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Women's college

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File:Scripps College for Women-9.jpg
Scripps College, a women's college in Claremont, California, United States

Women's colleges in higher education are undergraduate, bachelor's degree-granting institutions, often liberal arts colleges, whose student populations are composed exclusively or almost exclusively of women. Some women's colleges admit male students to their graduate schools or in smaller numbers to undergraduate programs, but all serve a primarily female student body.

Distinction from finishing schoolEdit

A women's college offers an academic curriculum exclusively or primarily, while a girls' or women's finishing school (sometimes called a charm school) focuses on social graces such as deportment, etiquette, and entertaining; academics if offered are secondary.

The term finishing school has sometimes been used or misused to describe certain women's colleges. Some of these colleges may have started as finishing schools but transformed themselves into rigorous liberal arts academic institutions, as for instance the now defunct Finch College.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Likewise the secondary school Miss Porter's School was founded as Miss Porter's Finishing School for Young Ladies in 1843; now it emphasizes an academic curriculum.<ref name="MyUser_Newenglandhistoricalsociety.com_March_31_2015c">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

A women's college that had never described itself as a finishing school can acquire the misnomer. Throughout the 114-year history of the women's college Sweet Briar, students and alumnae have objected to calling it a finishing school.<ref>Resentment of term finishing school

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|CitationClass=web }}</ref> Nonetheless the finishing school characterization persisted, and may have contributed to declining enrollment, financial straits, and the school's near closure in 2015.<ref>Characterization of Sweet Briar as finishing school

  • Template:Cite book(noting daughter of Dr. Hay was a junior attending the "Sweet Briar, Va. Finishing School" in 1922.)
  • Template:Cite book "[Hugo Black was] a traditional southern sexist male who believed...that women should not go out of their way to read the classics. Instead they should go to finishing school and prepare themselves for the rewarding, nurturing role of wife and mother...[H]e wanted [his daughter Jo Jo] to go to Sweet Briar College because, according to him, scholarship should never play too big a role in a woman's life”.
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Declining numberEdit

The continuing relevance of women's colleges has been questioned.<ref>Question of continuing relevance of women’s colleges

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|CitationClass=web }}</ref> While during the 1960s there were 240 women's colleges in the U.S., only about 40 remain as of 2015.<ref>parlous condition, declining numbers

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|CitationClass=web }}</ref> In the words of a teacher at Radcliffe (a women's college that merged with Harvard): "[i]f women’s colleges become unnecessary, if women’s colleges become irrelevant, then that’s a sign of our [women's] success."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Around the worldEdit

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AfricaEdit

Somaliland
Sudan

AsiaEdit

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PhilippinesEdit

South KoreaEdit

CanadaEdit

Brescia University College was Canada's only university-level women's educational institution until it merged with Western University in 2024.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia was originally founded as a women's college in 1875, but became co-educational in 1967.

Middle EastEdit

Kingdom of Bahrain
United Arab Emirates
Kuwait
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Most major universities in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are composed of two branches: a women-only branch and a similar male-only branch. This includes the following universities:

The following are female-only institutions:

Iran

United KingdomEdit

Template:See also Mary Astell advocated the idea that women were just as rational as men, and just as deserving of education. First published in 1694, her Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest<ref name="MaryAstellSeriously">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> presents a plan for an all-female college where women could pursue a life of the mind.<ref name="CornellWomensLit">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The first college to partially realise Astell's plan was Whitelands College, a women's teacher training college opened in 1841 by the Church of England's National Society and since 2004 part of the University of Roehampton.<ref name=Bluestockings>Template:Cite book</ref> Whitelands was followed by two colleges in London, Queen's College in 1848 and Bedford College in 1849. Queen's College developed into a girls' public school and Bedford College became part of the University of London before merging with another women's college. The first of the Cambridge women's colleges, Girton, which opened in 1869 initially in Hitchin, claims to be the first residential college in Britain to offer degree level education to women.<ref name="Girton Past">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Somerville and Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford opened in 1879.

Existing women's colleges:

Former women's colleges:

Former women's colleges in UK
College Established Became
co-educational
Bedford College, London 1849 1965
Bishop Otter College, now University of Chichester 1873 1957
Digby Stuart College, Roehampton University 1874 1971
Froebel College, Roehampton University 1892 1965
Girton College, Cambridge 1869 1976
Hughes Hall, Cambridge 1885 1973
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford 1878 1979
Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge 1965 2020
Royal Holloway, University of London 1879 1965
St Aidan's College, Durham 1947 1981
St Anne's College, Oxford 1879 1979
St Hild's College, Durham
(merged to form co-educational college)		 1858 1975
St Hilda's College, Oxford 1893 2008
St Hugh's College, Oxford 1886 1986
St Mary's College, Durham 1899 2005
Somerville College, Oxford 1879 1994
Southlands College, Roehampton University 1872 1965
Trevelyan College, Durham 1966 1992
Westfield College, London 1882 1964
Whitelands College, Roehampton University 1841 1965

United StatesEdit

Early historyEdit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} Women's colleges in the United States were a product of the increasingly popular private girls' secondary schools of the early- to mid-19th century, called "academies" or "seminaries." According to Irene Harwarth, et al.,<ref name="WomensCollegesUS">Template:Cite book</ref> "women's colleges were founded during the mid- and late-19th century in response to a need for advanced education for women at a time when they were not admitted to most institutions of higher education." While there were a few coeducational colleges (such as Oberlin College founded in 1833, Lawrence University in 1847, Antioch College in 1853, and Bates College in 1855), most colleges and universities of high standing at that time were exclusively for men.

Critics of the girls’ seminaries were roughly divided into two groups. The reform group, including Emma Willard, felt seminaries required reform through “strengthening teaching of the core academic subjects.” Others felt seminaries were insufficient, suggesting “a more durable institution--a women’s college--be founded, among them, Catharine E. Beecher. In her True Remedy for the Wrongs of Women (1851),<ref name="BeecherTrueRemedy">Template:Cite book</ref> Beecher points out how “seminaries could not offer sufficient, permanent endowments, buildings, and libraries; a corporation whose duty it is to perpetuate the institution on a given plan.”<ref name="WomensCollegesUS" /><ref name="SmithWolf">Template:Cite book</ref>

Another notable figure was Mary Lyon (1797-1849), founder of Mount Holyoke College, whose contemporaries included Sarah Pierce (Litchfield Female Academy, 1792); Catharine Beecher (Hartford Female Seminary, 1823); Zilpah P. Grant Banister (Ipswich Female Seminary, 1828); George Washington Doane (St. Mary's Hall, 1837 now called Doane Academy). Prior to founding Mount Holyoke, Lyon contributed to the development of both Hartford Female Seminary and Ipswich Female Seminary. She was also involved in the creation of Wheaton Female Seminary (now Wheaton College, Massachusetts) in 1834.<ref name="LefkowitzHorowitz">Template:Cite book</ref>

Women's College CoalitionEdit

The Women's College Coalition is an association of women's colleges and universities (with some observers/participants from the single-sex secondary/high schools) that are either two- and four-year, both public and private, religiously-affiliated and secular. It was founded in 1972, at a time in which the "Civil Rights Movement", the "Women's Rights Movement", and Title IX, as well as demographic and technological changes in the 1960s brought about rapid and complex social and economic change in the United States. These societal changes put increasing pressure of perceived "unpopularity" and "old fashioned" perceptions and opinions placing the concept of "single-sex education" for both women and men on the most drastic downward spiral in its history. Additionally, the landscape of education dramatically changed as many previously all-male high schools (both private/independent and public) along with the colleges, many of which were either forced by official actions or declining attendance figures to become coeducational, thereby offering women many more educational options. At the same time with the similar changes forced on women's institutions, both private and public secondary schools along with the colleges/universities, forced a number of the larger number of girls schools to also coeducate. By the late 1970s, women's enrollment in college exceeded the men's and, in the 2020s, women make up the majority of undergraduates (57% nationally) on college/university campuses.Template:Citation needed Women earn better college grades than men do, and are more likely than men to complete college.Template:Citation needed

During the past several decades, the Women's College Coalition engaged in research about the benefits of a women's high school and/or college education in the 21st century.Template:Citation needed Drawing upon the findings of research conducted by the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and Hardwick-Day on levels of satisfaction among students and alumnae at women's colleges and coeducational institutions, as well as the Association of American Colleges and Universities, NAICU and others, the Coalition makes the case for women's education and women's high schools and colleges to prospective students, families, policy and opinion makers, the media, employers and the general public.Template:Citation needed

Women's colleges and universities in North AmericaEdit

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See alsoEdit

ReferencesEdit

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Further readingEdit

  • Faragher, John Mack, and Florence Howe, eds. Women and higher education in American history: essays from the Mount Holyoke College Sesquicentennial (1988) online
  • Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz (1993) [1984]. Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women's Colleges from Their Nineteenth-Century Beginnings to the 1930s (Alfred A. Knopf, NY (1984); University of Massachusetts Press.) ISBN 0585083665.
  • MacDonald, Sara Z. University Women - A History of Women and Higher Education in Canada (McGill-Queen's University Press. 2021)
  • Rowold, Katharina. The Educated Woman: Minds, Bodies, and Women's Higher Education in Britain, Germany, and Spain, 1865-1914 (Routledge, 2009).
  • World Bank Task Force on Higher Education and Society. Higher Education in Developing Countries: Peril and Promise (World Bank. 2000)

External linksEdit

Template:Female education Template:School types

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