This month wide-eyed students will be leaving home and enrolling in their first classes at college. But compared to high school, something may look amiss. On many campuses women outnumber men, sometimes dramatically. Reports indicate that 57 percent of college students are women, a trend that dates back at least the last decade. There are many reasons why, not least of which the fact that women tend to outperform men in high school. This is especially true of some minorities and low-income students.

I asked Wheaton College president Phil Ryken whether he’s worried about this trend, and if so, what can be done about it. He responds with several suggestions for families and local churches that will encourage men without denying opportunity to women. It would be great to see fathers pick up his idea for teaming up with other dads to read and discuss books together with their sons. He also makes an excellent case for intellectually engaged Bible preaching that models lifelong learning.

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After watching the video, you may want to comment with other suggestions drawn from ways mentors encouraged you to think for your own good and the glory of God.

Collin Hansen serves as vice president for content and editor in chief of The Gospel Coalition, as well as executive director of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He hosts the Gospelbound podcast and has written and contributed to many books, most recently Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation and Rediscover Church: Why the Body of Christ Is Essential. He has published with the New York Times and the Washington Post and offered commentary for CNN, Fox News, NPR, BBC, ABC News, and PBS NewsHour. He edited Our Secular Age: Ten Years of Reading and Applying Charles Taylor and The New City Catechism Devotional, among other books. He is an adjunct professor at Beeson Divinity School, where he also co-chairs the advisory board.

Philip G. Ryken (MDiv, Westminster Theological Seminary; DPhil, University of Oxford) is president of Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, and a Council member of The Gospel Coalition. He has authored more than 50 books, including Loving the Way Jesus Loves. He and his wife, Lisa, have five children and two grandchildren.