Glenn Harlan Reynolds explores that question in this piece on TCSDaily.
Reynolds suggests that the answer may be “that men aren’t so much underrepresented in college as women are overrepresented. This is plausible. There probably are too many people going to college in general, and it may be that men — more likely to choose, or at least consider, high-paying but unfeminine alternatives like plumbing, or other, more ‘masculine’ alternatives like military service — are less likely to wind up in college as an unthinking extension of high school.”
I particularly like the phrase “an unthinking extension of high school.”
Last year, I suggested pretty much the same thing here.
Reynolds suggests that congressional hearings into this supposed problem may be in the offing. It’s just the sort of thing that lends itself to political grandstanding, but knowing a bit about how hearings are usually conducted in Washington, I can’t imagine any good coming of it. And as I’ve said before, education is none of the federal government’s concern.