During the past few years, I have walked into a number of classes I’ve taught, looked around and have been startled at what I have witnessed. I am talking about the X/Y factor, or the gender ratio. Gender imbalance was striking. A number (though not all) of my classes were more than two-thirds female.
I did not remember seeing such a gender imbalance in my classes during my first few years of teaching or when I was an undergraduate and graduate student.
I was so surprised that I spoke to a few colleagues here at my own and other institutions about this issue. They noticed identical situations in their classrooms and at their institutions as well. Indeed, it appeared the boys were either “not back in town” or they were not flocking to college campuses with the frequency that their female counterparts were.
By 2005, a number of publications started documenting and discussing the plight of young men in higher education. There were numerous articles lamenting the seemingly precarious plight of college-age men. The common theme in a number of these pieces was that these young men were in a significant state of crisis. The argument seemed to be that these young adult lads had been ignored, let down and marginalized by an indifferent society that considered the plight of young females more worthy of attention. While not all articles were this dramatic, the theme of gender disparity seemed to be a perennial one that found its way onto the op-ed pages in newspapers and as feature stories in magazines.
