Challenged by Coeducation

by Miller-Bernal, Leslie; Poulson, Susan L.

• ISBN13: 9780826515421
• ISBN10: 0826515428
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-02-28
• Publisher: Vanderbilt Univ Pr

Summary

Challenged by Coeducationdetails the responses of women's colleges to the most recent wave of Women's colleges originated in the mid-nineteenth century as a response to women's exclusion from higher education. Women's academic successes and their persistent struggles to enter men's colleges resulted in coeducation rapidly becoming the norm, however. Still, many prestigious institutions remained single-sex, notably most of the Ivy League and all of the Seven Sisters colleges.In the mid-twentieth century colleges' concerns about finances and enrollments, as well as ideological pressures to integrate formerly separate social groups, led men's colleges, and some women's colleges, to become coeducational. The admission of women to practically all men's colleges created a serious challenge for women's colleges. Most people no longer believed women's colleges were necessary since women had virtually unlimited access to higher education. Even though research spawned by the women's movement indicated the benefits to women of a "room of their own," few young women remained interested in applying to women's colleges.Challenged by Coeducationdetails the responses of women's colleges to this latest wave of coeducation. Case studies written expressly for this volume include many types of women's colleges-Catholic and secular; Seven Sisters and less prestigious; private and state; liberal arts and more applied; northern, southern, and western; urban and rural; independent and coordinated with a coeducational institution. They demonstrate the principal ways women's colleges have adapted to the new coeducational era: some have been taken over or closed, but most have changed by admitting men and thereby becoming coeducational, or by offering new programs to different populations. Some women's colleges, mostly those that are in cities, connected to other colleges, and prestigious with a high endowment, still enjoy success.Despite their dramatic drop in numbers, from 250 to fewer than 60 today, women's colleges are still important, editors Miller-Bernal and Poulson argue. With their commitment to enhancing women's lives, women's colleges and formerly women's colleges can serve as models of egalitarian coeducation.

Author Biography

Leslie Miller-Bernal, Professor of Sociology at Wells College, is the author of Separate by Degree: Women Students' Experiences in Women's and Coeducational Colleges. Susan L. Poulson is Professor of History at the University of Scranton. Together they co-edited Going Coed: Women's Experiences in Formerly Men's Colleges and Universities, 1950-2000 (Vanderbilt University Press).

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
PART I The Place of Women's Colleges in Higher Education
1 Introduction: Changes in the Status and Functions of Women's Colleges over Time	1
Leslie Miller-Bernal
PART II Case Studies of Women's Colleges That Have Become Coeducational or Have Closed
2 Vassar College: A Seven Sisters College Chooses Coeducation	25
Clyde Griffen and Elizabeth A. Daniels
3 Coeducation at Wheaton College: From Conscious Coeducation to Distinctive Coeducation?	48
Susan F. Semel and Alan R. Sadovnik
4 A Catholic Women's College Absorbed by a University: The Case of Mundelein College	76
Prudence Moylan
5 Texas Woman's University: Threats to Institutional Autonomy and Conflict over the Admission of Men	108
Claire L. Sahlin
6 Wells College: The Transition to Coeducation Begins	145
Leslie Miller-Bernal
PART III Case Studies of Women's Colleges That Have Remained Single Sex
7 Revitalizing the Mission of a Women's College: Mills College in Oakland, California	175
Marianne Sheldon
8 Simmons College: Meeting the Needs of Women Workers	208
Susan L. Poulson
9 Spelman College: A Place All Their Own	234
Frances D. Graham and Susan L. Poulson
10 College of Notre Dame: The Oldest Catholic Women's College Changes with the Times	257
Dorothy Brown and Eileen O'Dea, SSND
PART IV Case Studies of Affiliated Women's Colleges
11 Rekindling a Legacy: Barnard College Remains a Women's College	289
Andrea Walton
12 Cambridge University's Two Oldest Women's Colleges, Girton and Newnham	328
Leslie Miller-Bernal
PART V Conclusions
13 The State of Women's Colleges Today	375
Leslie Miller-Bernal and Susan L. Poulson
APPENDIX 1 Statement of Six Past Presidents of Formerly Women's Colleges, 2000 Exceptional Coed Colleges: A New Model for Gender Equality	389
APPENDIX 2 List of Women's Colleges in Spring 2005 and Some Summary Characteristics	394
Contributors	397
Index	401