Challenged by Coeducation: Women's Colleges since the 1960s (review)

Abstract

Challenged by Coeducation: Women's Colleges since the 1960s. Edited by Leslie Miller-Bernal and Susan L. Poulson. (Nashville:Vanderbilt University Press. 2007. Pp. xiv, 418. $79.95 clothbound, $29.95 paperback.) Leslie Miller-Bernal and Susan Poulson offer a new perspective on the familiar topic of coeducation and women's colleges. Departing from the usual studies on the impact of women's colleges on their students' lives, they examine, through a series of case studies, the recent transformation of women's coEeges from single-sex education to coeducation. The case studies, written by the editors and contributors, document the response of thirteen women's colleges to the challenges posed since the by the rise in popularity of coeducation. Running through case studies is the issue of gender equity in education, which they raise when they address the central question of the book: Why are women's colleges desirable? . . . Women's colleges, in short, may offer a subculture that keeps the dominant culture at a distance (p. x). In higher education, they argue, context is as important as access (p. xi).This theme is carried over from their previous book, Going Coed: Women's Experiences in Formerly Men's Colleges and Universities, 1950-2000, in which they noted that while the colleges may have adopted coeducation, they did not institute gender equity on their campuses. Miller-Bernal and Poulson break the book into five parts, not including two appendices, intended to partly reflect the fundamental outcomes for women's colleges since the 1960s (ix). In their introduction (part 1), they offer the reader a brief history of women's colleges in the United States, including the opposition women's colleges faced and the difficulties they have encountered since the rise in popularity of coeducation in the 1960s. In parts 2-4 the editors present the case studies in three groups that reflect the typical ways women' colleges responded to coeducation. Part 2 looks at women's colleges that have either adopted coeducation to survive or closed (Vassar, Wheaton, Mundelein, Wells, and Texas Women's University); part 3 studies colleges that have remained single-sex for at least their traditional undergraduate population by developing programs to offset the decline in undergraduate tuition (Mills, Simmons, Spelman, and College of Notre Dame, Maryland); and part 4 examines affiliated or coordinate colleges that have a close relationship with a neighboring men's or coeducational institution (Barnard CoEege, Columbia University; Girton College and Newnham College, Cambridge University). …