We’ve heard a lot about the “boy crisis” in higher education, and strong evidence for it has come from a variety of sources. College admissions offices struggle each year to keep their entering classes at less than a 3-to-2 ratio of girls to boys. The American Association of Publishers reported in 2005 that “male students study one-third less than women, party more often, are more likely to earn a ‘C’ or less in their courses, and expect to take longer to graduate, according to a nationwide study of 1,800 college students released today by Student Monitor.” And former Newsweek editor Peg Tyre wrote last month at The Huffington Post that “boys get expelled from preschool at nearly five times the rate of girls, they get identified as being learning disabled or having behavior issues at four times the rate. They are twice as likely to get held back. They bring home more C’s and D’s on their report cards and according to the Centers for Disease Control, by the time American boys are 16 years old, a full 14 percent have been ‘diagnosed’ with an attention deficit disorder.”

All of this runs against a much-publicized report by American Association of University Women announcing that the boy crisis was a complete myth. (Go here to reach the full report on pdf file.) The report offered several arguments and facts to counter the belief that boys are in trouble, but singled out this one the most:

“Perhaps the most compelling evidence against the existence of a boys’ crisis is that men continue to outearn women in the workplace. Among all women and men working full time, year round, women’s median annual earnings were 77 percent of men’s earnings in 2005 (Institute for Women’s Policy Research, 2007). Looking at the college-educated, full-time work force one year out of college, women [sic] earned 80 percent of men’s earnings on average in 2001, and 10 years out of college, women earned only 69 percent of men’s earnings in 2003 (AAUP Educational Foundation, 2007).”

Here is an explanation for the disparity, though, offered by Leonard Sax in Education Week. (It’s here, but you’ll need a subscription or to go through your library.)

“Remarkably, [the report] makes no mention of the single biggest contributor to that persistent gender gap; namely, the fact that young women continue to choose professions that pay less well than those chosen by men with similar education.”

Sax affirms that women are just as capable of math and physics and engineering as men are, but they don’t choose those lucrative fields. Apparently, when boys good at math and science are asked if they want to make a career of them, many answer, “Yes.” When girls good at math and science are asked, “girls today almost unanimously answer it NO.” In fact, the absolute number of women in computer science and physics, he notes, fell by more than 50 percent in the last 20 years. The truth is, “Women remain more likely than men to major in art history and journalism; men are more likely than women to major in computer science, physics, and engineering.”

Sax thinks that the answer lies in single-sex classes, which would send more girls into those fields. But according to an AAUP position paper on the issue, quoted by Sax, “Separate is inherently unequal.” That sounds more like an ideological commitment than a factual inference.

(Image derived from a photo by Flickr Creative Commons user Menlo School)