Higher education has a gender problem: With a surplus of women and a shortage of male students, colleges are becoming more and more gender unbalanced. The more farsighted among university administrators are starting to worry that this will turn universities into a pink-collar ghetto, places that the public thinks of as finishing schools for girls rather than gateways to middle-class stability.
Part of the problem, of course, is that our K-12 system, staffed overwhelmingly by women whom research shows tend to favor girls, leaves a lot of boys demoralized and uninterested in further education. But another big part of the problem is that college has become and anti-male space.
At today’s universities, masculinity is almost never discussed except in negative terms, usually with the word “toxic” attached. When girls and women are discussed, the question is always about how to help them do better. When boys and men are mentioned, it’s almost always as some sort of a problem.