WHERE THE BOYS AREN’T: Chronicle of Higher Education: The Missing Men.

Wilson is part of an exodus of men away from college that has been taking place for decades, but that accelerated during the pandemic. And it has enormous implications, for colleges and for society at large.

Last fall, male undergraduate enrollment fell by nearly 7 percent, nearly three times as much as female enrollment, according to the National Student Clearinghouse. The decline was the steepest — and the gender gap the largest — among students of color attending community colleges. Black and Hispanic male enrollment at public two-year colleges plummeted by 19.2 and 16.6 percent, respectively, about 10 percentage points more than the drops in Black and Hispanic female enrollment. Drops in enrollment of Asian men were smaller, but still about eight times as great as declines in Asian women.

In the late 1970s, men and women attended college in almost equal numbers. Today, women account for 57 percent of enrollment and an even greater share of degrees, especially at the level of master’s and above. The explanations for this growing gender imbalance vary from the academic to the social to the economic. Girls, on average, do better in primary and secondary school. Boys are less likely to seek help when they struggle. And they face more pressure to join the work force. . . .

But when Shelley began calling around to see what other colleges were doing to support men, he came away empty-handed. “Most of the people I talked to expressed the sentiment that men are the problem,” he said.

Twenty-five years later, Shelley sees this structural “anti-maleness” embedded in school-discipline policies that disproportionately net boys, and in sexual-assault prevention programs that sometimes treat incoming students as threats. “I had one young man tell me ‘I was welcomed to college by being told that I’m a potential rapist,” he said.

Probably not the best pitch. Of course, even in this article most of the focus is on “men of color.”

Plus: “Meanwhile, the decline in male enrollment shows no signs of abating. This spring, 400,000 fewer males enrolled in college than in the spring of 2020, a drop nearly double that for females (203,000), data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center show.”

The problem is that higher education isn’t the value proposition it once was, and it treats male students — especially, but not solely white male students — as problems, if not outright enemies. Why go?

That this article is in the Chronicle suggests that the establishment is worrying, but they’ve been aware of this problem for a couple of decades. But work on academic support or recruiting behind the scenes doesn’t offset the bad image protected when every other statement marginalizes and “otherizes” the very group you’re trying to recruit.