Gender studies would be worthwhile if they actually explored and communicated legit, relative differences between the preferences and capabilities of men and women (while emphasising that these differences are general, not universal) rather than obsessing over a history of perceived and actual oppression.
Seems it might actually offer explanations for disparities like this without having everyone immediately resort to 'oppression' as the answer.
Look at this quote from the article itself:
For African-Americans, the gender disparities are breathtaking: some 64% of blacks receiving bachelor's degrees are females. Black male participation in college life is somewhat lower because a shockingly high proportion of teenagers are involved in criminal activity often involving incarceration.
That's not the school's discrimination. That's an unfortunate result of a masculine temperament combined with the economic and social hardships statistically more likely to affect black Americans.
White males might not be as likely to be robbing liquor stores, but that doesn't mean that they're going to uni or, if they are, that they value the experience as much as their female counterparts do.
Young guys are more likely to be engaging in a fulfilling life of crime, starting their own businesses (I think), dying in their nation's wars, killing themselves, crafting YouTube personas, or (at this juncture in history) bonding with their parents'/spouse's couch, than young women are. These are all perfectly valid alternatives to higher education, and none can be blamed on the institution's discrimination.
The perception of discrimination might be a contributing factor. Especially as it's recently become a popular topic.
But, let's not pretend it's the sole factor. It probably isn't even a major one.
I think the actual important question is, are degrees, etc., overvalued?
I don't think that they're worthless, at all. And in some fields (STEM, specifically) they're an absolute necessity for the time being. But generally speaking? They're little more than an indicator of a decent baseline intelligence and work ethic. You can tell more about a person's professional value from a 4-year work history and a half-hour conversation.
Yet, how many years do you spend paying off that slip of paper, that - in most cases - just serves to prove that you're about as capable as the other few thousand people filling your prospective employers' inbox?
Education is more aggressively pushed onto young women, but I do not necessarily think that that is a positive thing for them or a negative for men. Awareness of flexibility of life choices is important in a fast-changing world, and university/college/whatever is not the best environment for enabling the potential of all people.
I am not saying that higher education is useless (far from it). But rather that when you try to expand it uniformly, in terms of scale of population and depth of specialisation, you reach a point of steeply diminished returns.
And I am not saying that there is no discrimination in education (it isn't a strictly American problem, as few things ever are), but all things being equal (which they never will be, entirely) I'd guess that the preferences of young females in general, are better suited to dry academia than are those of young males, and that this has more of an impact on enrollment numbers than does the looming specter of discrimination.
I also think that the lumbering, bureaucratic and slow-to-react structure of modern education is outdated, prone to corruption and in desperate need of reassessment in light of technological and social changes that it has failed to keep pace with.
