A college-educated man is hard to find.
For the 10th year in a row, women earned more bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees than did men. More than 57% of college graduates last year were women, according to new data from the U.S. Department of Education. Among master’s students, the gap was even higher, with 59% female graduates and 41% male graduates.
This trend dates back to 1981, when more women than men graduated from college for the first time, and it shows no sign of abating. The Department of Education has estimated that by 2027, women will take home 60% of higher education’s degrees.
This number seems to grow by 3% each year, according to the data. In 2017, women earned 41,717 of the 79,738 doctoral degrees awarded in the United States, and they outnumbered men in 7 of the 11 graduate fields, including arts and the humanities, two of the major STEM fields, education, and more. That number is up from last year.
A wide variety of factors could be responsible for this widening gap: Men can more easily find trade jobs than women, which could explain why women tend to see higher education as a necessity, not a choice. Boys are also more likely to lose interest in school, which is why girls tend to outperform boys academically from an early age, according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.
The economic and personal benefits higher education gives women are undeniable. But it could have social consequences as well. The number of women in college is increasing, and their standards are going up with them. And as the number of men in college drops, it’s becoming a lot harder for college women to find partners who meet their high expectations.
It looks like the boys have some catching up to do.
