And because of the huge inertia in political discourse, the gap will have to reach something like 50% vs 20% before it even becomes acceptable to raise this as an issue.
That doesn't mean that we're not failing our young boys; we certainly are. But it's always useful to break it down by race and class, especially in the States.
A deeper question is why? If our culture is biased against boys, you might expect the gap to appear in all racial and economic classifications. My hypothesis is that we're in the midst of a giant pauperization: technology is eating most real jobs. In recent decades, however, there's still been a relative abundance of salaried jobs that require stability and organizational and interpersonal skills, which women, either by genes or socialization, are better at. So there's a real difference in investment payoff for a woman to go to college than a man, given their existing skill sets [1]. So more women go to college [2].
For now, at least. Give it a decade or two and I'm predicting an even lower proportion of men and women both going to college, particularly those in marginalized communities whose labor wouldn't be improved to the point that capital needs them to to make more real profits.
[1] One way to confirm that would be whether a man with a college degree makes less money than a woman with an equivalent degree. Which I think is the case but want to find a real cite for it.
[2] Another hypothesis: traditional male archetypes are falling by the wayside. Discarding those is a strategy people are using, consciously or no, to try to build up the interpersonal skills of men. I don't know how to test this, however.
Another choice is that there are more attractive opportunities for a non-college educated male than a non-college educated female. Working construction, landscaping, or other dirty physical jobs is a way for a young male to work and make money without the necessity of college.
Let's look at the gender wage gap. Assume someone looks at the statistics that say that overall women earn less than men and says, why aren't race and class considered as factors? Why would someone say that, and what possible conclusions could they reach if they were to slice up the data for those demographics? They could say that some demographics are equal or in favor of women, but overall it would still be in favor of men, so what sort of point could they make there?
Sort of. At least, that's the net result. But it isn't because gender privilige is truly reversed- it is because they are weighted down by things like incarceration, which impacts men more than women, and gang violence, which also impacts men more as more men join gangs!
That is, suppose white men and women (for the sake of argument I'm excluding other races) are on a completely level playing field. But, black men are going to college far less than black women, because of incarceration or gang violence and whatever other factors. How can that be purely an issue of gender and not race?
The gap in achievement at later levels of schooling on an aggregate basis has been an active discussion for years already - we don't yet understand why, but it's an active area of interest, discussion and research.
As has the fact that the recession hitting those with lower levels of education harder are hitting men disproportionately.
Because you haven't heard about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Thankfully while real, those are fringe groups. So I guess my point is that there will probably always be resistance/people who reject bringing it up out-of-hand.
Canada, considered the most educated nation, has, if I recall correctly, 64% of the population with some post-secondary achievement. But note that includes university, community college, trades, etc.
Also, the distribution is quite bimodal, a small number of US MSAs have tons of college grads (Boston, SF, NYC) vs. huge tracts of the US with few graduates at all.
[1] "Coming Apart" by Charles Murray, highly recommended.
"Nearly 41 percent of young adults had their own or their partner's child in the household at age 27."
"Sixty-five percent of married individuals had at least one child in the home, compared with 21 percent of single individuals"
"By 27 years of age, 32 percent of women had received a bachelor's degree, compared with 24 percent of men. "
This is a rather strong antidote to the idea that everyone gets a college degree:
"At 27 years of age, 28 percent of individuals had received their bachelor's degree while 38 percent had attended some college or received an associate's degree."
Also interesting:
"At 27 years of age, 34 percent of young adults were married, 20 percent were unmarried and living with a partner, and 47 percent were single, that is, not married or living with a partner."