Women-Only Colleges

Abstract

The continuing controversy over whether segregated women-only colleges are socially acceptable and educationally efficacious has skirted the issue of appropriate measures of organizational effectiveness. Instead, the debate has focused on whether these colleges are out of date in today's climate, which calls for gender equality in the distribution of institutional resources. Successful legal challenges against men-only colleges have further undermined social legitimacy of women-only colleges [20]. The women's liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s stimulated widespread social attitudes and established legal conditions that make the position of single-sex colleges untenable, because some argue that separate education is inherently unequal, unnatural, and hindering of students' development in college [11]. In the current social climate it has been increasingly difficult for women's colleges to attract able students and to raise funds needed to function effectively, let alone to make programmatic improvements. As late as 1960, although some had already ceased to exist, there were still about three hundred women's colleges in the United States. Since then the number of women's colleges has decreased dramatically, and their combined total student enrollment has dropped precipitously. At latest report only eighty-four remain in operation; seventy-one are four-year, and thirteen are junior colleges [31]. In 1967, 9.3 percent (absolute number: 147,400) of all full-time women students were enrolled in women-only colleges, but by 1987 enrollment had dropped to only 2 percent (absolute number: 52,000) [9]. At present, none are being founded and, among those still functioning, more are making plans to merge with other institutions, transform themselves into coeducational institutions, or close. In light of this trend it is important to note that the decline of women's colleges has been stimulated neither by demonstrable empirical evidence concerning student development nor by any cogent theory about institutional effectiveness. As the number of women-only schools has declined, researchers have begun to present arguments and data suggesting positive effects on female student development [1, 3, 12, 13, 15, 16, 19, 22, 26, 27, 28]. Thus, this study seeks to address important yet neglected measures of organizational effectiveness for women-only colleges. We consider claims of educational efficacy (that is, how well the colleges develop their students) on three dimensions: academic development, social skill development, and career preparation [7]. Most previous evaluations of effectiveness among women's colleges have focused exclusively on measuring the impact of these institutions on postcollege career achievements of their former students [13, 15, 21, 22, 26, 27, 28]. By contrast, this study examines additional elements of student development - that is, academic ability, social self-confidence, and career preparation - during their college years. We take social self-confidence as both a cause and an effect of social skill development. Review of the Literature The focus of this research is to examine the capacity of two types of institutions (women-only and coed) to develop women's potential along academic, social, and career dimensions. We organized this review of previous research into three separate sections - one for each of the three dimensions. Academic Ability as an Indicator of Academic Development When institutional climate places a high value on achievement, students' talents are more fully developed [6]. Encouragement from teachers and peers is reported to be important for development of interest in academic achievement [14]. Tidball [22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28] and graduates of women's colleges interviewed on TV [8] contend that in women's colleges women are valued and women students feel free to excel in their work without fearing a loss of femininity. Smith [19] found that students at women's colleges evaluate their academic program as stronger than their coeducational counterparts do. …