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A slowdown in U.S. educational gains by American men is dragging down the competitiveness of our workforce, according to a new oped in the Los Angeles Times.

Authors Thomas DiPrete and Claudia Buchmann argue that if men had the same educational distribution as women, their earnings would be almost four percent higher than they are now and more men would be employed.

California women outperformed men in higher education degrees by more than 10 percent in 2012, according to the California Post-secondary Education Commission. This trend is no different for high schoolers, with girls making up about 54 percent of Los Angeles Unified’s graduates compared to 42 percent of boys.

One reason is these young men’s grades in middle and high school, which are consistently poorer than their female peers. DiPrete and Buchmann say young men also have unrealistically high expectations of financial success without a clear idea of how to achieve those dreams.

You can read the whole oped here.