If young men need another reason to go to college – and that does seem to be the case – they need look no further: they may need it to find a girlfriend or wife.

Educators in Maine have been perplexed and concerned by two diverging trend lines: Girls are increasingly getting higher educations and boys are not. At most public universities, female enrollment now significantly tops that of males.

A story in Sunday’s New York Times highlighted another worrisome trend: “About 18 percent of men ages 40 to 44 with less than four years of college have never married, according to census estimates. That is up from about 6 percent a quarter-century ago. Among similar men ages 35 to 39, the portion jumped to 22 percent from 8 percent in that time.”

It’s worth bearing in mind that at every age and among both sexes, fewer Americans are marrying. But the increase is the most pronounced for young males.

It’s also worth considering, perhaps, that more males simply don’t want to marry and would prefer to remain single. That, too, is possible.

But surveys show that most people, men and women, would like to marry at some point in their lives.

According to the Times, the biggest factor may be that the pool of women without college degrees is shrinking and most women with degrees seek mates with similar educational attainment and better financial prospects.

Life hasn’t been easy for men without much schooling. This group has been the most dramatically affected by the movement of manufacturing jobs overseas. Many have seen their real wages slowly sag over the past 30 years while wages for more educated workers have remained steady or grown.

Of course, for young people with their futures before them, the answer would seem clear: Stay in school. Develop a skill or learn a trade. It’s a cold world for workers without an education or marketable skills … in more ways than one.