Mr. Burnet: Unfortunately, I think you are right.

As Universities crank out more and more devalued
pieces of paper, you'll see more disconnect between male and female higher ed. entrance. And
more of a muddy correlation between financial success and academic achievement.

Do the breakdown on what fields of study are
chosen by males and females respectively and the
story becomes less clear.

Also, it's the racial gap that is really critical.
Whites are under-represented in certain important
academic sectors. This whole gender thing seems
like a smokescreen for that.

J.H.: The question is not so much whether a degree has value or not, (though I'd argue it has more value now due to the devaluation of a high school degree) rather it is the fact that more women are preparing for the future and less men are doing the same.

Haven't girls always done better in primary education, than boys ?
The question isn't really, why are females now enrolling in college in greater numbers than males, but rather, why haven't they before ?
Some part is surely that females are now getting married at a later age, on average.
Another part might be that females are only now fully able to realize their potential, although I would have guessed that GenX females had that freedom as well.

Michael "Candide" Herdegen:

"The question isn't really, why are females now enrolling in college in greater numbers than males, but rather, why haven't they before?"

I suppose as well the question isn't really why we have so many divorces and abortions today, but why we didn't have a lot more before. Or not why Islamists want to kill us today, but why they didn't fifty years ago. Or not even why crime is going up or down, but why it didn't used to go down or up.

Michael, no offence, but this is why people periodically rise up in a rage and slaughter intellectuals.

Buttercup;

J.H.'s point is that, given the devaluation of the college degree, it's hardly a given that attending college is in fact preparing for the future instead of postponing it.

AOG:

Are you suggesting we're outsmarting those silly girls again? Gosh, we're a shrewd bunch.

AOG: If an employer can hardly rely on a high school education to show competence in the basics any longer and must rely on at least some college to indicate this, than how is avoiding college preparing for the future?

And, though a college education is not necessarily an indicator of financial success, would you, as a parent, not incourage your child to go to college? So, it is not whether a degree garuntees financial success so much as the *preception* that it will garuntee that success. You want your child to be successful, you encourage them to pursue higher education.

Since most people on this blog site are college educated, I'd like to hear from one who is actively discouraging his/her child from attending college. I'd think you'd be hard pressed to find one.

Peter B:

Crime has always gone up and down, we just didn't document it before.

Divorce, abortion, and Muslim rage are all easily answered, and the right questions are asked.

However, in this post, the wrong question is being asked, similar to asking, "Why do more women want to kill their babies since Roe v Wade ?"
Obviously, they may well have wanted to before, they just had a much higher hurdle to accomplishing it.

Since we know that in North America, until roughly thirty years ago, it was harder for females to attend college than it was for males, my question makes clear the perceptual bias that prevents Jack McConnell and many others from definitively determining whether this trend is unusual, or the natural ratio.

Further, Mr. Burnet, you have implied that I am an intellectual, and I demand an apology, or satisfaction !

How utterly un-pc Mr. SmartyPants, everyone knows the proper ratio already.

Peter,
Just read an article in "Men's Health" that confirms your thesis. Young women today know that they cannot rely on marriage to provide for their economic security, so they are in a hurry to establish their careers early. When they get to their 30s, they know that they'll either have to find a suitable mate to have children with (the preferred option), or have and raise children by themselves (the default option that they plan for).

Men, on the other hand, no longer feel pressured to fulfill any responsible role in society. They know that they can have children at a much later age than women, so there is no biological clock driving their decisions. So there is really no pressure to get serious about careers or mates early, they can bask in prolonged adolescence for as long as they want.