Affirmative action

Yes. Historically the male to female proportion of college has been about 52% male and 48% female, recently it has changed to 56% female. But it’s not so simple to say that it’s a way of saying more women go to college- there’s much more. While female graduates now make up almost 30% of degrees in traditionally male dominated fields, a far smaller percent of men go in to careers like teaching or nursing where up to 80% of skilled jobs are held by women. More interesting to the point of debt- if slightly more than half of students are women, why do women carry 2/3rds of the debt? There’s more to it than just “more women go to college than men.”

You can't say that more women than men go to college because women have a larger share of the student loan debt. There's lurking variables, like how quickly women vs men pay off their debts, which itself is impacted by things like how quickly women vs men are hired out of college. There's more variables, too, these are just two examples.

Who cares, CNBC?

Men actually have a higher chance of getting into most colleges because there are more women applicants so the acceptance rates are more competitive. This combined with the fact that most colleges want a 50/50 gender splint means that it's easier to get into college as a man, and that some men who enter college are statistically slightly less prepared for it than their female counterparts.