I’ve been teaching college students for nearly two decades, and I’ve watched young men steadily lose ground – academically, socially, and emotionally. They enroll in college at far lower rates than women, drop out more frequently, sidestep leadership opportunities, and are more likely to say they feel alienated and hopeless. It’s not a crisis of ability. It’s a crisis of connection: these young men are drifting because the relationships, expectations, and sense of purpose that help boys become men have vanished.
Far too often, institutions treat male students not as emerging adults in formation, but as liabilities to be managed. Traits like ambition, competitiveness, and resilience – essential for leadership when properly channeled – are routinely misconstrued as pathologies. In K12, boys face higher rates of discipline, suspension, or expulsion; in college, they’re more likely to fail or drop out. Across all levels, they’re less likely to have strong relationships with teachers or mentors – the very thing that fuels their motivation.
The data are unmistakable: There are now roughly 2.4 million more female than male undergraduates in the United States – 8.9 million women compared to just 6.5 million men. And only about 42 percent of bachelor’s degrees went to men in 2021, a historic low. This isn’t a story about enduring privilege. It’s a story of a generation sliding away while we debate abstractions.
I’ve seen it firsthand. One student, a young man fighting low self-esteem, sat in the back and barely participated for weeks. After class, I told him I’d noticed the clarity of his argument during a discussion. The next class, that same student sat forward – he asked more questions and even stayed after asking how to improve. His transformation wasn’t magic – it was connection.
That connection matters because many boys are relational learners. When a boy trusts a teacher – when he feels known, respected, and challenged—his effort and achievement can transform. Michael Reichert, founding director of the Center for the Study of Boys’ and Girls’ Lives at the University of Pennsylvania, captures it well: boys who feel emotionally and intellectually engaged by teachers talk about “a sense of being transported, exploring new territory, and feeling newly effective, interested, and powerful.” That kind of transformation doesn’t happen through syllabi; it happens through relationships.
Without that relational grounding, disengagement is predictable, especially when our education systems are increasingly impersonal and transactional.
In generations past, male formation didn’t happen in silos. Fraternal orders, faith traditions, and service clubs surrounded boys with moral frameworks, mentors, and accountability. When I joined the Masons in graduate school, I entered a world where leadership was earned, service was owed, and accountability was reinforced because we all knew each other in person and regularly saw each other on campus and in class face-to-face. But that kind of formation has all but vanished from campus life, replaced by bureaucratic programming that talks about belonging but rarely gives young men a demanding path to it.
We can’t resurrect Masonic lodges and place them near our campuses quickly, but we can restore their principles: clear moral expectations, intergenerational mentorship, accountability to something higher than self, and promote service that binds personal growth to communal good almost immediately. These aren’t nostalgic values – they are preconditions for boys to flourish. They’re fully compatible with modern campus life – if we choose them.
But rebuilding such structures won’t happen overnight. We need something we can do right now, by anyone, anywhere, no approval needed. That’s why I’m introducing a new concept – and a tool – called micro-supports.
Think of micro-supports as the mirror image of microaggressions. If small slights, repeated over time, can chip away at confidence, then small, deliberate acts of recognition can steadily build it back. They’re not grand gestures; they’re moments of intentional noticing.
A professor pauses after class: “The way you framed that point was sharp.” A teammate sends a quick text: “You pushed through today – that mattered.” A roommate says, “We missed you tonight – hope you’ll join us next time.” A lab partner thanks you for catching an error that saved the project. A coach pulls you aside: “That’s leadership right there.”
None of these moments requires funding, permission, or a committee. But when they happen consistently, they begin to change the atmosphere. They send a clear, steady message: You are seen. You are valued. You are expected to contribute.
This isn’t sentimentality. For boys – especially those who learn best through trust and connection – micro-supports are fuel. Knowing that someone has noticed, remembered, and believes in you makes it easier to keep showing up, to keep trying. When those moments saturate classrooms, dorm halls, practice fields, and study groups, they do more than encourage – they inoculate against the isolation, drift, and cynicism that so often pull young men away from the very communities that could sustain them.
We’ve sounded alarms about the crisis among young men for years, but alarms don’t change lives; action does. Micro-supports are action – small, deliberate, transformative. They let us begin today while we work toward rebuilding mentorship and brotherhood.
Imagine a campus where noticing someone’s effort isn’t remarkable – it’s as natural as holding a door. That’s how you change culture: not with top-down policy, but with bottom-up practice.
And if we commit to micro-supports, we can stop managing the decline of young men and start reversing it. One look, one word, one deliberate moment at a time.
Big problems don’t always need big solutions – sometimes they start to turn when one person chooses, in one moment, to say: I see you, you matter, keep going. That’s a micro-support. And that’s how we begin to win this fight for our young men.
