Women's Colleges and Women's Education: Mission and Market

 Joanne V. Creighton

Keynote Address: Women's College Coalition, Washington, D.C.
September 29, 2003

Thank you for coming and being part of what we hope will be a stimulating meeting that has as its agenda nothing less than the transformation and reinvigoration of the Women's College Coalition. I applaud Lisa Ryerson and Mary Bullock, especially, and the other members of the Board, for their courage and imagination in taking this subject on and for their thoughtful conversation during the retreat of the Board in June.

I know we are all grateful for the good work of the Coalition since its founding in 1972 by twelve member institutions. We appreciate the fellowship it has provided, the sharing of practices and war stories, the successes of the Coalition in such ventures as the advertising campaign and political lobbying. We believe that the Women's College Coalition has brand identity and potential cachet, with many thanks due to Jadwiga Sebrechts, who served this organization with passion and dedication.

Now at this period of transition, it seems appropriate to assess where we are and where we want to go with this organization, and to admit that it is not now what we wish it might be. Unquestionably, much has changed during the past 30 years. A cynic could not help but think that our fellowship (or should I say sisterhood) is akin to that on the Titanic, as one after another of our sister institutions jump off into coeducation, merger, or closing. In 1960 there were 298 women's colleges (and more before that time); now there are 65 (57 of which are members of the Coalition). This 78% decline since 1960 is an irrefutable trend, and hardly a year goes by without more "defections."

Indeed, it is not surprising that it's rough seas out there. We are bucking all the tides in higher education. In addition to being single-sex, we are mostly small, private, liberal arts, and residential, and many of us are in rural or suburban locations, whereas the dominant trends in higher education are towards co-educated, large, public, professional, non-residential, and urban institutions. Financial challenges, difficult under the best of times, are daunting in the conditions of the economic downturn of the past several years.

Not only is the market for our product radically diminished, our mission is no longer so self-evident. I believe mission should come before market, so let me start there.

Axiomatically, the mission of women's colleges is to educate women. Most were founded when opportunities for educational advancement for women were severely limited. Historical forces over the past forty years, including the civil rights and women's liberation movements and our own success in educating women for leadership and social action, have had a profound effect on changing the landscape of higher education. Now, women are welcomed at higher education institutions of all kinds, being, in fact, the majority population of students in this country today. Instead of being in the vanguard, women's colleges might seem to be in the rearguard, a diminishing segment of higher education.

Have we, then, lost our historical reason for being? Should we declare victory for women's education and go coed? I don't think so, but I do believe we must change as the world changes around us.

And so we are. In fact, much is positive about how women's colleges have adapted to new realities, and part of our purpose later at this meeting is to disseminate and celebrate positive stories about what we do and have become.

But, of course, we are about more than self-promotion, and, in truth, sometimes our stories defending our practices can sound, well, defensive and self-serving; the marketing that is now ubiquitous in higher education is not its most attractive and most sustaining aspect.

What is sustaining and motivating is our mission: the education of women.

And, in fact, that agenda is not complete. Indeed, taking the long view of women throughout history, it has only just begun. While, to be sure, tremendous progress has been made since Mary Lyon founded Mount Holyoke Seminary in 1837, still advancing educational opportunity for women across all ethnic, racial, age, and socio-economic groups both in this country and in the world continues to be the great unfinished agenda of the 21st century. Integrally intertwined with that is an even more pressing issue and a much larger agenda, that of social justice for women - not to mention children and men -- worldwide.

For international students, we certainly continue to be about access. Some of us are highly international: we at Mount Holyoke are the most international of any leading liberal arts college, coed or single sex, with nearly 20% of our students from 82 different countries. To be sure, originally our international reach was connected with missionary work. Now, in transforming ourselves for twenty-first century realities, it is about diversity and global citizenship. Our goal is to prepare students, domestic and foreign, for purposeful lives in the complex, highly interconnected, multi-ethnic world that is their inheritance. We want them not only to embrace being women but to recognize a plethora of identities and roles, responsibilities and opportunities within global citizenship.

In addition to global citizenship, many of us are also committed to being good citizens of our local communities and to recognizing within them populations that have been traditionally excluded from education: older women, certain socio-economic and ethnic populations. Among the group of schools within this room are many heartening stories of adaptation and transformation to meet the needs of women within neighborhood communities.

So, we continue to be about access and about purposeful engagement in the world. We are also about equity. We know that the bad, old days of blatant, systematic and systemic gender discrimination isn't so long ago, only a generation or two, not long enough surely to erase the social and economic and psychological effects or to ameliorate the continuing gender imbalance of power in society. It is still a male-dominated world, the last time I looked, and part of our reason for being is helping students to cope with and to work to redress that inequality and lost opportunity. We encourage our students to imagine themselves as scientists and artists, as politicians and intellectuals, as movers and shakers.

Of course, educating women for productive and meaningful lives and advancing a social justice agenda is not a mission we carry on alone, but in conjunction with the schools, and with coed colleges and universities, and with governmental and nongovernmental agencies, and with well-intentioned educators, political leaders, and activists across the country and around the world.

Just as we within the Coalition are enriched by coming together across significant differences, I suggest that we would be further enriched and strengthened by a more capacious definition of coalition around the mission of women's education.

In other words, I propose that the Coalition could be stronger and have more influence if it drew others into conversation and action. I would particularly single out for inclusion those colleges that were once single sex but now coed, or were once separate and are now merged. Instead of expelling them from the fold, so to speak, why not keep them in or invite them back? I do not think that we should have the attitude: "better dead than coed." Rather, I say, "better alive than dead!" Like all of us, they are examples of survival and adaptation, innovation and transformation; I suspect that their commitment to women's education remains strong.

Perhaps a reference to some affiliate groups of Mount Holyoke College might be instructive. As you know, we are part of an historic group of colleges commonly referred to as "the seven sisters." One of the original seven sisters, Vassar College, has for 34 years been coed, and another, Radcliffe, is no longer a college but fully absorbed into Harvard as Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study. Nonetheless, every year, we, the "seven sisters" or as we sometimes say, the "seven siblings," meet as a group and find much common ground and mutual enrichment in this practice. We share a rich history and continuing passions and issues.

So too is Mount Holyoke part of an even more diverse group, Five Colleges, Inc., comprising five institutions within the same geographical area but with many differences: coed/single sex, public/private, large/small, new/old, undergraduate/graduate, liberal arts/professional. Yet this "coalition" around common interests is enriching and, in fact, an essential component in our very survival. One of the ways we come together around issues of women's education is within the Five College Women's Studies Research Center, located on our campus, which supports the scholarly and creative work of faculty at the member institutions; provides visiting residencies for scholars, teachers, and activities; sponsors faculty seminars, community workshops, and networking opportunities; and organizes national and international conferences. Combined faculties include more than 350 individuals with a primary research or teaching interest in women's studies broadly defined, one of the largest concentrations of such scholars in the world.

So there are many kinds of productive coalitions promoting women's education and the study and advancement of women. Yet, to be sure, there is something to be said for having at the core of this organization a sisterhood of women's colleges, considering the alacrity there seems to be in the press and elsewhere to herald the imminent demise of this "anachronistic" kind of institution. To paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of our death are greatly exaggerated. That said, I am sure that our numbers will continue to diminish.

Indeed, perhaps you suspect that I am arguing for a more capacious definition of our coalition around women's education to prepare the ground, as it were, for Mount Holyoke's capitulation to coeducation. While I would love the shock value of making such an announcement today . . . No. Not on my watch. Probably not ever. However, I do believe in pragmatism, in taking a cold look at whether there's a market for the mission.

I'm open-minded myself on this subject. All of my own education and all of my previous experience has been in coed environments. I know that both single-sex and coed models can work to educate women.

But, I have come to love Mount Holyoke College and to share the passion about carrying on the proud women's college tradition that it started. Moreover, the College is simply the best institution of the seven I've been affiliated with in my education and career.

Indeed, the most compelling reason for its continuing existence, I think, is that excellence. It adds value to the world of higher education. "It works" in educating students extremely well and that effectiveness seems to be integrally interconnected with its being single-sex. While, admittedly, it's much harder than it should be to sell prospective students on this option, still once they are in, most are sold. The experience and the passionate allegiance of the vast majority of students and alumnae (and the fervent opposition to coeducation of most) speak loudly. Part of the reason, "it works" is that students feel in touch, I believe, with the history, legacy, and resonant energy of the College. In a world overwhelmingly shaped and controlled by men, they feel part of a proud, buoyant, and excellent College shaped largely by and entirely for women. That is inspirational and educationally motivating.

Moreover, part of our role, as yours, is to offer students a choice, to be an alternative to ubiquitous coeducation. In the Walmart of coeducation, we are a classy boutique (with, I hasten to say, a déclassé student population of high financial need).

So, we at Mount Holyoke intend to carry on in the "pure" single sex tradition, not only because there is such a strong passion within our community (with a few vocal dissenters, to be sure) about this mission, but because it's a good marketing strategy - and I have with me here today our Executive Director of Communications, Patricia VandenBerg, who agrees with me and others on my team in thinking that in being single-sex, we have a distinctive marketing niche. We are differentiated from the pack of liberal arts colleges. We are a known brand; we appeal to a small but big enough sector of the market. We market a mission that is clear, coherent, and historically resonant. Instead of dispersing our collective energies in various directions, we focus them on being what we quintessentially are: small, liberal arts, residential, for women, diverse, international: we mine each aspect of our identity for its strength and its incipient strength. In so doing we have certain advantages: consensus about the mission and values of the institution, commitment to collective planning, excellent faculty and staff, generous and loyal alumnae, financial strength, and affiliations that help to ameliorate our "contra-trend" qualities.

I understand how others, under different circumstances, might decide to go a different route: to go coed, to take on graduate programs, to merge with another institution, to change the target population of students. I say: good luck and let's openly discuss such matters in this group. The name of the game is Darwinian adaptation and mutation. In a survival of the fittest world, let us be fit and survive. Let's embrace both our historical legacies and our transformative possibilities. Let us build strength through affiliation and coalition in order to have an impact on our primary mission, the education of women.

Indeed, my main point is that this very Coalition should adapt and change, mutate and grow in order to help all of us to survive and be effective agents of change.

Because we are not in women's education alone, we should not go it alone. How can we open up the conversation and affiliation? What could we together do to advance the education of women -- not to mention the marketing of our institutions? I look forward to the discussion at this meeting.

I can imagine, for example, this Coalition sponsoring a major biannual conference on issues in women's education. There are innumerable topics that come to mind and affiliations that we might make, depending on the focus each time.

Women's Colleges and Women's Studies

As women's colleges have been shrinking, women's studies and gender studies have been growing and transforming curricula and whole disciplines in fundamental ways in higher education. Gender is now so central to many disciplines that it would be difficult to imagine its absence as a category. What is the relationship, if any, of women's studies and women's colleges? What is the state of women's studies in women's colleges? In the broadest sense what has been the impact of women's studies on the education of women in this country?

Women's Careers and Lives Post-Feminism: Can You Have It All?

For the past several decades, women have in increasing numbers gone into professional careers. Drawing our collective alumnae into conversation and assessment, how have professional women fared in the workplace and in their personal lives? I've talked to many alumnae who want to come back and reassess their education and the choices that they made, who want to think through the changes that have happened to the position of women in society and in the professions over the course of their lives. Such conversation would be enormously interesting and instructive. Our collective alumnae are an incredible untapped resource - or perhaps I should admit that we tap them quite a bit for their financial support but we would be further enriched if we tapped more into their seasoned knowledge, experience, and wisdom.

Women in Science and Technology

Many of us have distinguished traditions of developing women scientists. What is the recent record of women entering scientific and technological fields? What are the impediments? What more can we do to encourage this development?

Girls' Schools and Women's Colleges

Many distinguished elementary and secondary schools for girls exist and indeed some high profile schools, such as the Young Women's Leadership School in East Harlem, have been newly formed within the past decade. We have much in common and much to learn from our girls' schools counterparts.

Girls and Boys: Who's Short-Changed in Schools?

Recently, some observers have argued that it is boys who lack encouragement to excel in school and girls are now walking off with all the academic glory. Is this true? What are the implications? Does the pattern persist in college and graduate school and in the workplace?

Women's Education Worldwide

It goes without saying that the deprivation of women worldwide not only to education but to dignity and human rights is a calamitous disgrace. What can we do to help to draw attention to this matter and to make a dent in the problem? How can we work with others in this country and abroad?

---

These are just a few possibilities. When you start thinking about the education of half the world's population, there's no dearth of material for discussion and debate.

The WCC itself should not be, in my mind, an organization that attempts to do research or generate data itself. It should not have an expensive infrastructure. It should be lean and mean, a loose federation of colleges, a convening force, a facilitator of good conversations and periodic major conferences which draw fee-paying participants and national attention.

Well, I don't pretend to have all the answers. I'm eager to hear what you think and work with you to re-imagine what this Coalition can be.