An NYU professor says fewer men going to college will lead to a 'mating crisis' with the US producing too many 'broke and alone' men

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An NYU professor says fewer men going to college will lead to a 'mating crisis' with the US producing too many 'broke and alone' men

Fewer men than women are attending college, which is leading to a "mating crisis," the New York University professor Scott Galloway told CNN on Saturday.  Women made up 59.5% of college students at the end of the 2020-21 school year, an all-time high, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month, citing US Department of Education data. That's in comparison to 40.5% of men enrolled in college. 

Data from the National Center for Education Statistics found that in 1970, men made up close to 59% of those enrolled in college, compared to about 41% of women who were enrolled.  Additionally, The Journal reported that in the next few years the education gap will widen so that for every one man who earns a college degree, two women will earn one. 

Galloway told CNN that the problem is much bigger than just the current numbers because men drop out at greater rates than women. "College is becoming the domain of women and not men," he said. 

The issue he said is being driven by the rising cost of college without much change to the quality of education. Elite universities, he said, are focused on giving a luxury experience and not expanding enrollment.  Additionally, he said, college-aged men have more options than their female peers. 

You can walk onto a construction site in Florida, you can turn on an app — cop, firemen, trade job — which at the age of 18 if you can make $100 to $200 a day that feels like real cabbage," he said.  But Galloway warned that beyond the classroom, the gap is causing an "existential threat to society," and that we are creating a "dangerous cohort." "We have mating inequality in the country," he said, adding that women with college degrees don't want to partner with men who don't hold a degree. 

"The most dangerous person in the world is a broke and alone male, and we are producing too many of them," he said. 

He said the most "unstable violent societies in the world," all have one thing in common: "Young depressed men who aren't attaching to work, aren't attaching to school, and aren't attaching to relationships."

The Journal reported that there's no "reversal" insight for this gap. Women make up 49% of college-age people in the country, but in the 2021-22 school year, there were 3,805,978 Common App college applications by women compared to just 2,815,810 by men. 

In the fall of 2020, while the University of California, Los Angeles expanded enrollment by 3,000 students, 90% of those spots were filled by women. That same semester, only 41% of those enrolled in UCLA were men, The Journal reported.  UCLA Vice Provost Youlonda Copeland-Morgan told The Journal that men's applications are not more competitive but that fewer men apply.