Challenged by coeducation: women's colleges since the 1960s

Susan L. Poulson, Leslie Miller-Bernal

Vanderbilt University Press, 2006 - Education - 418 pages

Challenged by Coeducation details 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 Coeducation details 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.

What people are saying

Review: Challenged by Coeducation: Women's Colleges Since the 1960s

User Review  - Rachel - Goodreads

Excellent set of case studies of women's colleges who resisted coeducation as well as former women's colleges that have started admitting men. Very thought-provoking, though troubling, at times, to a Bryn Mawr grad such as myself!

Review: Challenged by Coeducation: Women's Colleges Since the 1960s

User Review  - Teniell - Goodreads

This book profiled several women's colleges who contemplated admitting men from 1960-2000. An interesting read about women's colleges and their unique approaches to women's higher education.

Contents

• Changes in the Status: 1
• Case Studies of Womens Colleges That: 21
• Threats to Institutional: 108
• The Transition to Coeducation Begins: 145
• Case Studies of Womens Colleges: 173
• Meeting the Needs of Women Workers: 208
• A Place All Their Own: 234
• The Oldest Catholic: 257
• PART IV: 287
• Cambridge Universitys Two Oldest: 328
• PARTV: 359
• The State of Womens Colleges Today: 375
• APPENDIX 1: 383
• Statement of Six Past Presidents: 389
• Contributors: 397

About the author

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).

Bibliographic information

• Title: Challenged by coeducation: women's colleges since the 1960s
• Editors: Susan L. Poulson, Leslie Miller-Bernal
• Contributors: Susan L. Poulson, Leslie Miller-Bernal
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press, 2006
• ISBN: 0826515436, 9780826515438
• Length: 418 pages
• Subjects: Education / Higher; Education / History; Social Science / Women's Studies