BANGOR – Jeremy Carey of Milo found out the hard way that he needed a college education.

After graduating from Penquis Valley High School in 1996, he spent a couple of years “job jumping” – working as a line cook at various restaurants, then bagging wood shavings and stacking lumber at a sawmill.

“It was backbreaking work. Doing manual labor for eight bucks an hour wasn’t for me,” said Carey, who ultimately decided to enroll in the nursing program at Eastern Maine Community College in Bangor.

But many other men who haven’t made the same connection between education and better jobs are choosing not to continue their schooling.

Women, meanwhile, have gotten the message loud and clear. Across the country, they are making up increasingly larger proportions of college populations, contributing to the phenomenon that’s been dubbed “the disappearing male college student.”

In 1969, 4 million men and 2.9 million women were enrolled as undergraduates at colleges and universities across the country. By 2000, the number of male undergrads had risen 39 percent, to 5.6 million, but the number of female undergrads had leaped upward 157 percent, to 7.4 million.

“As women set out to achieve their personal and professional goals, the number who see higher education as a critical pathway to success continues to grow,” said Michael Thomas, senior director of policy and research for the New England Board of Higher Education.

Educators recently have begun to pay serious attention, however, to the fact that the number of men going on to college has not increased at the same pace as women.

University of Maine System Chancellor Joseph Westphal referred to the problem of men’s underenrollment during his State of the University address in February and said in a recent interview that he indeed was concerned.

“If Maine is going to have a vibrant and educated work force, we need more men engaging in education,” Westphal said.

There are 130,000 more women than men at public and private colleges in the region today, according to the New England Board of Higher Education, which addresses the issue in the April edition of its magazine The Connection.

The University of Maine System, which enrolls 74 percent of the state’s public higher education students, has 21,480 women compared with 12,773 men. For the past 10 years at least, enrollment for women has exceeded that of men at all seven campuses.

Enrollment at Husson College in Bangor is 58 percent female and 42 percent male. The gap recently has narrowed partly because the school started a football team, said spokeswoman Julie Green.

Women also have made gains at the community college level.

Ten years ago, the former technical colleges enrolled 65 percent men because of the emphasis on technical careers. Since the addition of health care and education programs as well as liberal studies, enrollment has shifted to 51 percent female, according to Maine Community College System President John Fitzsimmons. Some of the traditionally male-dominated programs also are attracting more women, he said.

A variety of reasons could account for men’s lack of interest in higher education.

Some men’s advocates say women’s studies and women’s centers on college campuses nationwide have perpetuated an anti-male culture that makes men feel unwelcome. Another explanation, they say, could lie with Title IX, which has resulted in thousands of men’s sports programs being cut.

For their part, educators say some boys get turned off to education long before college. Elementary and high schools aren’t geared to boys’ active, exuberant learning styles, requiring them instead to sit still and be quiet for long periods. Oftentimes boys tune out because they don’t see the relevance in their learning, say some educators. Also, because so many teachers are women, boys have few role models in school.

Once they graduate, many boys decide not to continue with the schooling that failed to engage them in the first place. Attracted by a quick paycheck, they take jobs at factories and mills.

Some don’t make it as far as graduation. Of the 1,740 Maine students who dropped out of high school in 2003, 1,008 were male and 732 were female.

Boys figure, “If I’m not liking school right now and college is more of the same, why should I put myself through that?” said Shelley Reed of the state Department of Education.

Other experts are quick to point out that schools don’t bear all the blame. Boys aren’t performing well academically because they are compelled by society to hold their emotions in check, then ultimately become depressed, said Robert Pfeiffer, a high school and elementary school guidance counselor in Appleton and Waldoboro.

One thing is for sure: Boys appear to be in trouble by virtually all measures. While girls have caught up with boys in math and science, the typical high school boy lags a year and a half behind the typical girl in reading and writing. Girls get better grades and tend to take more advanced-placement classes than boys, who are four times as likely to be diagnosed with a learning disability or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

According to surveys by the University of Maine’s National Center for Student Aspirations and the George J. Mitchell Research Institute in Portland, more females expressed higher college aspirations than males and said that they needed to go to college to get a good job and that doing well in high school was important to their future.

“I worry about our young boys,” said J. Duke Albanese, policy adviser with the Mitchell Institute and former state education commissioner. “We’re seeing a lot of young males hanging around communities after graduation, not having much direction, falling behind in terms of opportunities in their lives.”

When young women find that school isn’t motivating, they tend to push through and do what’s expected, while young men resist, Albanese.

“The result is that what we see in the achievement and performance of young males doesn’t reflect their abilities,” he said. “They haven’t been engaged or been turned on to learning because we haven’t found the right ways to motivate them. So they don’t show us what they can do and they don’t have the foundational courses they need to be able to go on with their education.”

Maine leads the nation in the low rate of men in higher education, according to a 2003 report by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. The report indicated there were 154 women in college in Maine per 100 men, just below Delaware which had the next lowest rate with 151 women per 100 men. Utah, with 100 men for every 98 women, had the highest rate of college-going males to females.

The phenomenon likely could have implications for both family structures and male-female relationships. As women increasingly obtain better-paying, more prestigious jobs, they’ll likely be making more of the major family decisions such as where to live, said Steven Cohn, a University of Maine sociology professor.

Historically, since women tend not to marry men whose potential income is significantly lower than their own, women may choose not to marry or to delay marriage until they find a partner who meets their criteria, said another UM sociology professor, Stephen Marks.

“Unfulfilled male educational potential diminishes national economic, social, political, mental and spiritual health,” said Tom Mortenson, senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education.

Men need to realize that times have changed, he said. “The kinds of work men traditionally have done without a college education are dying out, so there’s a lot of young men who thought they didn’t have to prepare for college. Now they’re in a great deal of difficulty.”

As interim president of the University of Maine at Machias in 2000, James Breece aimed to increase college enrollment among men by spreading the message that higher education can help everyone be more successful, even those who want to be woodsmen, farmers or lobstermen.

“You need college so you can learn to be informed citizens, to problem solve, to think critically, to help run your business more efficiently and to earn a better income,” he would tell high school students.

Now executive director of the University of Maine System Office of Planning and Policy Analysis, Breece pointed out that student population growth in the system has been due mainly to the increases in women’s enrollment. At UMS, the number of students rose from 23,813 in 1972 to 34,000 last year. While male enrollment stayed essentially flat, female enrollment almost doubled. In 1972, 55 percent of students in the university system were men, compared with 37 percent today.

Terry Mitchell, a guidance counselor at Central High School in Corinth, said the educational success of girls is testament to the programs created over the past 20 years to improve their college aspirations. “It’s a success story of sorts,” he said.

But there appears to be little out there for boys, he added. “I feel bad for my young men who say, ‘Hey, when are we going to do something?'”

“The mistake back in the ’80’s was that we didn’t talk about boys,” said Richard Kent, professor in the University of Maine’s College of Education and Human Development. “We figured they had it all wrapped up, so we concentrated on girls when what we should have been doing is concentrating on learning styles and having gender issues as part of the conversation. So we abandoned boys in a way.”

High schools need to be mindful that not all students – whether boys or girls – learn the same way, he said. Teachers should listen closely to what a student’s needs are and adapt curriculum accordingly.

Aware that boys thrive when they can relate on a personal level to their studies, Brewer High School English teacher Jamie Heans aims to make Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” relevant by asking them, “Ever been rejected by a girl?” Knowing that boys are social creatures, he assigns lots of group work so students can move around and talk to each other. Building on boys’ love for technology and music, he has them create their own movies including a soundtrack. And he allows them to choose books that interest them.

“I do better in school when I’m doing something – not just taking notes and working out of a book,” said Brewer High School junior Josh Dorr.

While Dorr plans on going to college, many boys give up before they’re even out of high school.

The most common reason boys offer for dropping out is: “I didn’t like school,” said William Davis, a professor of education and director of the Institute for the Study of Students at Risk at the University of Maine.

Boys may struggle academically because they’re not ready to handle some of the work and can’t sit through long blocks of instructional time, he said. They become disciplinary problems, get reprimanded by the teacher and end up discouraged. “A pattern of low self-esteem is set throughout their school career,” he said.

At Fort Kent Community High School, officials are working to increase the number of college-going students. “A lot of boys identify with their fathers, and when they see them working in the woods they decide that’s what they want to do too,” said guidance counselor Catherine Sevigny.

The school wants to help boys realize that times have changed and that they now need an understanding of computers and other technological tools to do the jobs their fathers and grandfathers did. Boys also need to realize that these jobs may not be there down the road and that a college education will give them something to fall back on, Sevigny said.

Some boys aren’t comfortable with doing well academically, said Fort Kent Community High School Principal Timothy Doak. The school is trying to change that mind-set, he said.

Others also want to turn things around. Chancellor Westphal said the university system is on the lookout for “things we’re doing or not doing to affect gender distribution. Maybe it’s programs, maybe it’s classes, maybe it’s support within the institution.”

Two years ago the Maine Department of Education created a committee to study gender equity in public schools to help both boys and girls achieve. The group plans to issue a report this fall.

Gov. John Baldacci is looking to expand the Osher Early College program, which targets students at risk of not continuing their education and provides academic and financial support to attend the Maine Community College System. Of the 207 Early College participants so far, 54 percent have been boys, said Fitzsimmons, president of the community colleges. “It may be a true silver bullet for attacking this problem,” he said.

Mainely Men, a male support group in the midcoast, also is trying to make things better for boys. The organization, together with Penobscot Bay Medical Center in Rockport, recently sponsored a conference for boys and their fathers or mentors. The goal was to strengthen positive relationships between sons, fathers and other males in the community and to break down cultural expectations.

“Ultimately men need to step up to the plate and help boys,” said school counselor Robert Pfeiffer, who helped organize the event.

“Women have done that for girls, and we need to celebrate that and follow in their successful steps,” he said.