Women in Higher Education: Access, Success, and the Future

Abstract

Several months ago, the Georgia Association for Women in Higher Education asked me to deliver the keynote address for their annual state meeting, with a focus on the “Current Status of Women in Higher Education: Challenges and Strengths to Moving Forward.” Over time, I have given time and small donations to various women’s advocacy and educational groups; but I must admit I have not been on the forefront of tracking women’s achievements and struggles. Developing my own career; mentoring graduate students (and others on campus who needed a listening ear); and tending two boys, a husband, and several family pets kept me busy. So, I found it interesting to do the background research for this talk. Below is a brief summary of my speech and an explanation of why I think the subject raises important questions for authors and readers of Innovative Higher Education. My talk centered on women’s earliest access to higher education, recent gains in enrollment and graduation, and current leadership in executive and administrative positions. We all know that women were excluded from formal education in the earliest years of higher education. The Georgia Female College of Macon, Georgia (now Wesleyan College) and Oberlin College in Ohio led the way in admitting women students in the 1830s, approximately 200 years after Harvard (1636) had enrolled its first class of males in an institution on a frontier that was to become the United States of America. The women’s colleges of the Northeast followed soon with the founding of Vassar (1865), Wellesley and Smith (1875), and Bryn Mawr (1884). The following100 years saw state colleges and private universities open their doors to women students, and enrollments and graduations increased at an accelerated pace according to the American Council on Education’s report about Gender Equity in Higher Education: 2010. Women’s share of baccalaureate enrollment and graduation is now close to 60 percent overall, and this percentage has remained consistent since 2000. From no participation to equal participation in a century is actually great progress. However, while the numbers highlight equity, they also conceal the struggle–legal, policy, and personal–that enabled this progress. Innov High Educ (2011) 36:145–147 DOI 10.1007/s10755-011-9184-x