Men are abandoning higher education

Thursday, September 9th, 2021

Men are abandoning higher education in such numbers that they now trail female college students by record levels:

At the close of the 2020-21 academic year, women made up 59.5% of college students, an all-time high, and men 40.5%, according to enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research group. U.S. colleges and universities had 1.5 million fewer students compared with five years ago, and men accounted for 71% of the decline.

This education gap, which holds at both two- and four-year colleges, has been slowly widening for 40 years. The divergence increases at graduation: After six years of college, 65% of women in the U.S. who started a four-year university in 2012 received diplomas by 2018 compared with 59% of men during the same period, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

In the next few years, two women will earn a college degree for every man, if the trend continues, said Douglas Shapiro, executive director of the research center at the National Student Clearinghouse.

No reversal is in sight. Women increased their lead over men in college applications for the 2021-22 school year — 3,805,978 to 2,815,810 — by nearly a percentage point compared with the previous academic year, according to Common Application, a nonprofit that transmits applications to more than 900 schools. Women make up 49% of the college-age population in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau.

[...]

The college gender gap cuts across race, geography and economic background. For the most part, white men — once the predominant group on American campuses — no longer hold a statistical edge in enrollment rates, said Mr. Mortenson, of the Pell Institute. Enrollment rates for poor and working-class white men are lower than those of young Black, Latino and Asian men from the same economic backgrounds, according to an analysis of census data by the Pell Institute for the Journal.

Comments

  1. Goober says:

    There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just a correction to something that had gone out of balance. There are right now a glut of college educated people in the labor market, to where the value of the degree has been diluted somewhat. Corresponding to that glut of college educated people competing for the same three jobs, is a shortage of trained and skilled trades workers. The value of a good tradesman has gone through the roof, whereas the value of someone with a college degree is just kind of “meh”.

    Kids are smart. They see this. They realize that the best earning potential right now is to go learn a trade. They’ll be head and shoulders above their classmates who decided to get psychology degrees and work at Starbucks for the rest of their lives.

    This is a good thing. We absolutely needed this.

    It’s also high time for colleges to realize that there are alternatives to them, and that their insanely high prices placing choking debt on someone who can use their degree to get a barista job isn’t a sustainable business model. They will start feeling the squeeze and do something about that, either raising the value of their degree to a point commensurate with the cost, or lowering the cost.

  2. Wilbur Hassenfus says:

    This is necessary. Somebody’s going to have to pay for the girls’ college loans, and very few of them will ever be able to afford it.

  3. Gavin Longmuir says:

    There are a lot of factors hidden behind the gross numbers of females getting college credentials. For example, how many of them are running up debts to get “degrees” in Lesbian Dance? Or even in English Literature? What is the gender difference in STEM degrees?

    Another factor is the question of where does the difference begin? It is clear that the average teenager leaving a US high school is seriously undereducated compared to the average teenager leaving an Asian high school. Again, there are many factors involved in that deficit — one of them is the very large number of boys who are forced by school authorities onto Hyper Activity/Attention Deficit Disorder drugs, with their largely unexamined long term effects. Since the school environment is tailored more for girl-type behavior, fewer girls are being potentially damaged by those drugs.

  4. Roo Ster says:

    Universities have been taken over by obnoxious leftist women in the administration and many of the disciplines. Any occupation that gets dominated by women is one which men will flee due to the low status women bring to any occupation and the environment women create.

  5. McChuck says:

    Most women go to college to find a mate or because their parents are paying for them to waste time. They major in completely useless, often made-up subjects, and are easily indoctrinated to the Leftist causes of the moment.

    Most men go to college in order to access a good job. Universities, for the most part, no longer provide a useful, job-related education. So why bother, especially when the Leftist harpies will make your life a living hell the entire time you’re attending? They can’t even look at or talk to the girls now without potential career ending consequences.

  6. Harry Jones says:

    I’m guessing the college women these days must all be lesbian if they’re hoping to find a mate.

    Where do young men go for job training? Certification classes? Union apprenticeships? The Army?

  7. Jim says:

    What higher education? Haven’t heard of it. Sounds fake.

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