Equality of Access or Opportunity: The Role of Womens Colleges in the 21st Century :: Free Essays Online

Equality of Access or Opportunity: The Role of Women's Colleges in the 21st Century 1. In 2001, almost fifteen million students attended postsecondary institutions in the United States and more than half of these students were women. Of these female students, ninety-eight percent of them attended coeducational institutions, but only two percent of them attended women's colleges (Langdon 2). While this data statistically documents American society's strong belief in the value of coeducation, it also highlights the recent decline in the popularity of women's colleges. As American society has come to believe that the problem of inequality in the education of men and women is no longer pertinent due to the fact that women are now afforded access to higher education, the country has discredited the validity of women's single-sex education. However, the surviving women's colleges are challenging this access-based definition of equality by renewing their mission statements and strengthening their educational goals. By refusing to equate equality of access with equality of opportunity and therefore recognizing the gender inequalities present in the educational system, women's colleges currently serve as the best way to prepare female students for active participation in the public sphere. 2. In order to understand the recent trend towards coeducation, the evolution of the women's college as a response to the lack of access to higher education must first be explored in depth. The women-only institutions that preceded the women's college and were highly popular from the 1820s on were known as "academies" or "seminaries" (Harwarth 1). While they did teach core academic subjects to their pupils, seminaries were seen by many progressive educationalists as an inadequate way to deal with the lack of quality education for females. Such seminaries lacked the governance of a board of trustees that provides educational institutions with permanence, credibility, and direction through the form of a mission statement and economic support in the form of an endowment. Because validity was seen as an essential step towards guaranteeing women a level educational playing- field, women's colleges followed the organizational mold cast by men's colleges, including forming board of trustee s, actions that institutionalized and therefore made important the goal of equal education for women. It was this tenet of equality upon which women's colleges were founded, specifically at this time period the equality of access to higher education. The will of Sophia Smith, founder of Smith College in 1875, stated that that it is "with the design to furnish my sex means and facilities for education equal to those which are afforded now in our Colleges for young men" (Harwarth 4).