My dad brought this up last night, to support his belief in the oppression of the white male on college campuses. Which is bullshit, and political correctness on campus is surely not a reason for this trend, but this does seem like a real trend and I'm wondering why it would be happening.
My answer at the time was there tend to be more non-college opportunities for men - trade school, apprenticeships, things like that, which I believe are overwhelmingly male. Also sort of similar to things I've seen about the "reverse gender gap" in Mongolia - men are more likely to take over a family business and will learn the skills they need working in the business, whereas women need to go to college to learn other skills because their future is not so laid out for them. College is not the marker for success it once was, and a lot of men might see more non-college opportunities for them that women don't.
There might also be a mental health aspect - I think women tend to deal with mental health better? Which might lead to them being able to deal with uncertainty and stress these days better than men, leading to more men dropping out. I don't have any statistics there to know if that's even true or not though.
I don't know if any of those answers hold any water, but this does seem like a real trend from what I can tell and I'm wondering why it might be occurring.
Being willing to go into debt may have more varaibles based on background though. For example, something like the number one demographic group that stood to benefit from student loan forgiveness were Women of Color.
i feel like that would suggest women are more affected by debt and therefore less likely to go to college/more likely to drop out. Especially if women of color are the most hurt by student loans
Dunno, escaping poverty through college, maybe? Being the first of the family to graduate with a degree ("breaking the cycle") is still a very big meme in poverty stricken areas and first/second gen immigrant families. You see it a lot over on :reddit-logo: Meanwhile, white males are becoming disillusioned by the system at a rapid pace. Problem being when they blame the less advantaged rather than the system.
To add to this, you often see specific degrees marketed to specific demographics. Women of Color were a major target of CNA/ Nursing school advertising for a while here in Florida.