I also agree that absent fathers must be an important element, but there again, it comes down to the feminisation of society. Single mothers have the same status as married women, and boys are brought up without a male role model. It all hangs together in a curious way, to my mind.

You both make salient points but the divergence is in more than just graduation ratios at the bachelor level. Verbal and reading scores diverge significantly starting in the mid-teens. Even in math, traditionally the masculine strong suit, boys are losing ground both in comparison to girls and to boys of previous generations.

The effect is much stronger among low income boys than upper income.

In terms of simple economics it may be more attractive – for the male especially – to adopt a trade and this may be a factor in the 60/40 ratio.

By today’s measure probably. However in a more traditional sense of ’college’ are they? Go back a hundred years and check the curriculum. If we check the subjects taught and the degrees awarded and then use those categories to recalculate student population is it going to so gender biased? The universities and colleges have had an incredible explosion in degrees and courses to certify employment paths which didn’t require such levels of education prior. Make the mid-century mark the dividing point. How many ‘professional’ artists had degrees [painting, sculptor, acting, dance]? How many of the reporters and writers of the ‘great’ dailies had degrees in ‘journalism’? Teacher colleges were at one time, two year colleges. Now go count the boys in engineering, chemistry, physics, animal husbandry, math, etc that you found in the old school curriculum. The point I’m trying to get to is that a lot of what passes as academic scholarship is really just a certification process. It has become largely such because the society, particularly one oriented the bureaucracy, finds it easier to use an artificial measure of one’s skills – do you have a piece of paper. The paper in turn imbues the holder with social status regardless whether really enlightenment has occurred. In this concern, are we also counting the wrong piece of paper?

As to the performance of boys versus girls in the primary and secondary system, I’d be interested in the comparative results of males attending public schools versus private schools versus military academies. Yes, private military academies still exist. I suspect you’ll find a male environment suitable for comparative analysis there.