There’s a gender gap in higher education, but not in the way you might think. Fewer young men are choosing college, and it isn’t because they’re less capable or intelligent—it’s because society has failed to make higher education as appealing, relevant and valuable to them.
According to UT Institutional Reporting, Research, Information and Surveys data for 2025, UT’s student body is composed of 55.9% women and 43.9% men. The trend of falling college enrollment in men isn’t unique to UT. Nationally, men made up 44% of college students in 2022 according to U.S. Census Bureau data, a decrease from 47% in 2011.
While women have historically been barred and discouraged from pursuing education, they have also consistently outperformed their male peers. Female students have demonstrated better attendance, received higher grades, put more effort into participation and had higher graduation rates. As a result, while the gender gap might appear to have numerically flipped, male students have never truly outperformed their female peers in higher education. Now, enrollment rates reflect that reality.
Statistics and data science freshman Alexis Luciano has never considered a path other than higher education. However, he noticed his male peers in high school being pushed away from it, largely due to economic factors and anti-higher education rhetoric online.
“Most men, I feel like, choose to go to technical schools so that way they can get out of school quicker and get a job that pays decently,” Luciano said. “That happened with my high school. Mostly everyone that I know, they went to technical schools rather than going to a college or university.”
Influencers and podcasters push wealth-seeking and denigrate education, politicians preach anti-intellectualism. It’s understandable that young men, when bombarded by this kind of messaging, might come to believe that pursuing higher education isn’t worthwhile. However, while there’s a tangible economic reward to pursuing alternatives like the trades or the military, at least in the short term, these decisions have far-reaching consequences.
Jordan Conwell, associate professor of sociology, specializes in the relationship between educational opportunity and socioeconomic well-being. He argues there are dramatic physical, mental and emotional repercussions of dropping male enrollment.
“This gender gap in college completion has been larger (for racial minority groups) for a longer period of time than it has among whites,” Conwell said. “And those groups also give us a sense of what happens when these gaps persist. There are a number of unintended effects on health, families, communities and patterns of marriage that come when you have large gender disparities in college completion, especially when some of the men who are not getting degrees might want those degrees.”
Girls aren’t inherently better suited to learning. Rather, they have not faced the same labor market, experience of K-12 education, messaging and broader cultural climate that boys have.
“It is reasonable to assume that men’s college ambitions are disproportionately harmed by that kind of (anti-higher education) narrative,” Conwell said. “But that also means that men’s college prospects could be helped by doing more to combat those narratives and talk about the value of higher education, not just for individuals but for their families, for their communities.”
Ultimately, the gender gap in higher education is more than a lost opportunity for individual young men. It’s perpetuating the conditions that create weaker communities and poorer outcomes in almost every facet of life. After convincing young men they can’t find success through higher education, it’s essential that we challenge anti-higher education messaging, think holistically and creatively about alternative pathways to college and invest in bridging the gap between education and employment. The classroom belongs to young men too, and it’s crucial that they know it.
Tuscano is a government sophomore from Round Rock, Texas.
