How would we go about solving this problem, then?
I think this is a largely a developmental issue. The real issue is that boys lag at least a year behind girls, both intellectually and socially, when it comes to brain maturity. As a result, boys don’t perform as well in school. I do think that if we essentially red-shirted boys and had them begin kindergarten a year later than girls, it would go a long way toward closing this gap. And in fact, the handful of western countries, like Switzerland and Finland, where both boys and girls start school later, tend to have smaller college gender gaps.
The other thing is that, in the years to come, I think we’re going to be hearing more about what I call “mixed-collar marriages,” which are pairings of college-educated career women married to working class, non-college educated men.