http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/16/us-usa-virginia-sweetbriar-idUSKBN0O10AU20150516
I personally don’t see any need for women’s college; I don’t feel women are prevented from reaching their fullest potential by the presence of men around.
Thoughts?
These days more girls than men are getting a higher education. But I heard that girls in general do better in mixed sex classes, while boys do better in sex segregated classes. If so, perhaps men’s college would seem to be more called for.
There’s still a market for them. My niece attends one (Agnes Scott). It doesn’t appear to be struggling.
Women’s college and historically black colleges/universities (HBCUs) are on a similar declining trajectory stemming from the success of integration. But there’s no natural law that says this trajectory will continue. I wouldn’t be surprised if more elite HBCUs (Howard, Morehouse, Spellman) start experiencing a pick-up in enrollment in response to pared-back AA policies in mainstream institutions. I also think there’s a renewed political consciousness among black students caused by recent current events–one that may drive more of them to HBCUs.
Similarly, I wonder if the increased attention on campus rape in recent years might create the perception that all-girl schools are safer. I could also see more institutions following Smith’s lead by broadening their reach to include transgendered students.
I don’t know that there’s a real “need” for any kind of private college at all. They exist in part because there are students who want a different sort of experience than they’d get at a state school. Sweet Briar isn’t far from Liberty University, the world’s biggest evangelical Christian college, where students are required to follow a strict code of conduct that forbids things like watching R-rated movies. Personally I think this is ridiculous and would be horrified if I had a child who wanted to attend such a school, but I also think private colleges should have a lot of freedom when it comes to setting their own policies.
Speaking as a women’s college grad myself I’d like to believe that co-ed schools do just as good a job of providing a good learning environment for young women, but I suspect that’s not really the case. But either way, women’s colleges will survive as long as there’s a market for them. That market is declining but not dead yet. Sweet Briar might have managed to attract more students if it wasn’t in the middle of nowhere, didn’t have (fairly or not) a lingering “finishing school” reputation, and there weren’t two other women’s colleges (Hollins and Mary Baldwin) within an hour’s drive.
Hmm… right, if there is apparently a limited market that does not favor that degree of local fractionalization, in Sweet Briar’s case it may have been largely a matter of it having become redundant in the eyes of would-be applicants. Plus I have a feeling that tiny indie LibArts colleges in general, coed or not, except for the heavily endowed elite level are going to have a hard time for a while to come yet. But IMO there should be the choice of academic environments for those who may prefer it.
monstro mentions HBCUs – of course the catch is that HBCUs are non-exclusive, but in both cases the notion of refocusing on the needs of a particular segment of the population and scholarship from their perspective is crucial to strengthening the institutions. HBCUs do not seem to suffer so badly with overlapping the same “market”, partly because they have a broader “base”() but also they can more effectively do “branding” into specific program orientations.
() Speaking of which, ISTM another reputation factor for Women’s Colleges is that they are for a higher purchasing-power woman… that a lower-middle or working class woman will not even try and if she’s a minority woman she’d be likelier to head for a HBCU or Hispanic-Serving Institution than a traditional Women’s College. But I could be completely out on left field on that part, anyone have a better sense of whether this is so?
A black woman who is interested in an all-women’s education is more likely to attend a school like Spelman than a school like Sweet Briar. But not always. I don’t think my niece (the one who attends Agnes Scott) had much of an interest in Spelman. Plus, a black woman is more likely to get scholarship money from a predominately white institution than a predominately black, all-women institution. My niece has received some financial assistance from her college. Don’t know if she’d have the same luck with Spelman.
I applied to Spelman at the urging of my mother. I had no interest in going there, not just because it’s expensive but because I didn’t think it would have been a good fit for me, personality-wise. And at that time, I really wanted my education to be as steeped in science as possible. In retrospect, a liberal arts education wouldn’t have killed me. But I can’t say I would have received the same preparation there that I received at Georgia Tech. Who knows? Maybe I would have.
I’ve got a few years to see if my niece’s decision was a good one. I have to admit to harboring some doubts, but I’m trying to be open-minded about it.
This sums it up, to me. There is a lot of room for different types of environments for education- I went to an “experimental” school myself and it was a good place for me.
But cultures shift, and new niche educations are popping up where older ones taper off. We see now, for example, a range and depth of internationally-focused programs that would have been rare just a decade ago. These new niches are attracting people who want something a little different who, a generation ago, may have gone to a women’s colllege.
It’s probably true that women’s colleges are perceived as being elite/expensive. However, private school students often don’t pay the “sticker price”. Most women’s colleges would be happy to offer a generous financial aid package to a promising minority student…or a promising majority student. Many of my friends actually hadn’t been that interested in attending a women’s college and chose our school because of scholarships/financial aid. But I’m sure a lot of working class high school girls don’t know that such opportunities exist.
I agree. There’s a lot more attention getting paid to rising costs and student loan burdens now than there was ten years ago. Prospective students and their families are starting to think more about how much they want to pay, rather than merely getting into the most prestigious school that will accept them. Pay $60,000 a year for Harvard or Columbia may still make sense, but paying that much for Sarah Lawrence College or Scripps College will increasingly seem llke a raw deal. Enorllments are already dropping in some places and I’d expect to see more well-established schools meeting the fate of Sweetbriar in the next decade or two.
I read an article that stated that some Sweet Briar students and alumni think its last administration was put in specifically to close the school, and made little serious attempt to save it.
Heck, a lot of working class high school boys don’t know that “elite” colleges offer generous aid packages. Good point, though, hardly anyone actually does “pay retail” at the elite schools and from what **monstro **and **Lamia **tell me, the students are likelier to get a better deal at a well endowed Smalll Indie LibArts that needs warm bodies in the lecture halls than at a Big Time Uni, but the news does not get to those who could use it, so the perception hangs on (for both Women’s Colleges and Small Indie LibArts in general).
Also, of course, the unfair stereotyping of Liberal Arts educations with “useless” doesn’t help, especially with the unfortunate popular redefinition of a Higher Education as just a very fancy Job Training program (specifically for the “Good Job” defined as secure, higher-paying). But again, that’s drifting away from the Women’s Colleges situation specifically, into the general.
Perception? I would be astounded if Sweet Brier doesn’t have an unusually low rate of sexual assault compared to this disgraceful national average:
This sounds paranoid, but I wonder if it could have just a smidgen of truth.
As soon as a private college like this starts telling alumnae that without a lot more giving, they are going down, it will get into social media, and the number of applicants will decline. That’s especially true of affluent applicants who are looking for a beautifully tended campus, not one on the brink of bankruptcy.
A declining applicant pool, decreasingly able to pay tuition without lots of financial aid, was already a big problem at Sweet Brier. So the board had good reason to approach their financial concerns in a calm manner. It was the proverbial damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t, situation.
Now, of course, the problems are thoroughly publicized. We’ll see if that generates enough contributions to save the school, but I doubt it will.
There’s still Texas Woman’s University which is a state school.
It’s co-ed strangely enough. There are 3 campuses, one in Denton (Main), plus Houston and Dallas.
I expect it will change its name eventually.