Men have been increasingly underrepresented and “marginalized” in higher education for 40 years going back to the early 1980s & and young women are more likely than their male counterparts to be working after earning a college degree

See Chart of the day: For every 100 young women in October 2020… by Mark J. Perry.

"Yesterday the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its annual report on “College Enrollment and Work Activity of Recent High School and College Graduates – 2020” based on data as of October 2020. Here’s a description of the BLS data used for the report:

Information on school enrollment and employment status is collected monthly in the Current Population Survey (CPS), a nationwide survey of about 60,000 households that provides information on employment and unemployment. Each October, a supplement to the CPS gathers more detailed information about recent degree recipients and school enrollment. In addition to data on recent high school graduates ages 16 to 24, this release presents information on recent degree recipients ages 20 to 29.

The data in the BLS report are presented in three tables that correspond to the three sections in the chart above:

• Table 1. Labor force status of 2020 high school graduates and 2019-2020 high school dropouts 16 to 24 years old by school enrollment, educational attainment, sex, and rate in October 2020
• Table 2. Labor force status of persons 16 to 24 years old by school enrollment, educational attainment, sex, and race in October 2020
• Table 3. Labor force status of 2020 associate degree recipients and college graduates 20 to 29 years old by selected characteristics in October 2020

Although the BLS report highlighted several gender differences in educational and labor force outcomes between young men and young women, most of the 26 gender differences displayed in the chart above were not mentioned in the text of the BLS report. Specifically, the data in the chart above show that:

• Compared to young women, young men were less likely to graduate from high school, more likely to drop out of high school, less likely to enroll in college after high school and more likely to be unemployed. For example, for every 100 females who graduated from high school last year and enrolled in college in the fall of 2020, there were only 70 young men. For every 100 young women who were recently dropped out of high school, there were 134 young men.
• Compared to women ages 16 to 24, men in that age group were less likely to be enrolled in college, far less likely to have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher, and far less likely to be employed with a college degree. Compared to young women in that age group, young men were far more likely to have less than a high school diploma, much less likely to attend college after high school and more likely to be unemployed with or without a high school diploma. For example, for every 100 young women ages 16-22 who were enrolled in college and working last fall, there were only 66 young men.
• Compared to females ages 20-29 years old who recently earned an associate’s degree or hold a bachelor’s or advanced degree (master’s, professional or doctoral), their male counterparts were far less likely to have recently earned an associate’s degree, less likely to hold a bachelor’s or advanced (master’s, professional or doctoral) college degree and far less likely to have a college degree (bachelor’s degree or higher) and be employed. Young men ages 20-29 who were recent associate degree recipients, recent college graduates with a bachelor’s degree or higher, and those who with a bachelor’s or advanced degree were far more likely to have those degrees and be unemployed than their female counterparts. For example, for every 100 women who were recent associate degree recipients, there were only 56 men. For every 100 women with an advanced degree who were unemployed, there were 175 men.

The significant gender differences favoring young women for a variety of educational outcomes detailed above provide additional empirical evidence that it is men who are increasingly struggling to finish high school and attend and graduate from college. Actually, men have been increasingly underrepresented and “marginalized” in higher education for 40 years going back to the early 1980s. And young women are more likely than their male counterparts to be working after earning a college degree. College-educated young men with any degree (associate’s, bachelors, or advanced) are more likely than female college graduates to be either unemployed or not in the labor force.

It is young men, more than young women, who are at-risk and facing serious educational and work-related challenges, which show up later in large gender disparities for a variety of measures of (a) behavioral and mental health outcomes, (b) alcoholism, drug addiction, and drug overdoses, (c) suicide, murder, violent crimes, and incarceration, and (d) homelessness.

See my December 2019 post “Chart of the day: For every 100 girls/women…..” where I suggested that despite the fact that boys and men are at so much greater risk than girls and women on so many different measures, those significant gender disparities that disproportionately and adversely affect men get almost no attention. In fact, it’s girls and women who continue to get a disproportionate amount of attention, resources, and financial support. From the time girls are in elementary school, they are favored with a significant number of educational resources that aren’t available to boys including (a) thousands of after-school and summer girl-only programs for computer coding (“Girls Who Code”), (b) hundreds of girl-only summer STEM camps sponsored by both universities and private organizations, (c) numerous female-only scholarships, fellowships, and awards at the college level for both students and faculty, (d) many hundreds of women’s centers and women’s commissions, (e) female-only political campaign programs and (f) female-only health and medical science programs.

It’s because of the many risks facing young men and boys and the overwhelming favoritism for women in all levels of education that motivated me to file Title IX complaints with the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) against more than 300 community colleges, 4-year colleges, and universities, and public school districts for violating the civil rights of boys and men. Based on those complaints, the OCR has now opened more than 150 federal civil rights investigations for violations of Title IX’s clear legal prohibition of sex discrimination. Almost 50 of those investigations have been resolved by colleges and universities agreeing to either (a) terminate their discriminatory programs, (b) convert discriminatory, single-sex, female-only programs into legitimate coeducational programs that are open to all gender identities, or (c) introduce single-sex, male-only programs that are equivalent to the female-only programs.

As I’ve pointed out many times before Title IX clearly says that “No person [female or male] in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, …. be subjected to discrimination under any education program….” In the past, universities routinely violated Title IX with impunity because they were never challenged when they engaged in illegal discrimination against men, but that’s now changing. I’m hopeful that we’re entering a new era of civil rights enforcement that ends the long-standing selective enforcement of Title IX’s prohibition of sex discrimination. Based on my experience, momentum is building towards a new world of “Title IX for all” and not “Title IX for some.”"