Single? Don’t blame Tinder. Blame math.

The world has been on fire since Vanity Fair published its eulogy for the death of modern dating at the hands of Tinder titled,“Tinder and the Dawn of the ‘Dating Apocalypse.’”

A new article from The Washington Post though says single women shouldn’t blame Tinder for their single status.

They should blame math.

Math in the sense that there is a huge gender imbalance in today’s college grad dating pool. Jon Birger, a freelance writer for the Washington Post postulates:

“Today’s college and post-college hookup culture is a byproduct, not of Tinder or Facebook (another target of modern scolds), but of shifting demographics among the college-educated. Much as the death toll of WWI caused a shortage of marriageable men in the 1920s, today’s widening gender gap in college enrollment has created lopsided numbers in the post-college dating pool.”

Birger explains that because there are more women graduating from college (about 34% more women than men graduated in 2012) the dating pool for straight millennial college graduates is severely skewed with about four women for every three guys.

The odds get even worse if you consider denser markets like New York City, where there are an estimated three women for every two men.

Oh, and if there wasn’t already an alarm clock going berserk in your head, get a load of this.

“I’d also urge marriage-minded women not to put off getting serious about dating because the math will only get worse over time,” Birger warns. “Call it the musical chairs problem: Nearly everybody finds a chair in the first round. By the last round, however, there’s a 50 percent chance of not getting one. Similarly, in a dating pool that starts out with 140 women and 100 men, the gender ratio among those still single soars from 1.4:1 to more than 2:1 once half the women get married.”

What’s a girl to do? Well, according to Birger, the single, college-educated, and young straight woman living in Manhattan has two options:

1) Date outside your socio-ecenomic class (AKA date a guy who didn’t go to college).
2) Leave Manhattan for a place like California, where the odds are better and men have to work harder.

But why on earth would anyone leave Manhattan?

Matt Lee is a Web producer for Metro New York. He writes about almost everything and anything. Talk to him (or yell at him) on Twitter so he doesn’t feel lonely @mattlee2669 .