In January, the Sun Journal reported on a study called “Shifting Gears,” which pointed to car ownership as a possible explanation for why boys attend college in smaller numbers than girls.

The theory goes that as boys buy cars – and get jobs to pay for them and the necessary insurance – their attention is pulled away from school. Their short-term goal of staying on the road detracts from homework and limits their aspirations.

They live in the now, causing college attendance to suffer.

It’s important to consider how outside influences can affect school performance, and certainly a strong argument can be made that working too many hours a week – just like too much partying or too much attention to sports – can undermine school performance.

But we’re skeptical of conclusions that suggest a single answer for why more girls go to college than boys.

The college track in schools places a great emphasis on being a good communicator. Success in college, regardless of the field of study, requires students who can read, comprehend and explain complicated materials. On this score, high school boys often score poorly when compared to girls.

Richard Witmire, writing in The New Republic, reports that only 44 percent of undergraduates are male. He goes on to theorize that it is caused by differences in the male and female brains. He doesn’t mention cars. Likewise, Newsweek points to the brain patterns of boys to explain the difference.

And, writing in Slate magazine, Ann Hulbert dismisses both brain scans and extracurricular distractions to point out the dangers of placing too much emphasis on gender when looking at school performance and college attendance.

High school girls tend to read at a higher grade level than their male counterparts, and the gap between them has been growing. In 2001, girls, on average, were about 1.3 grades ahead of boys the same age.

Whether that’s a result of brain chemistry, classroom strategies or car ownership, we can’t say for sure. What we do believe, however, is that the solution won’t be gender-based. When we were in school oh-so-many years ago, it was the teacher who took an interest in students as individuals who got the best results.

And away from the classroom, it’s about parents who constantly reinforce the value of a college education. Kids who hear from an early age about the importance of going to college get the message: In today’s world, college isn’t an option, it’s a necessity.

What makes a good student is difficult to distill into one-size-fits-all paradigms. It’s not subtle differences between the genders that matter most, it’s the sometimes very large differences between individuals. If we want to improve student performance – boy or girl – the best way is probably the hardest and slowest: One student at a time.