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by Jessica Calefati
When it opens its admissions to men this fall, Pennsylvania's
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
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
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
Susan Williams lives in a
Single mothers interested in learning more about their higher education opportunities can now make use of an information clearinghouse created last year by
Success via support. When
Virginia's
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."
Available at Amazon.com:
Paying for College without Going Broke, 2009 Edition (College Admissions Guides)
The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price
The Best 371 Colleges, 2010 Edition (College Admissions Guides)
© U.S. News & World Report
Women's Colleges have had to Broaden their Appeal and Support