By Kalena Reynolds | Staff Writer
At the end of 2020 and 2021, women made up 59.5% of college students — an all-time high — while men made up 40.5%. Additionally, within the next few years, for every man who earns a college degree, two women will earn one.
When Taylor Swift said, “You know how to ball, I know Aristotle,” she could have been referencing the “mating crisis” that researchers have been reporting within the United States. According to a Business Insider article, the crisis supposedly leaves men “broke and alone.”
The disparity of academic statistics is only the start of a nationwide dilemma that reveals women are not only outperforming men in college classrooms but also multiple other metrics.
70% of high school valedictorians are women, and women account for 60% of all high-school students with A or A-plus averages despite taking harder classes than men. 68.4% of the homeless population is men. Men make up nearly 80% of suicides. Men dying of overdose is at a two to three times greater rate than women in 2020 or 2021.
Arguments have also been made that college-aged men have an easier time entering the workplace without a degree than women; therefore, more men are skipping out on college altogether.
Sure, one could argue that these statistics are due to a lower admissions rate for men into college, but in reality, there is a lower application rate. The Wall Street Journal reported that in the 2021-22 academic school year, there were 3,805,978 Common Applications completed by women compared to 2,815,810 by men.
However, explanations for this gap are complex and break down into a multitude of possibilities.
The first possible explanation is the difference in maturation. A study done in 2021 suggests that biologically, men mature cognitively and develop slower than women, so an 18-year-old male would roughly compare to a 16-year-old female. While this wouldn’t explain the sudden change in metrics, it does explain why the Western education system could be failing men by expecting them to succeed using the same formula and timeline as women.
The next possibility could be the rise of single-parent households and their psychological effects on men.
“Over a quarter (27.6%) of all U.S. occupied households were one-person households in 2020, up from just 7.7% in 1940.”
In boys especially, the repercussions of growing up in a single-mother household are significant, such as a greater likelihood of suspension in the eighth grade and more diagnoses of ADHD.
There is also the non-scientific possibility that men no longer prioritize high performance. While this could stem from the uproar over female empowerment, specifically in the workplace, it could also just be from reduced gender roles and less traditional expectations of men.
It has become increasingly accepted in Western culture for women to be the breadwinners, and while this could lift societal expectations, it’s also leaving women with the question: “Where do I find an equal mate?”
Opinions aside, finding the answer to this problem should be prioritized and discussed throughout society before statistics become any more drastic.
