Gender Imbalance in Higher Education

Nancy Gibbs writes a short, provocative essay in Time Magazine on a troubling topic that many are reluctant to discuss: female college students are generally both more numerous and of a higher quality than their male counterparts. This leads to a widespread imbalance:

Roughly 58% of undergraduates nationally are female, and the girl-boy ratio will probably tip past 60-40 in a few years. The divide is even worse for black males, who are outnumbered on campus by black females 2 to 1.

U.S. News & World Report found that the admissions rate of men at the College of William and Mary, for example, was an average of 12 percentage points higher than that of women--because, as the admissions director memorably told the magazine, "even women who enroll ... expect to see men on campus. It's not the College of Mary and Mary; it's the College of William and Mary."