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Jacqueline King, author of a recent study on the gender gap in college, emphasizes that it is widest among blacks (63% women to 37% men in the latest figures), Hispanics (57% to 43%) and, in her analysis, lower-income whites (54% to 46%). "It's not middle-class white young men who aren't going to college," she says. And an enrollment boom among older women is further skewing the numbers.
Mortenson, though, cites U.S. Census measures indicating that the gap cuts across racial and income groups. Moreover, he and others argue, boys as a group trail girls at many stages of K-12 achievement: boys tend to earn lower grades and are less likely to earn a high school diploma. They score marginally higher on the SAT, but only 65% of boys who apply are admitted to college, vs. 69% of girls.
Christina Hoff Sommers, a conservative education analyst, writes in her recent book, The War Against Boys, that schoolboys are "routinely regarded as protosexists, potential harassers and perpetuators of gender inequity" who "live under a cloud of censure." Sommers cites studies showing that boys come to school less prepared than girls, do less homework and get suspended more often. "For males, there's no social currency in being a straight-A student," says Clifford Thornton, associate dean of admissions at Wesleyan University. Although the latest figures show that college graduates earn, on average, almost double the wages of those with no college, "there's a sense among many boys that it's sissy to go to college," says sociologist and author Michael Kimmel. "The thinking is, 'I can get a job without it.'"
Consider Justin Spagnoli. After high school he took classes at a community college before quitting to work in his father's cabinet shop in Royston, Ga. Today Spagnoli, 25, earns $50,000 a year, while his buddies are just finishing college, taking jobs for lower pay. "You don't need [a degree]," he says, if you have a talent.
Some private liberal arts colleges are making it easier for men to get in. At Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., this year's freshman class is 43% male--up from 36% last year--in part because the school gave preference to "qualified male candidates on the margin," says Robert Massa, vice president for enrollment and student life. The idea gets mixed reviews among Dickinson's students. "It reeks of affirmative action," says physics major Michelle Edwards. But Massa emphasizes that "the men we admitted were as qualified as the women."
Last July the University of Georgia lost a lawsuit filed by female students who were denied admission because of an affirmative-action policy that favored men. Says junior Shanna Norris, 20: "It's not fair that a boy would get extra weight [in the admissions index] over a girl, but it would be better if there were more boys on campus."
How then to recruit more guys? At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, recruiters aggressively tout math and science programs--traditionally popular among male applicants. Chicago's DePaul University (59% female) sends out extra mailings to boys.