here’s a tectonic shift underway that most Americans may not think about, but see every day when they take their pets to the vet or their kids to the dentist, need a lawyer or an eye exam, see a therapist or pick up a prescription:

More and more of the highly educated specialists who provide these services are women.

Without much attention, the number of women in medical school, law school, pharmacy school, optometry school, dental school and veterinary school has surpassed the number of men.

Women now earn 60 percent of master’s and  doctoral degrees, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

It’s a trend that begins with the steadily declining number of men who choose to go to college after graduating from high school. Among the reasons for this: Girls do better in grades K-12 than boys; traditionally female-oriented occupations such as teaching, nursing and social work require degrees; and boys are generally less likely to think they need college educations to get jobs.

The result is that the proportion of college students who are women has now reached a record nearly 60 percent, the Education Department says.

This is good news for women. But there’s a catch.

Men represent half of the potential labor force, and their relative absence from higher education is expected to worsen worker shortages in critical fields such as health care. It also could affect the nation’s global competitiveness at a time when economic rival countries are increasing college-going.

“If we’re trying to compete on a global level, the fact that men’s college-going rates are so stagnant means we can’t fix this problem until we get more men,” said Claudia Buchmann, an Ohio State University sociologist and coauthor of the book “The Rise of Women.”

Read the full article about college at Hechinger Report.