my observations of Testosterone Central [1] and my son who grew up in a poor/working class neighborhood, as well as a sociological literature on this same demographic is that they often feel that their gender identities are realized through how much money they have in their wallet. and while working at the shoe store in the mall ain't much, you get a discount on sneaks and some clothes, and have cash in your wallet whereas putting yourself through school means working a part-time or full-time job, and having very little cash in your pocket.
the other reason, and this is well-known in the literature, is thatt young women absolutely know that they can't get anywhere without a college degree. young women of color know this even more. their rates are rising. in terms of socialization, they see no women around them working in "good" jobs that are doing so without a college degree.
poor and working strata young men of color and poor white boys, otoh, do see men doing that: the men in their lives are police officers, security guards, in the military, truck drivers, medical technicians, bus drivers, postal workers, and sometimes have factory jobs. my own son now makes more than I do working first as a pit boss in a casino then as a poker/black jack dealer at the casino. He likes the job because it makes him feel a lot more grown up and like a man than it ever felt like working in an office for his girlfriend's uncle, an attorney.
my "other" sons (what some LBOsters will remember as "testosterone Central") all decided *NOT* to go to college because what they wanted was some avenue to feel as if they were men. john, the kid who did the most to mentor my son in basketball, dropped out of college study int he human factors field because he decided that he just couldn't take one more minute of the constant struggle. He got a job with the government, working as a clerk for $15/hr -- which was slightly less than I made -- and now has a wife and kid and is pleased as punch. the last time I talked to him, he was so ecstatic that he was Da Man, taking care of his family, his wife staying at home. (they reckoned she spent more on daycare, transportation and clothes than was worth the second income)
these young men are also systematically taught in school that not only were they weren't made of the "right" stuff for college (the school's ideology), that on their own friends view, college is for people who want to work in boring office jobs, wearing a shirt and tie all day, doing nothing meaningful with your life. how's that being a man, they say? the pressure is on the, wicked, to prove themelves men. The same pressure is on poor girls of any race, which is why the teen pregnancy rates are so high among the poor: part of the reason is that they see no opportunity to become women via work, so why not become women via childbearing. (there's a pretty large literature on this topic. I'm personally familiar with it having organizing with feminists to figure how the cause of this huge preg rate and solve the problem. I did this be/c i lived in the county in NY that had the highest out of wedlock teen pregnancy rate outside of NYC)
see also the culture of respect among the urban poor discussed in Eli Anderson's work, as well as the work of Jay MacLeod in Ain't No Making it. MacLeod shows that the young black men who choose to go to college end up with shite jobs that pay crap. This was based on research during late 80s and 90s as I recall. If what they learn is what is observed by today's young men in poor neighborhoods, not surprisingly it's not clear to young men of color that going into debt for a college degree is worth it.
finally, with no sociological evidence whatsoever to back up my thoughts here: young poor women of all races and ethnicities often see their mothers working two jobs and juggling kids and night school. they are taught that theirs is going to be a life where you do that because the pay you make is too low to get by on. It's ordinary to see women working second and third shifts -- in the Arlie Hochschild sense. Thus, going to school and working a full time job is something women from poor backgrounds see as associated with their gender and class position. They see it as part of what is expected of women.
i don't think young men have the same kind of role models, especially if they are from single parent families where the primary parent is a woman. they just don't see male authority figures working two jobs, taking care of the family,cleaning the house, and taking care of kids and relatives.
I can't count on my hands and feet the number of women I know who have to juggle work, school, children and the care of relatives -- never mind church! The number of men I know who work a job, go to school, etc? They usually find it's too much and drop out of school. I don't know why that is but in my worst moments ... neeeeeeeeever mind.
[1](I was "other" mother to a rag tag crew of kids, all boys, all of whom lived in my poor neighborhood. Since I had a job where I worked from home, I was one of the only moms home. This meant that they ran rampant in my house, night and day. It was also because this was the kind of home I grew up in. The neighbors treated our fridge as their fridge, the center of neighborhood activity.