The effort by some local universities to attract more men to higher education, as we reported yesterday, is to be encouraged. This society desperately needs to correct the gender imbalance that is now characteristic of these institutions of learning.

The statistics from the University of the West Indies (UWI) showing some 82 per cent of the students who matriculated to the institution this academic year were women, raise serious concerns. This disparity at UWI has been growing for several years and has now reached the point of crisis. Other institutions of higher education, including our teachers' colleges, face a similarly dire situation, with men increasingly representing a tiny minority of their students.

This state of affairs has major implications for the country's economy, family life and social stability. We do not begrudge the advance of women or seek in any way to coddle indolent young men, but in an increasingly competitive labour environment, influenced by the exigencies of globalisation, exposure to higher education and training is becoming crucial to the survival of the Jamaican worker. The failure of our men to take up these educational opportunities leaves them at a disadvantage in securing meaningful employment and, in fact, traps some of them in a cycle of undesirable activities, including crime.

There is something else that concerns us. With this great gender disparity at the tertiary level, where are our young professional women going to find eligible mates? This does not augur well for the development of healthy and vibrant interpersonal relationships which are the bedrock of strong societies.

Winston Adams, executive chairman and president of the University College of the Caribbean, was quoted as saying there is a view among Jamaican men that education is an investment which takes too long to produce a return. Anecdotal evidence, based on what is heard from many of our young men in some communities, suggests that this is a plausible explanation for the under-representation of men in the classrooms at the tertiary level.

Adams suggested the development of innovative programmes that would make the learning experience more interesting to male students. He suggested, for example, that information technology could be marketed in such a way as to encourage more men to enter tertiary institutions.

Even as we applaud the efforts to find solutions however, we should be careful to diagnose the problem correctly before implementing solutions to deal with it.

This is why we are fully in support of the UWI in undertaking a comprehensive study to find out the cause of male underachievement and how it might be addressed.

Our understanding is that the project began last year and is being undertaken by Professor Barbara Bailey of the Gender Studies Centre on the Mona campus. We are looking forward to the findings of this study and the recommendations for dealing with this crisis that confronts us.

We encourage the new government, through Olivia 'Babsy' Grange - the minister responsible for gender affairs - to work with the tertiary institutions and give them all the support the administration can muster to correct this most serious imbalance.