When the State Journal this week published the list of the top 4 percent of this year 's graduating seniors from Dane County high schools, girls outnumbered boys by nearly two to one.

That academic gender gap highlights a national problem with costly consequences: Boys are falling behind in the American educational system.

The dominance of girls among high school honors students is only the tip of the problem. The most alarming aspect is the scarcity of men earning college degrees.

Since 1970, the number of women enrolling in college has risen three times faster than the number of men.

Women now receive 60 percent of all associate, bachelor 's and master 's degrees.

Because a college graduate on average earns 62 percent more per year than a worker with only a high school diploma, the millions of men without college degrees will be a drag on the nation 's economy, particularly as employers demand higher skill levels. It 's as if women are equipping themselves to compete in the modern economy, and men aren 't.

But to solve the problem, the nation must first get past an unnecessary controversy over who is really at a disadvantage in America -- boys and men, or girls and women.

America remains correctly focused on addressing gender inequities in which girls and women are on the short end of the ratios. So school performance data showing boys and men on the short end have created conflict.

Backers of efforts to aid girls and women have squared off against backers of efforts to aid boys and men.

The conflict is based on a false premise: that we can only have one or the other.

America needs both.

The country should, indeed, continue to break down barriers that have contributed to lower pay for women in the workforce and kept women from gaining top management jobs.

But the nation should also attack the lack of educational achievement among males.

For answers, look to the achievement of females.

A generation ago the college degree ratios were almost exactly the reverse of what they are today, with women in the minority.

That gap produced the "Girl Project " to make the educational system more female-friendly.

Required now is a "Boy Project " to improve the achievement of boys in school and put more men in college. In the global economy, America needs all the educated people it can find -- women and men.