Young women have been more likely than their male counterparts to attend college for the past 20 years or so, said Heidi Hartmann, the president of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. But the country reached a tipping point where the share of women attending college of all ages outnumber the share of men attending college overall because there are now more young women with college degrees than older women without them, Hartmann said.

It’s hard to say exactly why women are now more likely to go to college than men, but Hartmann suspects it’s partly because it’s one of the only ways women can make sure they earn a good living. Many male-dominated professions like construction or working as a firefighter allow for men with only a high school degree to “do pretty well,” Hartmann said.