The Women’s College Advantage
The
Hardwick-Day Alumnae Survey, commissioned by the Women's College Coalition
in 2008, helps make the case for the effectiveness of a women’s college
education: Read
the report.
Studies have found that, by attending women’s colleges, women:
- Are more successful in careers; that is, they tend to hold higher positions, are happier and earn more money.
- Constitute more than 20% of women in Congress and 30% of a Business
Week list of rising women stars in Corporate America, yet only
represent 2% of all female college graduates.
- Have more opportunities to hold leadership positions and are able
to observe women functioning in top jobs (at women’s colleges,
90% of the presidents and 55% of the faculty are female).
- Report greater satisfaction than their coed counterparts with their
college experience in almost all measures – academically, developmentally
and personally.
- Develop measurably higher levels of self-esteem than other achieving
women in coeducational institutions. After two years in coeducational
institutions, women have been shown to have lower levels of self-esteem
than when they entered college.
"MY
research findings, based on the national data, suggest that women's
colleges are better than coeducational institutions in promoting women's
intellectual and social self-confidence, academic ability and cultural
awareness."
Assistant Professor Mikyong Minsun Kim, U. of Missouri-Columbia
"INTELLECTUAL support seems to prevail in the
classrooms of all-women's colleges. As a result, women at these schools
are more likely to take risks, to put themselves forward verbally, to
assume leadership roles, both while in college and after graduation."
Reported by The Oregonian
"SINGLE-SEX COLLEGES show a pattern of effects...that
is almost uniformly positive...students become more academically involved,
interact with faculty frequently, show increases in intellectual self-esteem,
and are more satisfied with practically all aspects of the college experience
compared with their counterparts in coeducational institutions... Women's
colleges increase the chances that women will obtain positions of leadership,
complete the baccalaureate degree, and aspire to higher degrees."
Alexander Astin in his important analysis of college environments,
Four Critical Years
"YOUNG women are there [at women's colleges]
to learn and to think about who and what they can contribute in an environment
more free of gendered expectations. Older women who come back to college
return with lives already shaped by these expectations...It's a situation
of unusual freedom...to explore and to examine again their own sense
of self. It can be, and often is an exhilarating experience."
Ellen Fitzpatrick, Professor, University of New Hampshire
"...STUDIES
show that women in all-female environments participate more in class,
take on more leadership roles, and are more likely to succeed in traditionally
‘male' fields."
Reported by Cosmo Girl magazine
"STUDENTS at all-girls schools far out-paced
their coed counterparts in science and reading and were at least equal
in academic achievement in other subjects. They also had stronger self-esteem,
took more math classes, and set higher educational goals for themselves.
In addition, they were less likely to hold stereotyped views of specific
careers as 'a man's job' or 'a woman's job.'"
Study by Lee and Bryk, University of Michigan
"WHILE they are still in their formative years,
young women [at women's colleges] spend those four or five years in
an environment that fuels them with sufficient self-confidence to last
for the rest of their lives. In whatever they do, they are strong, self-sufficient,
well-adjusted people."
James L. Fisher, former president of Towson State University
(source: Women’s
College Coalition)
