In Why are boys struggling in school? today’s USA Today reports on a Wichita Eagle piece about the continuing slide in male college enrollment (men make up only 43% of college students).

It didn’t take the chattering classes long to find the true culprit here: males themselves. Sociologist Ron Matson of Wichita State explains that "75% of household chores" are left to women, which teaches boys "to avoid responsibility."

I somehow have trouble believing that if current trends reversed themselves, and it were females who were underrepresented in higher education by a 4:3 ratio, that Matson or any other academic would be implying that girls and young women should perform more housework in order to boost their academic prospects.

And whatever the accuracy of Matson’s 75% statistic (which I don’t credit for a moment), it’s probably safe to say that today’s males are responsible for a higher percentage of household chores than they were, say, two generations ago – when college enrollment was overwhelmingly male.

If women were (still) being educationally shortchanged, the spin would still be anti-male (though with some actual justification in that case). If you think that A or not-A would each prove your point equally well, you’re probably arguing with a predetermined conclusion in mind.

Here is yet another example of there being some ideas so dumb that only an intellectual could credit them. But if this were just an isolated instance of backward logic by one Kansas ideologue, it wouldn’t be significant. What’s somewhat troubling is how ingrained the instinct to search for an “establishment” demon has become in academia, the media, and the culture as a whole.