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Men are driving the decline in college enrollments—particularly at four-year institutions, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.
While the number of women aged 18 to 24 in college has decreased by 200,000 since total college enrollment peaked in 2011, the number of men in that age bracket has dropped by a million during that time period. Men currently make up 42 percent of all 18- to 24-year-old college students, down from 47 percent in 2011.
The shift has not impacted community colleges, where men make up approximately the same portion of traditional-age students as they did in 2011.
In total, the number of young men who graduated high school and are now in college stands at 39 percent, an eight-percentage-point decrease from 2011. The share of women enrolled decreased four percentage points, from 52 percent in 2011 to 48 percent today. The gap between enrollment rates of male and female students is even wider for white students; the number of white male high school graduates who are in college dropped nine percentage points in the past 12 years, while the number of white female high school graduates attending college dropped only three percentage points during that period.
