Women's colleges have had a long and prestigious role in the education of American women. This volume offers insights into the continuing significant role of women's colleges in higher education. It provides a brief history of women's colleges in the U.S. in the context of social and legislative issues that have affected the country, examines how women's colleges have managed to survive in an era of coeducational institutions and equal opportunities in education, and identifies the unique features of women's colleges that make them attractive to young women. Charts and tables. Extensive bibliography.

A pathbreaking study of the critical role women’s institutions play in global higher education. Educating girls and women is a powerful route to improving societies worldwide. When women receive more education, literacy rates in children rise, maternal and infant death rates drop, and women enjoy an increased earning capacity. Yet in parts of the developing world, women’s education is considered a low priority at best and a dangerous countercultural activity at worst. In Europe and North America, the number of women’s colleges is shrinking—yet women-only institutions are growing in size and number in many other regions of the world, where they provide access to female students who are prevented for legal, cultural, religious, or practical reasons from attending coeducational universities. Women’s Colleges and Universities in a Global Context is the first book to provide a comprehensive comparative analysis of the increasing significance of single-sex higher education institutions for women around the world. Based on Kristen A. Renn’s on-site study of thirteen women’s colleges and universities in ten different countries—Australia, Canada, China, India, Italy, Japan, Kenya, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom—this timely and provocative volume combines interviews of campus leaders, faculty, and students with extensive online and archival research. Renn provides an overview of each country’s political, economic, and educational situation, then explores the theoretical and practical themes she uncovers in their educational institutions for women. In the end, this volume addresses not only the role of women’s colleges in their own countries but also what these institutions can teach us that would benefit higher education worldwide.

More than 150 colleges in the United States were founded by nuns, and over time they have served many constituencies, setting some educational trends while reflecting others. In Catholic Women's Colleges in America, Tracy Schier, Cynthia Russett, and their coauthors provide a comprehensive history of these institutions and how they met the challenges of broader educational change. The authors explore how and for whom the colleges were founded and the role of Catholic nuns in their founding and development. They examine the roots of the founders' spirituality and education; they discuss curricula, administration, and student life. And they describe the changes prompted by both the church and society beginning in the 1960s, when decreasing enrollments led some colleges to opt for coeducation, while others restructured their curricula, partnered with other Catholic colleges, developed specialized programs, or sought to broaden their base of funding. Contributors: Dorothy M. Brown, Georgetown University; David R. Contosta, Chestnut Hill College; Jill Ker Conway, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Carol Hurd Green, Boston College; Monika K. Hellwig, Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities; Karen Kennelly, president emerita of Mount Saint Mary's College, Los Angeles; Jeanne Knoerle, president emerita of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College; Thomas M. Landy, College of the Holy Cross; Kathleen A. Mahoney, Humanitas Foundation; Melanie M. Morey, Leadership and Legacy Associates, Boston; Mary J. Oates, Regis College; Jane C. Redmont, Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley; Cynthia Russett, Yale University; Tracy Schier, Boston College.

Challenged by Coeducation details the responses of women's colleges to the most recent wave of Women's colleges originated in the mid-nineteenth century as a response to women's exclusion from higher education. Women's academic successes and their persistent struggles to enter men's colleges resulted in coeducation rapidly becoming the norm, however. Still, many prestigious institutions remained single-sex, notably most of the Ivy League and all of the Seven Sisters colleges. In the mid-twentieth century colleges' concerns about finances and enrollments, as well as ideological pressures to integrate formerly separate social groups, led men's colleges, and some women's colleges, to become coeducational. The admission of women to practically all men's colleges created a serious challenge for women's colleges. Most people no longer believed women's colleges were necessary since women had virtually unlimited access to higher education. Even though research spawned by the women's movement indicated the benefits to women of a "room of their own," few young women remained interested in applying to women's colleges. Challenged by Coeducation details the responses of women's colleges to this latest wave of coeducation. Case studies written expressly for this volume include many types of women's colleges-Catholic and secular; Seven Sisters and less prestigious; private and state; liberal arts and more applied; northern, southern, and western; urban and rural; independent and coordinated with a coeducational institution. They demonstrate the principal ways women's colleges have adapted to the new coeducational era: some have been taken over or closed, but most have changed by admitting men and thereby becoming coeducational, or by offering new programs to different populations. Some women's colleges, mostly those that are in cities, connected to other colleges, and prestigious with a high endowment, still enjoy success. Despite their dramatic drop in numbers, from 250 to fewer than 60 today, women's colleges are still important, editors Miller-Bernal and Poulson argue. With their commitment to enhancing women's lives, women's colleges and formerly women's colleges can serve as models of egalitarian coeducation.

WINNER OF THE 2020 CONNECTICUT BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION AND NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS FOR BOOK CLUBS IN 2021 BY BOOKBROWSE "Perkins makes the story of these early and unwitting feminist pioneers come alive against the backdrop of the contemporaneous civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1970s, and offers observations that remain eerily relevant on U.S. campuses today."—Edward B. Fiske, bestselling author of Fiske Guide to Colleges "If Yale was going to keep its standing as one of the top two or three colleges in the nation, the availability of women was an amenity it could no longer do without." In the winter of 1969, from big cities to small towns, young women across the country sent in applications to Yale University for the first time. The Ivy League institution dedicated to graduating "one thousand male leaders" each year had finally decided to open its doors to the nation's top female students. The landmark decision was a huge step forward for women's equality in education. Or was it? The experience the first undergraduate women found when they stepped onto Yale's imposing campus was not the same one their male peers enjoyed. Isolated from one another, singled out as oddities and sexual objects, and barred from many of the privileges an elite education was supposed to offer, many of the first girls found themselves immersed in an overwhelmingly male culture they were unprepared to face. Yale Needs Women is the story of how these young women fought against the backward-leaning traditions of a centuries-old institution and created the opportunities that would carry them into the future. Anne Gardiner Perkins's unflinching account of a group of young women striving for change is an inspiring story of strength, resilience, and courage that continues to resonate today.

This volume presents new perspectives on the history of higher education for women in the United States. By introducing new voices and viewpoints into the literature on the history of higher education from the early nineteenth century through the 1970s, these essays address the meaning diverse groups of women have made of their education or their exclusion from education, and delve deeply into how those experiences were shaped by concepts of race, ethnicity, religion, national origin. Nash demonstrates how an examination of the history of women’s education can transform our understanding of educational institutions and processes more generally.