Women graduate in STEM more than boys: It’s video games?

I found this report interesting, both because of its claim and because of the (what seems to me to be) horrendously flawed logic.  Women are increasingly taking more STEM classes, the author claims, and are nearly catching up to men.  However, more women graduate!  Why?  Well, of course, because men play more video games!  I might use this as an example of correlation-is-not-causation next time I teach the research methods section of my educational technology class.

The number of women taking courses in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the STEM subjects, has been increasing since 1966 according to a new report. But another study, on boys’ academic responses to new video games, establishes a cause-and-effect relationship that could partly explain the decline in male academic achievement.

Women students in higher education now outnumber men in most countries, except Japan and Turkey. In the US, this has skewed the ratio among the sexes in terms of those who graduate: the proportion of males earning degrees has dropped to 43% while that for women has increased to 57%.

via University World News – US: Women gain in science while video games hold back boys.