed the phenomenon where parents are more willing to pay full tuition, out of state tuition, sorority dues, semesters abroad and every other item that goes with higher education for their daughters than their sons. Many parents and especially helicopter mothers will support daughters pursuing the daughter's passions when those parents would never support their sons doing similar things.
There is also the problem that since girls mature earlier than boys and schools keep pushing college prep classes into lower grades, the boys start off behind the girls in 7th grade and will probably never be able to catch up.