Why More Boys Are Skipping College and What Parents Can Do About It
I was chopping carrots at the kitchen counter when my son and two friends clomped through the back door. It was early spring of their senior year, and the kitchen smelled like the start of something—I wasn’t sure what. They grabbed sodas from the fridge and sat down, and the conversation drifted to what came next.
“You hear back from State yet?” one of them asked my son.
“Not yet,” my son said.
“I didn’t apply anywhere,” the other boy said. He shrugged when we all looked at him. “I don’t know. I just don’t see the point. My cousin does HVAC and he’s already making more than my mom.”
The first boy nodded slowly. “My dad said if I’m not sure, it’s a waste of money. He’s probably right.”
I stood there holding a carrot, not sure what to say. My daughter and her friends had spent months comparing college essays, campus visit notes, scholarship deadlines. They had spreadsheets. The boys in my kitchen had nothing. Not because they were lazy, but because no one had ever made the case that college was for them.
This scene wasn’t just happening in my kitchen. The college gender gap has been widening for years, and it’s not a small one. Women now make up nearly sixty percent of college students. Men are less likely to enroll, less likely to finish, and more likely to drop out if they do start. We talk about it in statistics, but the numbers don’t capture what it feels like to sit across from a seventeen-year-old who has already written himself off.
I see it as a parent. I also saw it as a teacher before that.
When my son was in third grade, his teacher told me he had a hard time with reading. That didn’t surprise me. What surprised me was what he actually read at home. He could tell you everything about the Titanic, had checked out every ocean liner book from the library, and once spent an hour explaining to his grandfather how a diesel engine worked. But none of that counted in class, because it wasn’t on the assigned reading list.
We have a tendency, in schools, to create learning environments that fit certain kids. Sit still. Listen. Move from one task to the next on command. Read the assigned novel, not the manual. Boys are not all one thing, but a lot of boys I’ve known learn better when they can move, tinker, and choose what they read. When we don’t give them that, they quietly decide school isn’t for them. By high school, that decision hardens into “I don’t need college anyway.”
There are things I wish I had known earlier. Simple things.
For one, let boys read what they actually want. If graphic novels, sports biographies, or YouTube tutorial transcripts count as reading, that’s reading. Ask a librarian for high-interest, low-reading-level books—they are a lifeline. A fourteen-year-old who reads a car repair manual and then tries to fix something with his grandpa is not behind. He’s doing real-world literacy.
For another, take them to college campuses earlier than junior year. Not for a formal tour. Just go to a local community college on a Tuesday, walk through the building, sit in a hallway, look at a bulletin board. Buy a snack in the cafeteria. That sounds too simple, but it changes what a campus means. My son had an opinion about college before he stepped foot on one. It was abstract. It was for girls who liked school. When I finally dragged him to a visit during spring break, he rolled his eyes, but then the tour guide mentioned the dorms, and the guy next to us asked about the intramural league. He didn’t say much, but he looked around differently. College became a place with real tables and real staircases and real people who looked sort of like him.
We also need to stop acting like money conversations are too awkward. I’ve heard parents say, “We don’t want to discourage him.” But boys already have a very concrete fear of debt. Without someone to walk through what financial aid actually looks like, they fill the gap with assumptions. My son’s friend assumed college cost his cousin “a hundred thousand dollars.” It didn’t. No one had ever shown him the net price calculator, or explained that most people don’t pay the sticker price.
Keep it concrete. Sit down and say, “Here’s what a year of community college costs. Here’s what a state school costs. Here’s what a degree typically adds to lifetime earnings. And here’s what an apprenticeship pays over time.” Don’t use college as a moral judgment. Use it as a practical option among a few. The truth is, not every young person needs a four-year degree. But the gap we’re seeing is not just about choosing trade school over college. It’s about giving up on education entirely.
I notice it in classrooms, too. Boys are less likely to raise their hand when they’re confused, because looking confused in front of peers feels like failure. If you’re a teacher, don’t stand in front of the class and ask “Does anyone have questions?” You’ll get the same silent faces. Instead, walk around while they work and quietly say, “I noticed you finished number one pretty fast—want to try another one?” or “Show me where you got stuck.” That small shift—checking in next to a boy instead of above him—can make a huge difference.
We also need more men in teaching. It’s not that only men can teach boys. But boys who go through school and rarely see a male teacher can start to think academic life belongs to women. They begin to see classrooms as feminine spaces, and then they don’t want to be there. Schools can’t magically fix teacher demographics overnight, but they can be intentional about recruiting male mentors, especially in the early grades.
There’s a deeper thing, too. A lot of young men are sensing that college campuses aren’t necessarily welcoming to them. They hear jokes about boys being lazy, or they see social media about how men are the problem. They don’t have the language to sort that out, so they just step away. I don’t have a perfect answer for that. But I think it starts with listening, without lecturing. When my son’s friend said, “I just don’t see the point,” it wasn’t a debate. It was a statement of fear. He didn’t want to be a burden. He didn’t want to fail at something his sister was good at.
We can’t let young men quietly sign themselves up for a future they didn’t choose. College isn’t for everyone, but it should be an option for everyone—including the boy who would rather read a car manual, the one who didn’t apply anywhere, the one who thinks his dad is probably right.
My son ended up at community college this fall. He’s taking a general studies class and working part-time at a hardware store. It’s not the path I pictured, but he’s on it, and he seems okay. His two friends are not enrolled anywhere. One works nights at a warehouse. The other is saving up for a truck. I don’t know where they’ll be in five years. I hope they find their own path, but I also wonder if anyone will help them see that an education can happen later—that it doesn’t have to come at eighteen, but it shouldn’t be closed off forever.
For now, I keep making dinners. I keep talking. And I try to remember that leaving them behind isn’t something that happens all at once. It happens one kitchen conversation at a time.
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