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Women's colleges in higher education are undergraduate, bachelor's degree-granting institutions, often liberal arts colleges, whose student populations are composed exclusively or almost exclusively of women. Some women's colleges admit male students to their graduate schools or in smaller numbers to undergraduate programs, but all serve a primarily female student body.
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Women s college myths
Distinction between women's college and finishing school
A women's college offers an academic curriculum exclusively or primarily, while a girls' or women's finishing school (sometimes called a charm school) focuses on social graces such as deportment, etiquette, and entertaining; academics if offered are secondary.
The term finishing school has sometimes been used or misused to describe certain women's colleges. Some of these colleges may have started as finishing schools but transformed themselves into rigorous liberal arts academic institutions, as for instance the now defunct Finch College. Likewise the secondary school Miss Porter's School was founded as Miss Porter's Finishing School for Young Ladies in 1843; now it emphasizes an academic curriculum.
A women's college that had never described itself as a finishing school can acquire the misnomer. Throughout the 114-year history of the women's college Sweet Briar, students and alumnae have objected to calling it a finishing school. Nonetheless the finishing school characterization persisted, and may have contributed to declining enrollment, financial straits, and the school's near closure in 2015.
Declining number of women’s colleges
As educational opportunities for women increase, the necessity and purpose that called single-sex women’s colleges into being diminishes as does their continuing relevance. While fifty years ago there were 240 women's colleges in the U.S., only about 40 now remain. In the words of a teacher at Radcliffe (a women's college that merged with Harvard): "[i]f women’s colleges become unnecessary, if women’s colleges become irrelevant, then that’s a sign of our [women's] success."
Asia
Canada
Brescia University College is Canada's only university-level women's-only educational institution. Brescia is affiliated with and located on the campus of the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario.
Middle East
Most major universities in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are composed of two branches: a women-only branch and a similar male-only branch. This includes the following universities:
The following are female-only institutions:
United Kingdom
Mary Astell was one of the first English women to advocate the idea that women were just as rational as men, and just as deserving of education. First published in 1694, her Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest presents a plan for an all-female college where women could pursue a life of the mind.
Early history
Women's colleges in the United States were a product of the increasingly popular private girls' secondary schools of the early- to mid-19th century, called "academies" or "seminaries." According to Irene Harwarth, et al., "women's colleges were founded during the mid- and late-19th century in response to a need for advanced education for women at a time when they were not admitted to most institutions of higher education." While there were a few coeducational colleges (such as Oberlin College founded in 1833, Lawrence University in 1847, Antioch College in 1853, and Bates College in 1855), most colleges and universities of high standing at that time were exclusively for men.
Critics of the girls’ seminaries were roughly divided into two groups. The reform group, including Emma Willard, felt seminaries required reform through “strengthening teaching of the core academic subjects.” Others felt seminaries were insufficient, suggesting “a more durable institution--a women’s college--be founded, among them, Catharine E. Beecher. In her True Remedy for the Wrongs of Women (1851), Beecher points out how “seminaries could not offer sufficient, permanent endowments, buildings, and libraries; a corporation whose duty it is to perpetuate the institution on a given plan.”
Another notable figure was Mary Lyon (1797-1849), founder of Mount Holyoke College, whose contemporaries included Sarah Pierce (Litchfield Female Academy, 1792); Catharine Beecher (Hartford Female Seminary, 1823); Zilpah P. Grant Banister (Ipswich Female Seminary, 1828); George Washington Doane (St. Mary's Hall, 1837 now called Doane Academy). Prior to founding Mount Holyoke, Lyon contributed to the development of both Hartford Female Seminary and Ipswich Female Seminary. She was also involved in the creation of Wheaton Female Seminary (now Wheaton College, Massachusetts) in 1834.
Women's College Coalition
The Women's College Coalition is an association of women’s colleges and universities (with some observers/participants from the single-sex secondary/high schools) that are either two- and four-year, both public and private, religiously-affiliated and secular. It was founded in 1972, at a time in which the "Civil Rights Movement", the "Women's Rights Movement", and Title IX, as well as demographic and technological changes in the 1960s brought about rapid and complex social and economic change in the United States. These societal changes put increasing pressure of perceived "unpopularity" and "old fashioned" perceptions and opinions placing the concept of "single-sex education" for both women and men on the most drastic downward spiral in its history. Additionally, the landscape of education dramatically changed as many previously all-male high schools (both private/independent and public) along with the colleges, many of which were either forced by official actions or declining attendance figures to become coeducational, thereby offering women many more educational options. At the same time with the similar changes forced on women's institutions, both private and public secondary schools along with the colleges/universities, forced a number of the larger number of girls schools to also coeducate. By the late 1970s, women’s enrollment in college exceeded the men’s and, today, women make up the majority of undergraduates (57% nationally) on college/university campuses. Women earn better college grades than men do, and are more likely than men to complete college.
During the past several years, the Women’s College Coalition engaged in research about the benefits of a women’s high school and/or college education in the 21st Century. Drawing upon the findings of research conducted by the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and Hardwick-Day on levels of satisfaction among students and alumnae at women’s colleges and coeducational institutions, as well as the Association of American Colleges and Universities, NAICU and others, the Coalition makes the case for women’s education and women’s high schools and colleges to prospective students, families, policy and opinion makers, the media, employers and the general public.