Male numbers at universities across the English-speaking world are in decline. An independent commission in the U.K. found in 2013 that young women were a third more likely than their male peers to apply to university. The latest Statistics Canada figures reveal that women aged 25-34 earned 59.1% of university degrees. Moreover, a 2013 report by two economics researchers at MIT found that the decline in male higher education in the United States has been paralleled by a marked decline in male wages, employment, and occupational stature.

For some, this news may not seem disturbing. Men have dominated higher education and elite occupations for a long time—so the thinking goes—and it is women’s time to flourish now.

But as the authors of the MIT study point out, the ramifications of male under-achievement are disastrous not only for men themselves, especially for poor and racial minority men, but for their potential mates and their children, leading to the decline of stable, two-parent households for raising a family.

The reasons for decreased male participation in post-secondary education are undoubtedly complex, but an anti-male atmosphere may play a role. Whether intentionally or not, recent campus initiatives on sexual consent—which place even the most well-intentioned men in the role of potential rapists—and on encouraging men to own their purported “privilege” have led some men to perceive that their needs and feelings are less worthy of concern than those of female students.

It’s not pleasant to sit through classes, especially in the humanities and social sciences, where the male sex is singled out for its role in violence and inequality. And as more schools seek to implement what they call “victim-centered” policies for complaints of sexual misconduct, young men worry with good reason that an unfounded complaint can smash their educational dreams.

Perhaps it’s time to consider male-only post-secondary institutions.

At present, women can attend women’s colleges in Canada and the United States if they so desire. In the U.S. there are 39 women’s colleges. But although historically there were many all-male colleges, today there are only three. The history of male-only colleges has seen one after the other forced to open their doors to women, while the same has not happened to women’s colleges.

If we recognize that some women thrive in a female-only environment, why not give men the same opportunity? Why not give men the chance to learn in male-positive spaces and be taught by teachers practising male-positive pedagogy? If negative messages about femaleness impact young women’s capacity for achievement, wouldn’t the same be true for men?

It’s surprising, actually, that there has not been much public discussion of gender-segregated post-secondary education. Most of the debate concerns public schooling at the primary and secondary levels, in which the side advocating for single-sex education alleges, with plenty of supporting data, that both male and female students—and definitely male students—perform better in single-sex classrooms. A massive systematic review of all the studies of single-sex and co-ed education, conducted by the U.S. Department of Education in 2005, found that the majority of studies “reported positive effects for SS [single-sex] schools.”

I wouldn’t want to be a young man attending a co-ed university today.

Janice Fiamengo is a professor at the University of Ottawa and is speaking about misandry on campus at the National Conference on Men’s Issues on Sept. 17 in Ottawa. www.equalitycanada.com/nationalconference