Men left behind

Men have fallen way behind women for college/university attendance and graduation rates. This has been a 40-year trend.

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.

“Men are falling behind remarkably fast,” said Thomas Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, which aims to improve educational opportunities for low-income, first-generation and disabled college students.

American colleges, which are embroiled in debates over racial and gender equality, and working on ways to reduce sexual assault and harassment of women on campus, have yet to reach a consensus on what might slow the retreat of men from higher education. Some schools are quietly trying programs to enroll more men, but there is scant campus support for spending resources to boost male attendance and retention.

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.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/college-university-fall-higher-education-men-women-enrollment-admissions-back-to-school-11630948233#=

There are now over 1 million more female college students than males, 59.5% of all college students, even though females are only 49% of the population. This is a direct result of a feminist culture that devalues men and supports females. All my life I’ve heard from educators, journalists, professors, and pundits how women are oppressed and need special affirmative action to make it. All the way that women were being favored, men were ignored! This is Satanic. God’s plan for mankind is for the man to work and the female to be a homemaker. There are valid exceptions to this rule, but it should hold true for most people.

One of the saddest things about men being left behind academically is that no one seems to care. There is very little discussion of this disparity between women and men in the media, in academia, from politicians, K-12 educators, or from pastors. You won’t see widespread calls for affirmative action to help men as you saw with minorities or with women. Men will continue to fall behind. It’s a real tragedy. We live in a culture that hates biblical values for men. Patriarchy is attacked as being misogynist and sexist, racist and it’s declared by feminists as unworkable in modern society. We, as Christians, must stand up for biblical values. We must value men and their important role as husbands, fathers, and workers. We must demand that this achievement gap be addressed and solutions implemented.