Business Week runs a long article on how (and why) boys are falling behind in their schooling. Worth a serious read. Then look at this USA Today editorial (much longer than normal) on how some colleges are instituting an affirmative action program for boys, and how this preferential treatment will become a an issue if the Supreme Court overthrows affirmative action in the Michigan case.
I would say (and have said) that this is a serious issue. I am not sure what the female-male ratio on college campuses is, but it is almost certainly the exact reverse of what it was, say, thirty years ago. (It is probably 60-40% female now). I looked up the other day from a list of Ashbrook Scholars we have accepted into the program--the acceptance is done solely on their intellectual and moral virtues, and not only on paper, each is interviewed for over an hour--I believe there were twenty-two at the time and noticed that there were only seven boys. It has been like that for years. Not good. Why this is happening is a long story and merits some serious conversations which will have to be had another day. But I promise to get back to it. Look at these articles and file them. 
Concerning. Now that I have a son, I am eager to do my part to reverse this trend. As the business week article states: “It’s not just that boys are falling behind girls… It’s that boys themselves are falling behind their own functioning and doing worse than they did before.” The main failure is the de-masculine-ization of education. Boys are reprimanded for acting the way they were created – wild. Those that hold back this wildness are rewarded by instructors, but ridiculed by classmates – and hide.
Although this may not be entirely accurate (because it is from memory), John Eldredge in "Wild at Heart"says, “I hear people ask, ‘Where have all the real men gone?’ ‘You asked them to be women”, I want to say…”
Read “Wild at Heart”, it really explains the man’s soul… “Adventure, with all its requisite danger and wildness is a deeply spiritual longing written into the soul of man. The masculine heart needs a place where nothing is prefabricated, modular, zip lock, franchised, on-line, microwaveable. Where there are no deadlines, cell phones, or committee meetings. Where there is room for the soul. Where, finally, the geography around us corresponds to the geography of our heart.” Eldredge, “Wild at Heart”
One of these days, I’m going to learn that one has to hit "New Paragraph" to make things read properly...
John