There is a famous little rhyme that goes, “Girls go to college to get more knowledge, boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider.”

The fact of the matter is that this rhyme is slightly misleading, because more men actually attend college after graduating high school and have increased the enrollment numbers at Cerritos College.

Kristi Blackburn, dean of institutional Effectiveness Research and planning at Cerritos College showcased some percentages during the last five years at Cerritos College.

In 2009, 54 percent of female high school graduates and 43 percent of male high school graduates were enrolled at Cerritos College in the fall following graduation.

By 2014, the share of women enrolled at Cerritos College decreased to 53 percent, while the enrollment for men had immediately increased to 45 percent.

According to Cerritos College President Linda Lacy, this is not because there are more women than men, it’s because there are more men who are applying after they graduate high school, which is a great thing.

“There has been a movement to try to get more males in community colleges period, in colleges across the nation. There was a real decline in males going to college, so a lot of efforts have been focusing on that,” Lacy said.

Theoretically the goal for community colleges is to have a 50/50 split between male and female students. So far, Cerritos College has tried to meet that quota.

During the years of 2009 and 2014 male student enrollment has increased by 2.6 percent.

This is due to an outreach effort to recruit more males that are in high school and speak to them about the importance of a college education.

Cerritos College takes an example of data that shows the earning income over ones lifetime if they have a high school or not, AA degree, bachelors, masters and doctoral.

Cerritos College also shows the statistics of how often recessions happen and that usually, the most unemployed workers are the ones without the degrees.

Lacy added, “I think the word is that the college degrees are important and we consider our college degrees advanced. Obviously if students are going into CTE (Career Technical Education) program, weather they want to be an electrician, or a weldor, or auto mechanic, or a nurse, physician’s assistant any of those are what we consider advanced college degrees.”

Lacy also said that recruiting men is difficult because there are more level entry-jobs available for men.

Male enrollment at Cerritos College raising shows that Cerritos College is opening up many opportunities to men that they didn’t have before.