Why men are lagging behind women in college enrollment

[Music] this morning in our school matters series we are looking at why fewer men are going to college than women only about 4 in 10 college students are men and that is a record low according to the wall street journal colleges and universities have lost one and a half million students over the past five years and men make up 71 percent of that decline this gender gap is not new but it's been widening for nearly half a century we spoke with marcus pickens who's from englewood california about why he left college i was a decent student in high school i wasn't the best student but i also didn't necessarily try my best i faced academic struggles so the first thing i noticed when i got into college was that i was underprepared to take college level mathematics i was having significant financial problems so i ended up having to work seven days a week i had a realization that i'm not about to let school define who who i am you know so i started planning a business i was like you know what if my dad can do it with an 11th grade education and make his business successful enough to purchase a home you know then what's stopping me ron lieber is the author of the price you pay for college and he joins us now few people know more than you about this subject so help us understand why have men been dropping out in essence for almost 50 years yeah so we have a historical issue that starts with the fact that we send 18 year olds to college in first place it's not at all clear that that's the optimal time to go now we've got a decade or two of history of student loan debt that people have that on the brain and then you get to a pandemic right and people are looking to value right the classes are online you may not be able to meet your friends and if you've got an opportunity in the marketplace where there are a lot of jobs going wanting and their jobs traditionally that men have taken and they may be higher paid jobs it sort of sounds to start to seem like a rational decision to not go to college right away yeah now college may not be the best option for everyone but what other alternatives should people consider well this is part of our challenge as a society right we don't necessarily value the high school to work pipeline as much as we write good right we don't have the right apprentice programs we don't have the right support systems we may not be supporting community colleges that may offer trade programs as much as we might and so we don't value it quite in the same way and we probably ought to do better at that were you saying ron that 18 is not the right age to go to college is that what you're saying yeah i mean many many decades ago we just decided that that's the way that it ought to be but that was before you know a lot of the best science on adolescent psychology and brain development discovered that you know brains are not that fully formed until maybe your early 20s or mid-20s so we're spending all this money on college for people who may not be ready and men young men um don't come along as quickly as young women do on app i do that's true but what would you do when you graduate from high school because most people many people can't afford not to go to college sure in terms of getting your career going yeah so what we're not talking about here is the sort of classic gap year as it's come to be conceived a sort of rich person's layabout um there can be apprentice programs there can be military service there can be non-military national service there can be a year of volunteer work there can be all sorts of jobs where you can go to find your passion or just rule something out because if you can figure out something that you don't want to do in the world that you don't want to study and raise money on later you've accomplished something very important this really changes the college experience for kids currently at school kids on their way to school because if you've got 60 women on campus 40 percent men that's an imbalance right are schools gonna have to start favoring men as weird as that sounds to bring them in in a few schools that's already happening right and if you are an administrator at one of those schools you have to sort of think about it right because if you're trying to correct the gender imbalance and there's a certain percentage of the population that wants to go to a 50 50 school it's not a good look to be 60 40 right so you may need to put your thumb on the scale for men in certain instances at some schools now you can find data that supports investing in college which helps you with a degree and then going into the workforce but then you can find data that shows you can go right into the workforce out of high school what do you think is the best option well much depends on what your interest and aptitude might be for college right not everybody wants to spend four years in the classroom and there are people who are good with coding or who are good with their hands um who could find a more worthwhile and satisfying career by going straight into the workplace yeah by the way national service military or not at age 18 would be something this country could benefit from a lot of people believe that it's a conversation that comes up every now and then could be a solution you're right about that ron lieber thank you so much for joining us we will be right back

Channel: CBS Mornings

Views: 92,478

Keywords: video, cbs, news, men, women, gender, college, enrollment, lagging, gender gap, university, education, school, ron lieber, author, the price you pay for college, men leaving college

Id: GTeQFFqP1qg

Length: 5min 1sec (301 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 16 2021