Peter asks two important questions — why are men declining on college campuses, and is this a real problem?

First, I don’t think Tierney’s hypothesis that girls’ skills and interests are better suited to the “knowledge economy” cuts it. Even if that were the case (doubtful, because the entire notion that we are undergoing some great economic transformation into a “knowledge economy” is unpersuasive — it’s just one of those buzzwords people nod at), how does that information get into the heads of young men and their parents to cause them to conclude that going to college, despite all the hard-sell, based-on-earnings statistics such as those I wrote about yesterday, is not a good move for them? Can you imagine this conversation: “Mom and Dad, I’m not going to apply to college because women are going to dominate the best jobs in the future.”

We need a better explanation.

I think that Peter is on the right track in suggesting that boys are more apt to find school boring (maybe because, as Christina Hoff Sommers has argued, it’s been so feminized) and the idea of accepting several more years of it is unappealing to many of them. He’s also right in suggesting that the difference in job opportunities for young men and young women may play a role. An 18 year old guy can earn pretty good money doing construction or getting into auto mechanics. Perhaps it’s the case that the cost of not going to college is higher for many young women than for many young men.

Do we need to worry about this?

Not the group imbalance per se. Fretting over unequal group representation is a leftist preoccupation. As long as each individual is making the wisest choice given his or her own circumstances, we need not worry that any group is over- or under-represented.

If, however, the decline of interest in higher education among men is indicative of a general decline in education among boys, then we do have reason for concern. It appears that our weak K-12 educational system has more of a deleterious impact on boys. Some who might have earned college degrees and become professionals instead become truck drivers, and some who might have graduated from high school and become truck drivers drop out and do menial jobs — or crime. That is a problem.