Where the Boys Are

Rebecca de Winter

According to FLOTUS, today (April 26, 2016) is College Signing Day, a celebration of students seeking higher education after high school. On Twitter, look for the hashtags #CollegeSigningDay and #ReachHigher to see inspiring examples of students proudly taking “signing selfies” and showing off their school spirit.

Politics of FLOTUS aside, I love this. It makes me happy to see young adults reveling in the excitement and accomplishment of college acceptance.

Now of course I have to rain on that parade.

While the media has been relentless in its hammering the narrative that women’s rights are still not a thing (seriously?), young men have been quietly disappearing from college campuses across the nation over the past couple of decades.

According to the latest data available, women outnumber men in college by a large margin, male-female ratio of 43.6–56.4.

There are a lot of theories as to why this is occurring. According to the Pew Research Center, scholars have speculated that it could be due to economic factors, or perhaps behavioral and disciplinary issues boys are more likely to experience in school.

While boosting and encouraging our young girls to aim for the stars is good and noble, are we neglecting our boys? It’s not a zero-sum game. We can manage both, though many feminists claim otherwise.

Some seem to be taking a kind of perverse pleasure in this reversal of fortunes for young men, and claim that the changes have to do with, what else? Sexism.

I can’t claim to have the answers here, I’m just discovering this phenomenon. As a mom to two boys and one girl, I have a horse (or, three) in this race. My oldest son is in college, but it was not an easy accomplishment for him. Not that it is for anyone, of course, but nine of the top ten in his class were young women. I found that interesting.

There is certainly much to celebrate today about the increasing academic success of young women, and I’m the last to complain about that. However, something is clearly amiss when young men are disappearing in droves from campuses across the nation. Maybe we can take a time-out from the fake college “rape epidemic” and try to find out what exactly is going on.

Let’s bring back our boys.

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