I read somewhere that the group of people in the USA least likely to get married is black female Ph. Ds. I always thought that it had to do with the amount of time and effort required to obtain an advanced degree. But, there is more to it. If you are a woman with a college degree, finding someone with your level of education may be difficult because the odds are not in your favor. The Guardian takes up the subject of why female graduates find it difficult to find a like-minded man.

More women than men are graduating in many countries – but according to Date-onomics, a new book on hook-up culture, there’s a downside: there may not be enough educated men to go round. Is it time to widen the search?

The numbers are pretty much the same across the United States. Across young people, age 30 and under, [there are] about four college grad women for every three college grad men. In many cases, this gender gap is even bigger in rural states than in urban ones. It’s not just the US, it’s most western countries, whether it’s Italy, the UK, Australia.”

In the US, he writes that among 22-to 29-year-olds, there are 5.5 million college-educated women, and 4.1 million college-educated men. We are seeing a gap in the UK too. Last year, a record number of women outnumbered men, with nearly 58,000 more women than men.

It turns out that one of the problems is that women tend to study different subject than men and get different degrees. If a woman wants to increase her odds of going to school with lots men she had best study engineering or medicine instead of pursuing a degree for teaching in primary or secondary education. Finding someone with your level of education can be difficult when the odds are not in your favor to begin with and more so when your career path takes you away from eligible men. So, what do you do? At this point is online dating a help or a hindrance.

Selection Bias

One of the well-known bugaboos in psychological and social experiments is selection bias. If you do not include the right subjects in your test it skews the results. Dating apps and dating resumes may be doing this in online dating. In an attempt to make dating more efficient many apps as well as resumes limit the number of choices a woman has in the dating world. There are lots of intelligent men whose career path does not take them to a college degree. Many successful men never went to or dropped out of college. If you start with the pool of men who have a college degree or even a college degree similar to yours, you may be very happen when you find the right guy. But, you are missing out on lots of men who, if you met them in a social situation would be exactly right for you. Finding someone with your level of education may not be the place to start. Rather consider looking for shaded interests and then when you meet them focus on their ability to communicate and make you laugh!