The "Einstein Center Population Diversity" welcomes you to the Tuesday Dialogues. In this digital event series, we discuss key questions related to the future of our societies in a circle of experts and interested stakeholders.
You are kindly invited to join our upcoming event:
“Boys’ Achievement Crisis”: myths, evidence, policy challenges
Tuesday, 20 October 2026, 1-2 PM CEST
(with German-English simultaneous translation)
Hania Sobhy, Research Group Leader, Max Planck Institute for Political and Social Science
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In a reversal of trends in the past century, boys are now under-achieving relative to girls. In Germany, girls consistently outperform boys in reading, outnumber men in university enrolment and are more likely to graduate. This trend, recognised in OECD countries since the 1990s, now increasingly affects middle income countries.
International organisations have called it the "Boys' Achievement Crisis", involving three elements: underperformance (lower skills/learning outcomes), participation(lower enrolment, retention), and underachievement (lower completion or graduation). This could contribute to divergent productivity, income, health outcomes and even engagement in violence, all leading to changing family and social dynamics.
Explanations vary: Some suggest that transformations in labour markets have favoured sectors that attract female students. Others believe there are general shifts in the school environment that disadvantage boys. Some go even further, talking about gendered social norms around reading, gendered differences in school performance skills and the absence of male role models.
The gender-specific framing, while important, puts the discussion at risk of polarisation. It also obscures critical socioeconomic dimensions, as male underachievement is concentrated in lower income groups. Giving an overview of the available research, Dr. Hania Sobhy will separate evidence from myths about the issue – and name the most urgent challenges for education policy.
The speaker: Dr. Hania Sobhy is a political scientist and a Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Political and Social Science. She works on the politics of education, citizenship and the global learning crisis. Her current project is part of the MPG-funded transdisciplinary project "EduTrack", with a focus on teachers, inequality and collective action. She also teaches on the comparative politics of education at the University of Göttingen.
Tuesday Dialogues: This series of public, online talks on demographic research and pressing societal issues has taken place one Tuesday a month since 2020. Since 2024 they are being organized in collaboration with the Einstein Center Population Diversity in Berlin. The Wissenschaft in Berlin Förderfonds supports this important initiative in a forward-looking field of research.
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