College Education Concerns in the 21st Century
(c) M. Ryder

When it opens its admissions to men this fall, Pennsylvania's Rosemont College will become the latest in a long line of former women's colleges to either go coeducational or shutter their doors.

According to one study, just 3 percent of collegebound women will even consider attending a women's college. Yet on many traditional coeducational campuses across the country, female students now outnumber their male peers.

Some argue that this combination of factors demonstrates that women's colleges are obsolete, but Pat McGuire, who has served for 20 years as president of Trinity Washington University and its women's college, thinks otherwise. McGuire says she has watched Trinity (located in the District of Columbia) transform during her tenure and offers the admissions essays written by prospective students as evidence of why women's colleges still exist and whom they are serving. "Where I come from," one applicant wrote, "based on stereotypes, the typical thing for me to do is become someone's 'baby mama' or housewife. Women all over are subjected to these stereotypes [and] that's why I firmly believe in this college."

McGuire says that poor or minority women who see not just college but a women's college in particular as their ticket to knowledge, empowerment, and success are not the only students who appreciate what women's colleges have to offer. An analysis of data from the National Survey for Student Engagement shows women at women's colleges rate their educational experience higher than women at coeducational schools.

When more than 300 women's colleges existed in the early 1960s, these schools primarily served upper-middle-class, white students. Some famous alumnae of this era include Madeleine Albright, Drew Gilpin Faust, Betty Friedan, Katharine Hepburn, Anna Quindlen, and Martha Stewart. The nearly 50 women's colleges still operating today are among the country's more ethnically and socioeconomically diverse liberal arts colleges, offering generous financial aid packages. Just as women's colleges were founded because women couldn't go to college elsewhere, many of today's women's colleges are surviving -- and thriving -- by educating specific populations of women who are still underserved.

Though about 95 percent of Trinity's students were white when alumnae like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius were students there, 85 percent of Trinity's current student body is either black or Hispanic. About half of the students hail from the D.C. metro area, and many women are the first in their family to go to college. Some are also the first in their family to graduate from high school, McGuire says. Although Trinity has little money for marketing and relies mostly on word of mouth to promote itself, the number of students enrolled in the university's women's college has risen by about 40 percent since 2000 to a record high of 600 students this spring semester. Trinity, like many of today's women's colleges, also enrolls part-time and professional students in coeducational programs to help financially support its women's college.

Because many of Trinity's women's college students arrive needing to improve their critical reading, writing, and math skills, the college recently rewrote its first-year curriculum to include a greater emphasis on developing these "foundational skills," McGuire says. "It's not that these women aren't smart or can't do it," she added. "It's that no one ever sat them down and explained how to do it."

Like Trinity, Nebraska's College of St. Mary once had a primarily white student body. Today, about 20 percent of the student body at St. Mary's is made up of minority women, but what makes this midwestern women's college stand out is the comprehensive support it provides for single mothers seeking a college education. Women in the Mothers Living and Learning program live with their children alongside other single mothers in on-campus dorms, have access to free meals for their children in the college's dining hall, and can enroll their children in day-care services that are within walking distance of the college's campus.

Susan Williams lives in a St. Mary's dorm with two of her children and says the specialized program for single mothers attracted her to a women's college. Before transferring to St. Mary's, Williams attended the University of Missouri. At Mizzou, she lived in off-campus housing with her children but had little access to additional assistance. "At Mizzou, I was basically living on my own, and that didn't work for me. I needed more [emotional and academic] support," says Williams, who is studying to become an occupational therapist. "Women need women's colleges because for some women like me, it's the only way they will see where they can go in life."

Single mothers interested in learning more about their higher education opportunities can now make use of an information clearinghouse created last year by Wilson College. The National Clearinghouse for Single Mothers in Higher Education (www.wilson.edu/wilson/asp/content2.asp?id=2874) provides links to areas of interest such as educational opportunities, financial aid, public policy, parenting skills, personal growth, and women and leadership.

Success via support. When St. Mary's initiated its program for single mothers in 2000, just six mothers and their children were enrolled. Today, the program has grown to include 32 moms and their 38 children, who come from across the country to join the program. Sister Karen, a nun who runs the MLL program at St. Mary's, says she often finds mothers supporting other mothers in ways as simple as an hour of much-needed babysitting. "If one student's baby is out of control and Mom is frazzled, another mom is often there to knock on her door and say, 'Take a shower. I'll keep an eye on the baby while you take some time for you,'" Sister Karen says. "This level of support breeds success among these students, students who need to be successful not only for themselves but for their children, too."

Virginia's Mary Baldwin College reaches specialized populations of women like the young, exceptionally gifted students who can attend the college as teenagers or women interested in joining an all-female corps of cadets, but the school also attracts women without the socioeconomic means to attend other colleges. Mary Baldwin President Pamela Fox says that 75 percent of her college's students receive need-based financial aid and that in response to the failing economy, Mary Baldwin students will have access to additional financial aid through the "Boldly Baldwin" program starting this fall.

The package offers 250 new first-year students a $2,000 merit award, an undetermined number of upperclassmen additional merit and need-based aid, and 50 students of all grade levels new, on-campus internship positions where, she says, "we will put our own students to work." Fox says the Boldly Baldwin program is just one example of the many ways women's colleges turn to innovative ideas as a means to continue to attract new students. "Women's colleges are ahead of the curve and on the forefront of what women need," Fox says. "We have never been and we will never be followers. We have to create our own way forward."

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The Best 371 Colleges, 2010 Edition (College Admissions Guides)

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(c) 2009 U.S. News & World Report