Women now make up 56 percent of entering college freshmen, a percentage that keeps rising. This is an uncomfortably uneven split for many colleges and universities, prompting a host of new and creative measures to recruit and enroll male students. Some are just amusing marketing stunts, such as giving baseball caps to the first 500 men who enroll, a recruitment promotion adopted and quickly shelved by Brandeis University. But other attempts to balance gender on campus are occurring behind closed doors, where gender is becoming the newest determining factor in admissions decisions.

With some of the nation's largest public universities expecting fall female enrollments to exceed 60 percent of students, getting more men on campus has become a top priority for recruitment and admissions officers. Colleges fear a “tipping point” where the gender imbalance is so acute that it leads to strained social relations on campus and a lasting inability to recruit and retain the best students, both male and female. As a result, admissions committees pore over applications and, with fair intentions but limited guidance or certainty, favor male applicants. Some college administrators are openly doing so, as in the case of the Kenyon College dean of admissions who publicly apologized in The New York Times “to all the girls I've rejected” in order to achieve a gender balance in the freshmen class. Others are doing so with more anxiety and confusion, wondering if this is the best way to respond to the gender imbalance. Can we do this, they ask? Is this even legal?

Actually, it's not. Under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, passed 34 years ago this month, public schools that receive any federal funding are prohibited from ranking applicants by sex or from limiting the number or proportion of students by sex. Title IX regulations do allow institutions to take some “affirmative” steps, but to do so schools have to demonstrate that these steps are necessary to overcome the effects of past or present sex discrimination. Fewer males applying to and graduating from college may be distressing, but it is not discrimination.

So why all the fuss? In part, the issue is gaining attention because the female advantage in enrollment has now reached the campuses of our flagship institutions. With their strong athletic programs, business schools, science and engineering departments, and student populations that typically exceed 35,000, these schools never before worried about attracting male applicants. The male gender gap was traditionally an issue reserved for smaller liberal arts colleges and for community colleges serving primarily low-income student populations. And it has been a particularly acute predicament for historically Black and Latino-serving institutions.

Having now reached the nerve center of higher education, the gender imbalance on campus has generated some dire predictions about its long-term societal effects. The long history of discrimination that women faced in higher education is erased and forgotten, as we are warned that legions of men will be unprepared for the workforce and whole populations of educated women will be left lonely and childless, unable to find suitable mates in college. A brief glance outside of the college campus and at workforce projections for the next fifteen years should quickly allay these concerns. Men, as an aggregate gender-defined population, are at no risk of disappearing from any industry or losing the majority of any major decision-making circles. As for the women who aren't able to find husbands in college, they can expect to meet plenty of educated mates at work, where women and men are nearing equal proportions.

Colleges are right to respond to any trend that may affect both the real and perceived quality of their institutions, and few would argue against the goal of achieving gender diversity in co-ed colleges and universities. But furtive and arbitrary college admissions processes are definitely not the solution.