This trend is separate from the question of whether the U.S. is sending too great a percentage of high school graduates to universities. However one might answer that question, it is a concern distinct from the ratio of boys to girls in higher education.
The article began by stating a pattern already established in various publications:
Men are abandoning higher education in such numbers that they now trail female college students by record levels.
Since the 1960s and 1970s, large amounts of federal, state, and local funding has gone into explicit efforts to encourage girls to attend post-secondary institutions. To which extent, if any, that funding is responsible for the current gender gap is open to question.
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.
Over time, this disparity could lead to a significant shortage of professionals. The societal and economic impacts will take time to manifest themselves, and take time to be corrected.
In the past, there was a time at which a gender gap existed in the opposite direction: when more boys than girls attended, and graduated from, institutions of higher education. The problems caused by that old gender gap were different from the problems which will be caused by the current gender gap. A scarcity of men with college diplomas will present society with a different set of challenges than the scarcity of women with college diplomas formerly caused.
