Will more female college grads be forced to 'marry down?'

The class of 2011 is due to graduate soon, and 57 percent of those college kids in caps and gowns will be women. The uneven ratio raises a natural question, says Kay Hymowitz, author of Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys, in The Daily Caller: "When the time comes, will these women be willing to marry 'down'" and wed a less educated man?

No, ladies won't settle for less: We're unlikely to see "more college-educated women walking down the aisle with their plumber," says Kay Hymowitz at The Daily Caller. They'll want smart children, and both sexes are drawn to ambitious, educated people they think will help produce alpha kids. "Americans have grown to expect more equality and companionship in marriage than they did in the benighted past." The truth is, while we don't like to think of ourselves as class conscious, "marriage brings out the snob in the most democratic man or woman — for better or worse."

"Will women marry down?"

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

But they might have to: "If men do not catch up to women's pace in educational achievement there will be a substantial gap between the sexes," says Jenna Goudreau in Forbes. At some point, something, or someone, has gotta give. "An uneven pool of educated singles may not be impacting marriage yet, but it will soon enough."

"Prince William and Kate Middleton's modern marriage"

Love is about more than college degrees: "Women 'marrying down' doesn't seem that outlandish, but maybe that's because I know quite a few couples that fall into the 28% of marriages in which the woman has more education than the man," says Margaret Hartmann at Jezebel. And it's not exactly scandalous "for a woman pursuing an advanced degree to fall in love with a man who didn't go to college." A memo to "college snobs": Asking for your date's college transcript isn't going to help your love life.

"Will the rise in female college grads create smarter spinsters?"