Visitors to Ballard Hall at Oregon State University might be struck by the quaint charms of the former women’s dormitory, which was built around the last turn of the century, particularly the stairs and their short risers. In those days, the architect was sensitive to the needs of the women who didn’t wish to raise their skirts immodestly high to climb the stairs and risk exposing an ankle.

The first graduating class, in 1870, included three people, and one of them was Alice E. Biddle, who entered college at 16 and later married one of her professors. The archives at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/archives/chronology/ mentions other women throughout the university’s history, but their roles were along established gender-appropriate career lines: home economics, teaching and nursing. A woman didn’t graduate from the forestry college until the 1960s.

One retired OSU animal sciences professor noted that 20 years ago, the typical animals sciences student was a young man studying producing agriculture involving livestock. Now, the typical animal sciences student is a young woman who is studying veterinary medicine.

Such feminization of professional studies is part of a national trend, according to the National Center for Education Statistics of the U.S. Department of Education. Women have overtaken men in earning diplomas in fields that were dominated by men when their mothers attended college. (See “The Condition of Education” at http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe.) The study noted that not only do women outnumber men on U.S. campuses by 2 million, they account for half of the students in law, medicine and optometry. They outnumber them in professional disciplines ranging from biology to business.

This would seem like progress if it weren’t for two things:

• As of 2004 statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Historical Income

Tables, women still earn about 76.5 percent of the salary men did for the same work.

• The gender gap in education affects males at all age levels, starting in grade school.

So even as we celebrate that more young women are entering fields where they were denied access a generation ago, it is ironic that the fundamental goal of equal pay for equal work remains elusive. And it is disturbing that male students are lagging behind and dropping out academically, starting in middle school. This was never the intent of programs to boost achievement for women and witness a decline in academic competency of male students, and of course there’s no indication now that there is a causal relationship between these trends.

Whatever the root of the decline in the male presence in higher eduction and professional occupations, the trend needs to be the focus of study and action.

If the reason for the decline in the male presence in higher education is that more men are finding job satisfaction and a living wage in technical careers rather than those requiring college degrees, fine. That is honorable work, and not everyone needs to attend college to be considered a valued citizen.

All students, however, need to complete basic educational requirements, and that means finishing high school. Anything less puts males at an unacceptable competitive disadvantage.