Why Can't a Woman Be More?

By Ezra Bowen

Last month Freshman Shannon Welcome, 18, of Woodstock, Ill., started classes at St. Mary's, a small women's college across the street from Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. "I guess you could say it's my dream school," she exclaims. "I can take classes at Notre Dame but still have the intimacy and nurturing atmosphere of St. Mary's." Welcome is considering a law career, and, she says, "I think the competitive benefits of being in a women's college will give me an edge."

Mary Wadland, 20, feels much the same about her education at Hollins College in Virginia. "I've come out much stronger, I think, than I would have if I had attended a coed school," says Wadland, who graduated in June after serving as student-body president. "We knew we were going to have to compete with men all our lives," she observes, "and it was nice to be in that cocoon for four years and then come out charging."

These votes for women's colleges are just two in a newly resurgent constituency. The 1960s and '70s were lean years for women's education. The opening of such male bastions as Yale, Dartmouth and the service academies helped draw so many crack high school girls into coed institutions that two- thirds of the nation's 298 women's colleges either went coed or closed their doors. But today the surviving 101 boast that undergraduate enrollment is surging, despite a declining pool of high school graduates. Last week a preliminary survey of 64 schools, conducted by the Women's College Coalition, showed that the number of entering freshmen this semester has risen an average of 6.6% above last year, with some notable peaks around the academic landscape. The head count at California's Mills College is up 20%; freshman enrollment at the College of New Rochelle in New York has jumped from 92 to 144. At Bryn Mawr in Pennsylvania, early-admissions applications increased 50% to help make the freshman class of 345 the biggest in the school's 102-year history. "Our applicant pool is up, the quality of students is up, and we're doing quite well," exults Martha Morris, admissions director at Chicago's Mundelein College.

Why this dramatic turnaround? "We're doing a better job of getting out the message on how well women's colleges train women for careers," asserts Nicole Reindorf, the WCC's associate director. Graduates of women's colleges, she points out, generally outperform their coed counterparts. For instance, a 1985 survey of 5,000 women's school alumnae found that nearly half had earned graduate degrees (vs. one-third for all graduates from coed institutions). Of women listed in Who's Who in America, women's college alums outnumber coed- school graduates by more than 2 to 1. And the bottom line turns out to be the bottom line: two years ago, the median salary for graduates of all-female colleges from the classes of '67 and '77 was $25,000, about $8,000 more than for coed-school alumnae.

These figures come across loud and clear to some of the sharpest of today's college-bound women, 24% of whom say they are interested in pursuing a business major -- twice the proportion 20 years ago and only 2% lower than the men's figure. Some are also aware of studies suggesting that female egos take a subtle but destructive pounding in coed classrooms. A report released last fall by the Carnegie Foundation found that "even the brightest women students often remain silent" in mixed classes. "Not only do men talk more, but what they say often carries more weight." By contrast, at women's colleges, notes Wellesley President Nannerl Keohane, female students not only enjoy "equal * opportunity, but every opportunity." This pays off, she insists, when graduates go out into the real and frequently sexist world: "When they do hit their first mound of prejudice, instead of saying, 'I'm not ready for this,' they will say, 'I know I can do this. I did it at Wellesley.' "

They learn leadership by example: top administrators at women's colleges tend to be women and, on average, the faculty is 61% female, in contrast to 27% for all higher-ed schools. Without the intimidating male presence, notes WCC's Reindorf, students at all-female colleges are more apt to venture into such traditionally male fields as engineering, physics and economics. At Bryn Mawr, for example, the percentage of physics majors is 20 times as great as the national average for all women students.

Recruiters for women's colleges have been working hard to bring these advantages to the attention of high school students, some of whom continue to regard single-sex schools as anachronisms or even convents. Not all are succeeding. A number of small isolated Roman Catholic women's colleges continue to struggle against stagnant enrollments. And over the past two years, Wheaton College in Massachusetts and Goucher in Maryland have abandoned the battle and gone coed. Russell Sage in New York was considering conversion last spring, but after completing a 15-month study of other colleges that had gone coed, administrators decided not to tamper with 71 years of tradition.

Russell Sage is among the most aggressive and innovative recruiters of female applicants. Among its techniques: assigning every arriving freshman an upper-class "big sister," along with a faculty mentor and a student adviser, and weaving "old-girl networks" to create the same kinds of career opportunities for its graduates that "old boys" have traditionally held out to young men. Russell Sage also puts its seniors in touch with alumnae executives who provide career advice and arrange job contacts.

Other women's colleges offer similar programs. Many promise applicants "the best of both worlds" through cross-registration arrangements with nearby coed colleges. "This is no cloistered enclave," says Barnard President Ellen Futter. "Our students have an absolutely coeducational life by virtue of our participation in Columbia University." Yet the best women's schools remain shrewdly protective of the special position they occupy in the highly competitive college market. Many educators, and some alumnae as well, believe that schools like Skidmore and Vassar, once bellwether women's colleges, have slipped in both status and educational quality since they decided to admit men.

"To go coed makes you one more small, non-name-brand liberal arts college," says Reindorf. "Theoretically, you get twice as many students, but you trade off your market niche."

Bryn Mawr President Mary Patterson McPherson believes single-sex institutions play an important role by contributing to a pluralistic approach to education. She frets about the sameness of so many American colleges: "There aren't many institutions anymore that have a very clear image." Futter concurs, "We are dealing with an increasingly franchised commodity. This isn't hamburgers; this is education." Finally, educational leaders are far from convinced that the women's movement has erased the prejudices that gave rise to women's colleges in the first place. "Maybe there will come a day when women and men will be able to work equally professionally across the board," says Wellesley's Keohane. "Perhaps when that day comes, our mission of educating women alone will be accomplished. I don't think it's going to happen soon."

With reporting by John E. Gallagher/New York and Pat Karlak/Chicago