Comments
By jnord 2025-04-250:17 By altairprime 2025-04-2517:402 reply Previously on HN, with some discussion spread across four posts over the past year:
Why aren't we talking about the real reason male college enrollment is dropping? https://celestemdavis.substack.com/p/why-boys-dont-go-to-col...
> What has changed is an increase in girls. When you look at other areas where this exact same thing has happened, it is not such a head scratcher why fewer men are going to college. We’re just not talking about it.
> For every 1% increase in the proportion of women in the student body, 1.7 fewer men applied.
> “There’s a cliff you fall off once you become 60/40 female/male. It then becomes exponentially more difficult to recruit men.”
Whatever other factors may exist, college is now at or past the 60% women threshold, so of course men are quitting college. We can expect — to such a degree of certainty, given historical U.S. data that we could place a safe bet on a market about it — that college will be 80% women and in perhaps ten years or less.
It’s cute that Bloomberg is focusing on all the rationalizations that men are coming up with for this — at least some of them have the courage to say that it’s just the “vibes”. A little self-awareness would go a long way towards understanding, but Bloomberg doesn’t go there. Honestly, they should be assessing gender trends at trade schools over the past twenty years and see if those are at risk of becoming incompatible with U.S. masculinity next. What would it do to their president’s domestic manufacturing dreams if men refused to attend trade schools?
By bsder 2025-04-2622:23 > Whatever other factors may exist, college is now at or past the 60% women threshold, so of course men are quitting college. We can expect — to such a degree of certainty, given historical U.S. data that we could place a safe bet on a market about it — that college will be 80% women and in perhaps ten years or less.
I simply don't buy this. A social gathering spot of common age where the male:female ratio is 4:6 or better for men should be swarmed with men. When I was young, I worked in a geographic area that had demographics like that among the 20-30 year old women and it was the sole time in my life that I was "popular".
The problem is the school pipeline. The average girl does significantly better than the average boy across the board (this is documented ad nauseam). If they all apply to college, then with no adjustment, more girls will get admitted than boys.
What happened is that college became required, which means that the "average" high school student must now go to college where in the past only the "upper" high school students would go to college.
The differential between boys and girls is much smaller the higher the average achievement of the "demographic slice" you take.
This is 5GW, and many of the statements you link are entirely value based.
The simple fact of the matter is there are hidden biases against men completing college, that favor women completing college.
The same holds true to a large degree in employment with few exceptions.
Making a supposition that the pool of female to male candidates for college is interconnected is a fallacy. It is independent, and based on factors with no current visibility, and there are no guaranteed prospects even if men can somehow complete the struggle session to a degree.
What's worse. Women don't date down. So all those women who got degrees will have a harder time finding mates, will be the bread winner which leaves the men in a role that is unattractive to them, and they will be highly dissatisfied as a result of simple math and gender selection differences.
You don't survive by ignoring reality, and birthrate collapse is going to happen given the myriad of issues that people can't seem to get a mental grasp enough to recognize the underlying problems. When there is a problem, and people can't communicate sufficiently to organize to recognize said problem, nothing gets done. You can't react, and the problem grows until it can't grow any more (at existential crisis). Cascading failures are diabolical because people cannot believe that certain little things cause great big things in time. Evolutionary selection eventually destroys societies based in total control, as those members cannot adapt and fail Darwinian fitness.
I am in my 50’s and I could not agree more, every step of the way in my education and career it is just women everywhere. most of my teachers were women all the way through high school, undergraduate school, all women (teachers and students), graduate school, all women, myriad of jobs since graduation all my bosses and co-workers all women, CEOs of every company I worked for, all women. On just about every team I worked on I was the only male person on the Team. Lived in 12 states during schooling and subsequent career, my Congress representatives, all women, my Senators, all women. Mayors of every of the 14 towns/cities I worked in, all women. My Governors, all women… Just madness :)
By mixmastamyk 2025-04-2622:501 reply Where is this glorious place?
By juunpp 2025-04-273:51 Definitely not in the CS campus.
By altairprime 2025-04-269:06 I disagree.
By orionblastar 2025-04-250:593 reply My son earned a business management degree and had a hard time finding a job. He had to work in a movie theatre as an assistant manager that didn't pay too well. He went to trade school and earned a CDL (Commercial Driver's License) for $5000 and now drives a truck for decent money.
A college degree can be expensive, and it does not guarantee a job, plus you have a huge student loan to pay off. That is why American Men think it is not worth it to go to college anymore.
By bravetraveler 2025-04-257:50 > think it is not worth it to go to college anymore.
They're likely right, too. Turns out... employers minds are elsewhere. The degree no longer serves as a useful signal.
In nearly two decades I still haven't found cause to finish my degree. Hell, I don't even have to practice what I was hired for.
Can often find the job is 'whatever we decide'. Education, in some/several senses, is undesirable. Instead of falling for it, may find it better to be too dumb to notice or too tough to care about hoodwinking.
By _mlbt 2025-04-2512:58 Additionally going into the trades can mean joining the workforce immediately so that you can start early on buying a house and saving for retirement.
Also military recruitment is way up, which is another avenue young men (and women) can take to acquire employable skills without going to college.
By BobaFloutist 2025-04-2520:271 reply But why do American Women disagree with American Men on this?
By orionblastar 2025-05-0120:13 Not all women, there were some women in my son's class applying for the CDL.
Generally, Women do not want labor jobs and enjoy a desk job instead. This is why men are paid more than women in general the labor jobs pay more and require a trade school.
