(NewsNation) — Men are turning away from college and the shift could have profound implications for the economy, their health and the American family.
Today, only 39% of young men who have completed high school are enrolled in college, down from 47% in 2011, according to a recent analysis by Pew Research. That works out to about 1 million fewer young men in college compared to just over a decade ago.
The trend isn’t new but as scholars like Richard Reeves have pointed out, the gradual retreat from higher education signals a larger crisis facing boys and men.
“It’s now clear that there are many boys and men who have fallen behind and that we have to be able to think about gender inequality in both directions,” Reeves said in a recent TED Talk.
Four-year universities aren’t the only schools with fewer men, community colleges have also seen enrollment dip in recent years, the National Bureau of Economic Research has found.
“It’s not the fact that the skilled trades are luring many of these men away from the college pathway. Many of the men who are not pursuing college today are not going into the skilled trades,” said Zack Mabel, a research professor at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.
Here are four ways men disappearing from campus could affect our communities.
1. College enrollment decline and the economy
Fewer men in school could worsen labor shortages in fields that depend on additional training and education. That may present a challenge for fast-growing sectors like health care, jobs that often require a bachelor’s or associate’s degree.
It will also leave those with less education more vulnerable to changing economic tides.
More than 70% of jobs over the next decade will go to workers with some education beyond high school, according to researchers at Georgetown. That percentage jumps to 85% for the types of jobs that provide financial stability.
Over a lifetime, workers with bachelor’s degrees typically earn $1.2 million more than those with only a high school diploma. Those with degrees are also less likely to lose jobs when the economy sours.
So are men pursuing other types of education instead? Not exactly.
“Many young men are foregoing education in training programs and associate’s degrees and so our entire economy as a whole is potentially not going to have enough workers to fill a lot of those skilled positions,” Mabel said.
By 2030, there could be as many as 2.1 million unfilled manufacturing jobs, an industry that has historically relied on male labor.
A broad decline in education and future earnings could also hamper public investments that rely on tax revenue, Mabel pointed out.
2. Men’s health could suffer
Research shows that people with more education tend to live healthier, longer lives than those with less education and that gap has grown in recent decades. As men turn away from school, worse health outcomes may follow.
Men are more likely than women to suffer “deaths of despair” stemming from drug overdoses, alcohol-liver disease and suicide. They’re also more likely to die from cancer.
Today, women live about six years longer than men in the United States and college-educated Americans live about 8.5 years longer than those without a bachelor’s degree. Thirty years ago, that education gap was 2.5 years.
Of particular concern are the so-called “social determinants” of health. It’s not that college-educated men are learning health secrets in the classroom, it’s that they tend to have more access to social and economic opportunities that lead to healthier, fulfilling lives.
Now, federal lawmakers have introduced legislation to establish an Office of Men’s Health. The Office on Women’s Health has been around for over 30 years.
3. Risk for relationships
Marriage used to be something most people did regardless of their social class but that’s no longer the case. Today, college graduates are more likely to get — and stay — married than those with less education.
In 2015, 65% of college-educated adults 25 and older were married, compared to 50% of those with no education beyond high school, according to Pew. In 1990, the marriage rate was above 60% for both groups.
Single and divorced men are at higher risk of dying from opioids. Married men also live longer and die by suicide at lower rates.
Because people with college degrees tend to partner with each other, the gender imbalance on campus has led to a broader mismatch in the dating market.
Most young men, over 60%, are single today. And women, particularly those who are college-educated, say they’re struggling to find someone who “meets their expectations.”
NYU Professor Scott Galloway has warned that the college gender gap, and the “mating inequality” that follows, pose an “existential risk” to society.
“We thrive on deep, meaningful bonds. Men who fail to attach to partners, careers, or communities often grow bitter and seek volatility and unrest,” Galloway wrote in a 2022 op-ed.
4. Racial inequalities could widen
Black and Hispanic men attend college at lower rates than their white counterparts and their proportion has shrunk in recent years.
Among Black high school graduates, just 37% of men between the ages of 18 to 24 were enrolled in college in 2022, down from 42% in 2011, Pew found.
At many Historically Black colleges and universities, just 1 in 3 undergraduate students are men, according to the Washington Post. For decades, those schools have served as important pipelines to high-paying careers, educating a significant portion of the nation’s Black engineers (40%), lawyers (50%) and judges (80%).
The wealth gap between white and black households has narrowed since 2019 but the typical white family still has about six times as much wealth as the typical black family. A turn away from college could exacerbate that disparity.
Among Hispanic men, the enrollment drop-off has been even more pronounced, falling from 42% in 2011 to 33% in 2022.