| Description |
1 online resource (xii, 418 pages) : illustrations |
| Contents |
Introduction : changes in the status and functions of women's colleges over time / Leslie Miller-Bernal -- Vassar College : A seven sisters college chooses coeducation / Clyde Griffen and Elizabeth A. Daniels -- Coeducation at Wheaton College : from conscious coeducation to distinctive coeducation? / Susan F. Semel and Alan R. Sadovnik -- A Catholic women's college absorbed by a university : the case of Mundelein College / Prudence Moylan -- Texas Woman's University : threats to institutional autonomy and conflict over the admission of men / Claire L. Sahlin -- Wells College : the transition to coeducation begins / Leslie Miller-Bernal -- Revitalizing the mission of a women's college : Mills College in Oakland, California / Marianne Sheldon -- Simmons College : meeting the needs of women workers / Susan L. Poulson -- Spelman College : a place all their own / Frances D. Graham and Susan L. Poulson -- College of Notre Dame : the oldest Catholic women's college changes with the times / Dorothy Brown and Eileen O'Dea -- Rekindling a legacy : Barnard College remains a women's college / Andrea Walton -- Cambridge University's two oldest women's colleges, Girton and Newnham / Leslie Miller-Bernal -- The state of women's colleges today / Leslie Miller-Bernal and Susan L. Poulson |
| Summary |
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 |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL |
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English |
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digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL |
| Subject |
Women -- Education (Higher) -- History
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Women's colleges -- History
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EDUCATION -- Higher.
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Women -- Education (Higher)
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Women's colleges
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| Genre/Form |
History
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| Author |
Miller-Bernal, Leslie, 1946-
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Poulson, Susan L., 1959-
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| LC no. |
2006010321 |
| ISBN |
9780826592200 |
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0826592201 |
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1283342804 |
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9781283342803 |
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9786613342805 |
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6613342807 |
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0826515428 |
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9780826515421 |
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0826515436 |
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9780826515438 |
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