The Hardwick-Day Alumnae Survey, commissioned by the Women's College Coalition, compared alumnae graduating from women's colleges between 1970 and 1997 with women graduating during the same period from liberal arts colleges and flagship public universities. According to the study, women's college alumnae are not only more likely to complete a graduate degree - 53 percent, compared with 38 percent of coed liberal arts graduates and 28 percent of public university alumnae - but they also scored higher in overall satisfaction with the undergraduate experience.
In addition, women's college graduates reported that their schools were "extremely effective" in helping them with career preparation and advancement, as well as development of professional skills, self-confidence, personal and professional values and community involvement.
"What I think is most interesting," Converse President Betsy Fleming said, "is that so often we hear as a women's college that, 'Oh, this is not necessarily like the real world.' What I find so exciting about these results, and just from my own personal anecdotal experience with graduates, is that (women's colleges) better prepare you for the real world than many of the other educational offerings out there." |
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Specifically, Fleming said, "There is a real focus on the student and on women's development, both personally and professionally, at a women's college. They tend to be smaller environments, they're well-equipped with facilities and there is a real relationship that develops between the students and faculty. I think, by nature, women are relational beings, and it is in this institution that is all about developing positive relationships and learning how to discuss ideas, that really seems to encourage these kinds of outcomes and results."
Case in point, Fleming said, are women such as 1972 graduate Betsy Crane Griffith, who falls within the Hardwick-Day timeline.
Griffith said back in the late 1960s and early '70s when she was in school, a college woman's career was thought of in terms of getting a degree and then "hopefully finding the man of her dreams, getting married and having a family. ..."
"But I think Converse gave me a base of confidence about what I could do - a knowledge and openness to what's out there," she said.
Griffith, an elementary education major, waited 20 years after college to get married and have a child. Soon after she graduated from Converse, Griffith ventured to New York to join a few of her fellow Converse alumnae, roomed with classmate Russell Holliday and got a job at Morgan Stanley on Wall Street. She began as a secretary in the research department and worked her way up to executive director.
Griffith specifically addressed several areas that were studied in the Hardwick- Day survey and how Converse succeeded in those areas, including community involvement, leadership skills, teamwork and developing moral principles that can guide action.
"At Converse, they had an honor code that was very strong," said Griffith, who recently retired after 32 years and is living in New Jersey. "You signed off on it, you talked about it, you lived it, and it is one that I took throughout my life on Wall Street."
Garrison Walters, executive director of the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education, agrees that women's colleges have their value. He added, however, that the survey might be outdated. Thirty years ago, women might have been more hesitant to assert themselves in a classroom or organization at a coeducational school, Walters suggested. He asserted that times have changed, as evidenced by the fact that enrollment at medical and law schools are about even for men and women.
The survey's data that struck Walters most was the significantly lower scores by public university graduates, compared with much smaller differences between women's college alumnae and those of coed liberal arts colleges.
"There's an important difference," Walters said, "in that those public universities, back when the survey respondents were going there, were not emphasizing teaching as much as they do today. So I would expect that a survey conducted 10 years from now, looking back at the previous 20 years, would probably show a much smaller difference. Public universities have increased their emphasis on smaller class sizes and direct involvement of professors."
More than 30 years after Griffith graduated, however, Converse senior Sarah Walters (no relation to Garrison Walters) said the advantages of attending a women's college that helped make Griffith a success still hold true today. To her, it's the "sisterhood" and abundance of female role models that sets schools like hers apart.
"One thing that really strikes me about Converse is how there's peer mentoring that goes on that's not really assigned - it's not something that an administration can come in and implement," said Walters, a member of Mortar Board (a national senior honor society) and a leader for the school's Model NATO and National Model Arab League teams, who twice has studied abroad. "It's role modeling that goes on in the classroom, outside the classroom, the dining hall. We all are living together and around each other so much, so you're able to watch and admire a lifestyle that successful students have adapted.
"And when you look at their alumnae, those are the kind of women that you want to be and you say, 'I want to go have the same experiences they had that helped make them who they are.' I found that Converse definitely offered that, and I have not regretted my decision to come here at all." |
