The end of the male only college is nigh
Being “women-only” offers options in the classroom
Single-gender colleges encourage leadership
Single-gender colleges encourage educational risk taking
While many female applicants when considering an all-female college are mildly unenthusiastic, for male applicants all-male colleges are almost extinct. The only secular male-only colleges are Wabash College (Indiana), Deep Springs College (which is a 2-year, tuition free, educational experience like nothing else on earth), Morehouse College (a traditionally all black male institution), and Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. For females, on the other hand, there are a number of colleges to select among, though this number has dwindled down from 200 in 1980 to 58 today. Among the all-female schools still standing, many have some of the most beautiful campuses on the continent: Smith, Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, and Bryn Mawr. A full listing can be found on Wikipedia:.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_colleges_in_the_United_States.
Granted, the number of National Historic buildings, of which Bryn Mawr alone boasts ten, is a fairly flimsy reason to attend an all-female college. There are, however, a lot of reasons a young woman might choose to spend four years among her own gender than to deal with the distractions prevalent at a coed college. Yet, claiming that attending an all-female college destines you to years of classes without a trace of the other gender misrepresents reality. Virtually all the remaining women’s colleges are either part of an extensive consortium, or have an associated coed institution either nearby or at its doorstep. For example, if you attend Wellesley, you can cross register at MIT, or even earn a double degree (a BA from Wellesley and a SB from MIT in five years). Furthermore, if you attend Bryn Mawr, you’re part of a consortium that includes coed Swarthmore, Haverford, and the University of Pennsylvania; if you’re enrolled at Barnard, you’re in fact, as good as in Columbia, which has been coed since 1983.
Attending an all-female college does not preclude contact with males within the classroom; what it does is allow you to regulate just how much contact you desire: in other words it expands your options beyond what they would be attending a comparable coed college.
Admittedly, attending an all-female college is not for everyone. The schools themselves will tell you this. Most all-female college students are more intellectually driven, and have strong personal goals. They’re also a rare commodity: only 2% of bachelor’s degrees awarded are to graduates of women’s colleges. Yet despite their miniscule numbers, one-third of the women board members of the Fortune 1000 are from women’s colleges and of all the women members in Congress, a fifth attended women’s colleges. (The Washington Post, “Are Women’s Colleges Still Needed?” by Selena Rezvani, September 3, 2010) Something about all-women colleges obviously encourages leadership.
The atmosphere of same sex colleges is, in many ways, much more conducive to learning; students can dispense with worrying about appearances and all the posturing that having the opposite sex in the classroom might provoke. College should be a time for students to explore their intellectual development—consideration of the opposite sex serves mainly as a distraction. Taking risks and failing, at least initially, is critical to learning anything. If all-women college students stumble, most right themselves eventually: graduates of women’s colleges are twice as likely to earn PhDs in sciences, and finish medical school. Within a single sex college many students feel they are ensconced in a brotherhood or sisterhood of fellowship. Being a part of such a community makes risk taking not so frightening. And learning to take risks, frankly, is the quintessence of learning, of entrepreneurship, and of life.
Possibly in another decade or two, there won’t be any more single-sex colleges. Mills College, Scripps, Smith, and Mount Holyoke might all disappear or meld into the great wash of post-secondary offerings. I, for one, want to see a lot more women physicists, business leaders, and engineers producing unique solutions to pressing problems. I hope all-female colleges survive; they serve certain women well, and all of us are the beneficiaries.