<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1"> <title></title> </head> <body> Despite extensive outreach programs and dire predictions about their futures, there is a minority group growing ever smaller on college campuses. It seems no matter what anyone says or does, the trend cannot be reversed. Fewer and fewer of them attend college. The minority group? Men. Although that may be a surprise to you -- it certainly was to me -- it's no surprise to college administrators who are scrambling to get more men on campus. "The trend is well established,'' says Richard Black, associate vice chancellor of admission and enrollment at UC Berkeley. "There are more women than men at most American colleges and universities.'' The average student body across the country is 58 percent female, according to B.J. Johnson, a woman who is dean of academic and enrollment services at the University of San Francisco. That sounds high until you consider that 63 percent of USF students are women. At Sonoma State University, it's 62.6 percent. In comparison, the numbers at Cal are not as dramatic -- 54 percent women, 46 percent men. But Black says that's only because Cal has strong engineering and computer sciences programs, which remain male bastions. Still, he isn't betting on the numbers turning around. He says 54.3 percent of fall admissions in 2003 were women. That number rose to 55.1 percent in 2004 and 55.5 last September. Johnson admits USF's numbers are skewed somewhat by its strong nursing program, which attracts more women than men. But Johnson, who has helped spearhead outreach programs for male applicants at USF, says the national collegiate gender imbalance is beyond what schools expect or want. The trend is even more alarming among ethnic minorities. African American women outnumber African American men on campus by a 2-to-1 ratio. The numbers for Latinos are almost as lopsided. "We were surprised when it began in the early '90s,'' says Johnson. "But not anymore. It is disturbing on two levels, first in the implications for society and second because of the overall educational experience.'' An exception is San Jose State University, where the division is roughly 50-50. Again, a strong engineering and computer science program helps, as well as Silicon Valley's reputation as a hotbed of jobs. But Marshall Rose, the school's associate vice president for admission and enrollment services, says the school is concerned and has begun marketing itself aggressively to men. "It is good to have a balance,'' Rose says, "but we are not sure how long it is going to last.'' Tom Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute in Washington, D.C., has been tracking this trend since 1979, when what he calls the "male share of higher education enrollments'' dropped from 59.3 percent in 1969 to 49.1 percent. The number has been sliding ever since, but only recently has anyone noticed. "People are starting to catch on,'' he says. "Up until now, there has been nothing but me banging away at this topic.'' It doesn't take long to understand why Mortenson's view isn't popular. When some women hear that college administrators are trying to get more men onto campus, the rhetoric begins to fly. Feminists say women need to be encouraged to attend college, to graduate, to move into white-collar jobs. After all the work to gain an equal academic playing field for women, they ask, do you expect women to go backward? Hold your fire, says Mortenson. The gender war on campus is over. Women won. "The women's agenda has so dominated, people sort of sneer at you,'' he says. "What are women complaining about? They are about to take over the world. Which is great, by the way.'' Johnson agrees. Women need not feel threatened. "It's not that we are going to kick the women out,'' he says. "We just want more men.'' Don't hold your breath, say some experts. As long as girls are doing better in elementary, middle and high school than boys, they will continue to comprise a larger number of students on college campuses. "Young women dominate honor societies, are more apt to be valedictorians and head for the elite colleges,'' says Judith Kleinfeld, a professor of psychology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who is making an extensive study of high school boys. "Many colleges now have under-the-table 'affirmative action' for boys to keep their numbers up.'' The real concern, says Black, is not that young men don't have the opportunity to go to college. Or they can't make the grades. He worries that they aren't interested. For whatever reason, they don't consider college "manly." "You can be a man and still be interested in writing and literature,'' Black says. "I think there's some embarrassment to saying that, but I think we need to say it. It is OK to be a good scholar, to study hard. That's what men do.'' It's not hard to see why a growing number of boys and young men might think that way. After all, who are their role models? "If it is not a sports figure, it is a movie action figure,'' Black says. "We need to look around for people to inspire our boys.'' As it is, our boys are turning to athletes and actors for inspiration, getting it from people like NBA superstar Kobe Bryant. Who, by the way, did not go to college. E-mail C.W. Nevius at <a href="mailto:cwnevius@sfchronicle.com">cwnevius@sfchronicle.com</a>. 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