I heard this story on the radio and then I went in to look at the details a bit more. I believe this shift has been more dramatic occurred within the past ten years or so.
At the close of the 2020-21 academic year, women made up 59.5% of college students, an all-time high, and men 40.5%, according to enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research group. U.S. colleges and universities had 1.5 million fewer students compared with five years ago, and men accounted for 71% of the decline.
This education gap, holds at both two- and four-year colleges, has been slowly widening for 40 years. The divergence increases at graduation: After six years of college, 65% of women in the U.S. who started a four-year university in 2012 received diplomas by 2018 compared with 59% of men during the same period, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
In the next few years, two women will earn a college degree for every man, if the trend continues, said Douglas Shapiro, executive director of the research center at the National Student Clearinghouse.
I have one still in college and he has had his struggles with the poor instructors, the inbred institutional bureaucracy and at-home learning for the same tuition. One who has graduated was never happy with his experience either.
I know both men and women who have started the process and racked up the debt and have not finished their degrees. I believe that the colleges are behind all of the problems and not the students or potential students.