The study suggests that the education offered at women’s colleges is markedly superior to that received by women at coeducational institutions (a finding made even more significant by the fact that the most academically selective women’s colleges were largely absent from the survey).
In fact, the study of first-year and senior students’ college experiences reported, women’s colleges consistently offer female students more of the following experiences and advantages:
- challenging academic programs,
- integrative/deep learning,
- development of leadership skills,
- interaction with faculty,
- mentoring in the sciences,
- effective role models in faculty,
- support for success (among first-years),
- collaboration with peers,
- better integration of transfer students,
- opportunities to interact with people of diverse backgrounds,
- and overall satisfaction with college life.
The Indiana study also found that young women at coeducational institutions continue to be poorly represented in positions of campus leadership, and that their peers at women’s colleges are much more likely to major in math or science.
In conclusion, the study said, women’s colleges are contemporary models of effective education, and have much to teach coed institutions about how to provide "a challenging yet supportive educational environment for all their students," male as well as female. |
Also in July, a front-page New York Times headline proclaimed that young women are "leaving men in the dust" on college campuses. The article went on to report that female students generally surpass their male classmates in grades and other measures of achievement throughout the college years.
According to that article as well as an earlier Times op-ed piece by a college admissions officer, in order to keep a close-to-equal gender balance on campus, some coed institutions have begun to practice affirmative action for male applicants.
Thus, as certain social critics continue to rail against affirmative action for the historically disadvantaged, we are now effectively seeing the practice of affirmative action for a historically advantaged group.
Needless to say, the coverage in the Times generated a flurry of mail to the editor, much of it countering the widespread media chatter we have been hearing about the "boy crisis."
According to education policy analyst Sara Mead, who was quoted in the July article, such chatter reflects a general uneasiness about women being out in front in any important arena. It also supports the notion that there is some kind of zero-sum decision to be made about helping girls or helping boys.
Moreover, as Mead told the Times, all this talk of a "crisis for boys" hides a basic, persistent pattern. "Even if you control for the field they’re in, boys right out of college make more money than girls," Mead observed.
Aye, there’s the rub. No matter how diligently girls and young women work to excel in high school and college, they quickly confront the lingering societal obstacles to equality and fair pay, and eventually find their access blocked to leading posts in business, the professions, and national politics.
According to another report released this summer, by the American Council on Education, although undergraduate enrollment is now 57 percent female - because of increasing numbers of women among Hispanic, lowincome white, and older students—men still outnumber women in law school as well as in master of science, MBA, and noneducation doctoral degree programs.
When the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963, women earned an average of 59 cents on the dollar earned by men. Now, more than four decades later, equal pay is still elusive and women are earning about 77 cents on that dollar—some progress, but clearly not enough.
The least progress has been made at the top, where economic and political power is concentrated. According to Catalyst, a research and advisory organization, women held only 14.7 percent of the board seats at Fortune 500 companies in 2005. The situation in government is just as bad: Of the 435 members of the House of Representatives, 70 are women, and of our country’s 100 Senators, only 14 are women.
For women’s colleges, a high priority is to prepare women for leadership and hasten the day when pay is equal, the policies of government and business adequately support women in the workplace and the obligations of family life, and those long-enduring "old boys’ clubs" have passed completely into history. |
Here at Barnard we are building the Barnard Leadership Initiative, a venture that embraces a host of interrelated components:
- courses in entrepreneurship,
- political decision-making,
- business organization and other germane subjects, as well as the capstone "Interdisciplinary Senior Seminar in Public and Private Enterprise";
- skills workshops;
- alumnae mentoring programs;
- internships; student organizations;
- visiting speakers series, and more.
Inspiring this ambitious undertaking is our vision of nothing less than full gender equality in the leadership ranks of every social arena. The Initiative is carefully designed to enable students to become innovative, responsible, authoritative, and ethical front-rank leaders in business, government, public service, and the nonprofit sector.
I predict that this initiative itself will soon be hot news in higher education.
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