There's a lot of interesting points you make, but also a lot of incorrect assumptions. A recent Yale poll indicated that 18 to 21 year olds lean Republican. However, 22 to 29 year olds leaned Democrat. That they leaned D less strongly than younger voters leaned R is offset by the fact that there are roughly twice as many in the latter category. So essentially, it is a split, according to this one poll.

A more recent Harvard poll shows Dems are extremely unpopular among 18 to 29 year olds. I guess that doesn't necessarily make them satisfied with Republicans, but it should be very worrying for Dems. I believe that both sides are extremely unpopular and U.S. citizens are desperate to find change via any means necessary, which makes elections far less predictable than they used to be.

If everyone that should be in college were to flood vocational schools, you'd have no one to buy their services, and a S&D curve that will disfavor wage growth.

You don't need everyone to do something to see major change. Most of the lowered enrollment is coming from men, who are only about 50% of the population. And it's not all men that are foregoing college. But if enough men are doing it, it may be enough to force colleges to re-evaluate their tuition rates and policies.

Not sure how men were made to feel uncomfortable when I was an undergrad, or how that has changed today, as I regularly visit campus. And given the love affair big schools have with all things sports, I fail to see how bro culture is being eliminated on campus.

Just because you don't notice it doesn't mean it's not there. The fact that this story even exists proves that college is becoming less appealing to men.

I went to college and AI will never replace me. Unless you think AI will be capable of designing scientific experiments or handling the complexities of what goes wrong in a research environment. Anecdotal, but applicable to the whole of science.

AGI is likely inevitable. No one knows if it will happen in 5 years or 500 years but when it does, your job (and everyone else's) will immediately be gone. And even if you're safe for a good while, many other college graduates are not. As you pointed out earlier, society doesn't work if everyone tries to do the same exact thing. So you're looking at this issue only through your own personal situation and then extrapolating that to other people's situations.

Colleges aren't left-wing echo chambers so much as places where people learn how to analyze facts and expand their worldview through the myriad life experiences of students from all over the world.

I wish this was true. The lack of critical thinking I see today from both sides of the aisle, whether inside of colleges or out in the real world, is astonishing. Social media has made us far more tribal and tribalism is the biggest enemy of critical thinking.

You, implicit in your choice of words and coded phrases, believe that we should make it so that the output of college is a more even divide between liberal and conservative. But de facto that would be conservative indoctrination in order to achieve that, as the historical trend has always been towards more progressive beliefs and attitudes in the more educated.

I most certainly do not think that colleges should attempt to influence the political viewpoints of their students and nothing in my post even insinuated that. You inferred something that was never said and is contrary to my entire view. My point was that colleges should be more welcoming to people who already hold conservative viewpoints, many of whom happen to be men. Where everyone lands after being able to openly discuss their viewpoints is up to each individual and should be as independent as possible of groupthink, whether the groupthink would be coming from the college or any other organization.

any group of people is going to eventually become an echo chamber

While there may be some truth to this, this wasn't nearly as prevalent before social media.

Being open to more than one side of things is difficult for any group because it causes turmoil instead of agreement,

This has always been part of the social contract of college before "safe spaces": the process of learning is going to expose you to many things that are unfamiliar and possibly uncomfortable, but it's an important part of the process. The more you experience it, the less uncomfortable it becomes.

social cohesion is important for feeling safe and having good cognitive health and learning

This interpretation of social cohesion is an excuse for feeling validated in your own pre-conceived notions. Before social media and college "safe spaces", students could experience social cohesion while still being exposed to drastically different viewpoints.

I went to a fairly small college, and there were lots of viewpoints of every sort at that one, you just needed to seek them out.

At a good institution of learning, you don't have to go far out of your way to find different viewpoints: the college will provide you with a variety of viewpoints via the curriculum and students can decide for themselves which viewpoints they agree with. Such institutions may still exist, but I can't imagine they're as common as they used to be.

This should NOT be something so difficult and complex

This is the official battle cry of Dunning Kruger.