Every year, more women than men become college-educated. The disparity is already prevalent across North America and Europe, and the trend is beginning to spread across the world more widely. At the University of Texas at Austin where David Buss the author of the article intitules the Mating crisis among educated women, teaches, the sex ratio is 54 percent women to 46 percent men. This imbalance may not seem large at first blush. But when you do the math it translates into a hefty 17 percent more women than men in the local mating pool Speculations about reasons range widely. They include the gradual removal of gender discrimination barriers and women’s higher levels of conscientiousness (relative to men’s) that translate into better grades and superior college app qualifications. Whatever the causes turn out to be, the disparity is creating a dramatic and unintended mating crisis among educated women.While there are some degrees, particularly in science and engineering subjects, that are overwhelmingly filled with male students, the general trend in many countries is for more women to go to university than men. How great to have so many clever, educated young women spilling out every year, but there could be negative consequences, as a book, titled Date-onomics, by Jon Birger a financial reporter and author points out: there may not be enough educated men to go around, and cite data from the National Center for Education Statistics (and includes very helpful charts in the appendix) showing that 1981 was the last year that more men than women graduated from a four-year undergraduate program.Not for nothing are there 39 percent more women ages 22 to 29 with college degrees in Manhattan than men in the same bracket, with a gap of 100,000 between female and male college degree holders under the age of 35 in the entire city.And while the land of Sex and the City is tough for single women seeking college-educated men, it’s hardly the worst. Fort Lauderdale has 71 percent more female college grads than male between ages 22-29, followed by Providence, which has 60 percent more.Most women are unwilling to settle for men who are less educated, less intelligent, and less professionally successful than they are. The flip side is that men are less exacting on precisely these dimensions, choosing to prioritize, for better or worse, other evolved criteria such as youth and appearance. So, the initial sex ratio imbalance among educated groups gets worse for high achieving women. They end up being forced to compete for the limited pool of educated men not just with their more numerous educated rivals, but also with less educated women whom men find desirable on other dimensions.Beyond academic achievements, While women who win the Academy Award for Best Actress are celebrated for reaching a pinnacle of career achievement, several of them also share another distinction – divorce. Known as the “Oscar Curse,” Best Actress award recipients are more likely to file for divorce than are their nominated counterparts or Best Actor winners. Sandra Bullock, Julie Andrews, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Halle Berry, Emma Thompson, and Kate Winslet all share this experience. Patterns like this led us to ask whether womens’ high status careers affect marital stability, and if so, why?

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