Are Women’s Colleges Outdated?

Tom Matlack thought women’s colleges were

anachronistic—until he toured Barnard with his
daughter.
I’ve always been skeptical about women’s colleges. I grew up in Amherst
within a few miles of Smith and Mount Holyoke where, I admit, I tried to
sneak into parties as a high school student. Beyond serving a destination for
horny young men, the colleges always gave me the creeps, perhaps because I
was explicitly excluded from the community or because of some juvenile
fantasy that the schools harbored a lesbian cult. Still, the women who went
there, it seemed to me, were living in some bygone gender-segregated era
where such a place had a purpose. I assumed they went to women’s colleges
largely because they couldn’t get into the numerous elite coed schools.

Why go to Smith if you could go to Amherst?

♦◊♦

Last year we faced what seemed like a momentous decision: whether to send
our 5-year-old to an all-boys grade school for kindergarten. The school is
known for being particularly good at channeling high-spirited boy energy
into creativity and learning.

The theory goes that boys mature more slowly, on average, than girls,
particularly when it comes to fine motor skills and reading. I had seen this
firsthand when class art projects came home from nursery school. It was like
some pages were produced by art students and others by fingerless monkeys
—stick figures on one page, followed by pages awash with color and faces
and feeling. Without exception, you didn’t need to look at the name to know
the gender. Many boys just want to run and tackle one another most of the
time, so having a school that emphasizes physical activity to calm their
minds and allows them space to develop creativity at their own pace made
sense to me. And the school has a particularly strong tradition of character
development, which appeals to my “good men” orientation. But there was
only one problem: no girls.
The difference was made clear to me on a recent vacation. We traveled for
10 days with one of our son’s female nursery school classmates, whom he
hadn’t seen for over a year. He met up with his best male friend on the last
day. Our son has a sensitive and gentle spirit, but that doesn’t mean he
doesn’t like to play rough. For over a week, he played with his female friend
nonstop. We started calling them “the old married couple.” I was impressed
not only with how happy my son was but the ease of the play. With his male
friends the frenzy ultimately led to a crash, but the girl brought out the more
creative and mature side of him. They could have gone on forever, never
once fighting. On the last day, when the male buddy showed up, we noticed
a marked change. It got loud. Very loud. The little girl stood to the side to
make way for boys screaming, chasing each other, having a blast. All good. I
love to see my son so happy. But to be honest, I liked him better when he
was with his female buddy. She taught him something his male friend
couldn’t. (My wife has the same impact on me.)

We chose a coed kindergarten.

♦◊♦

I have the privilege of raising a boy in kindergarten; his brother, who is in

ninth grade; and his sister, who is a high school junior just starting to look at
colleges. So after a week of watching my kindergartener play with his girl
pal, I picked up my daughter and set off on an East Coast college tour. On
our list were NYU, Penn, Swarthmore, Bard, Vassar, Brown, and Barnard.
My daughter is very involved in theater, so she’s looking for a school that
will allow her to get a liberal arts education while continuing to act. She’d
like someplace artsy, a little edgy, and urban if possible—big, but not too
big. She doesn’t really know, which is why we were going on this adventure
together.

If you have ever been on a college tour you know the drill: an hour-long
information session with an admissions representative not-selling-but-selling
his or her institution while telling you how hard it is to get in, followed by a
student-led tour. Too often they let freshmen that have no idea about the
school (or life in general) lead the tours. Out of frustration over this
ignorance, my daughter came up with a litmus test: the condition of the
bathroom toilet bowl in the student center. Her theory is that the cleanliness
of the toilet is a truth-teller, far more so than a freshman tour guide, when it
comes to how students really feel about their college.

I personally liked Bard and Swarthmore. At Penn there’s a free-standing

home right in the middle of campus, where students interested in writing
hang out, cook meals, and work on their craft. The writing house isn’t a
dorm; it’s just a creative club of sorts. We wandered in and found ourselves
face-to-face with Edward Albee, who was there giving a lecture. My
daughter was particularly excited because she had acted in several of his
plays. (The toilets at Penn were disgusting in general, but at the writing
house there is a Victorian-style bathroom with an old tub, complete with ivy
growing out of it and pictures on the wall of drag queens getting dressed.)

♦◊♦

But an even bigger shock than meeting the best-known American playwright
in the flesh took place in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of New
York City, home of Barnard College.

The tour was led by a senior in a stylish sweater dress and rubber boots to
protect against a steady rain that kept the city gray and gloomy. She showed
us the student center, the various academic buildings, and the ways in which
Barnard is connected to Columbia (including, conveniently, the
centralization of all theatre at Barnard) and the ways they are separate. She
explained the advising, mentoring, small class sizes, and the tradition upheld
by faculty and staff of serving breakfast to the students at midnight before
the beginning of finals. She also spoke about how, while all the other Ivy
League schools had gone coed and merged with adjacent women’s colleges,
Barnard had stayed separate and all-women for a reason.

“Why wouldn’t you want to send your daughter to an institution whose sole
purpose is to insure the success of women?” she asked, looking my way.
“Three percent of women graduating from high school go to women’s
colleges, and yet 30 percent of congresswomen went to women’s colleges
and 20 percent of the female CEOs. There’s a reason that is the case and
that’s why we are still here.”

The pretty, confident, and articulate young woman had smacked me directly
between the eyes of my teenage ignorance. Perhaps women’s colleges don’t
exist solely for the benefit of their male guests, I thought for the first time.
The information session started like all the others: a room full of nervous
parents and bored-looking kids, all trying to hide their abject fear. A woman
with wet hair and an iced coffee sat down at the front of the room. She
explained that she had been up all night with her 17-month-old baby and
might be a bit off her game.

For the next hour I sat transfixed. These sessions are generally so repetitive
that I close my eyes to try to use the time productively by meditating. Except
at Barnard. What I heard was an hour-long explanation and first-person
demonstration of what the tour guide had said in a couple of sentences: Why
Barnard had the resources of an Ivy League school but the feeling of a small
liberal arts college; how there are plenty of men to interact with in sports or
social clubs, but that the school had remained all women on purpose; how
for the right young woman Barnard would provide a unique education and
inspiration that a coed facility could not.

My head was still spinning as I walked down the hall and saw the list of
Barnard alums: Margaret Mead, Joan Rivers, Martha Stewart, Anna
Quindlen, Suzanne Vega, Erica Jong, Jhumpa Lahiri.

Jhumpa Lahiri! I was still trying to discredit the tour guide’s claim that
women’s colleges produce a disproportionate number of female leaders
across all fields until I got to that name. She’s my favorite writer of all time.

I have no idea whether my daughter will get into Barnard or, if so, choose to
attend the school. Ironically, she loved Barnard but is still trying to figure
out whether going to an all-women’s college will mean giving up the chance
to have close male friends, something that has been important to her high
school experience. I keep telling her that it won’t. But I am her dad, so what
I say doesn’t really count.

The one thing I took away from our trip was that there is indeed still a place
for a women’s college in 2011 America. Barnard is a special place. I only
wish my kindergartener could apply.

—Main Image: Columbia University Photo

Like this? You might also enjoy The First Date

Comments

1. Michael says:

March 28, 2011 at 7:30 am

0 0

She might also consider my alma mater, Bennington, which integrated in the ’70s but still has a
largely female population. They’re also strong on liberal arts, especially performing arts, but are
also about one discipline informing another.

Reply

2. Eoghan says:

March 28, 2011 at 7:40 am

2 0

There is a significant amount of evidence out there to suggest that sex segregates schools are a
good idea. There is no education gap for the boys at all boys schools.

A trend that has emerged in the UK among savvy middle class parents is to their boys to a private
all boys school and send the girls to a local co-ed in order to assure that both get a fair shake of the
education stick.

Reply

3. Natasha says:

March 28, 2011 at 8:46 am

1 0

I’m far more in favor of single sex colleges than I am elementary and high schools. In the lower
grades, or more accurately, during the formative years when we are developing our social and
interpersonal skills, I think we NEED the input and stimulation that the opposite sex can provide. I
can tell my daughter all day long how to interact with a boy, but all that is is a female
 interpretation of how to interact with a boy; it is NOT the same as having the interaction with an
actual boy.

However, once you hit college age, presumably most of those experiences have already been had,
or at least approximated. Also presumably, people engaged in a college education are going to be
taking their studies fairly seriously; hopefully more seriously than they did in high school.
Assuming these two conditions, I think that a single sex college is probably beneficial in that
neither the students nor the profs must be concerned with gender bias within the classroom and
can just get on with the experience of learning/teaching.
There are some students who are more concerned with playing sports, earning advanced degreees
in beer die or earning their “Mrs.” than they are with the actual education attending college will
provide them with. These students will probably not opt for single sex campuses. That is not to say
that I believe all coed college students are not serious about their education, they are, but I do
think you necessarily get a different calibur of student at a single sex institution. I think these
students do tend to be more academically focused, more certain of what they want their adult
professional lives to look like, and are more prone to going on to earn advanced degrees. Not
smarter, just driven differently.

Of course, students who attend single sex schools also tend to be of a certain race, income bracket
and gender….so who can say what the key factor is?

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4. Marisa M says:

March 28, 2011 at 11:46 am

2 0

I was accepted at both Mount Holyoke and Smith, but chose Mount Holyoke. And I have never
regretted that decision. I even left for a year, and then went back because I couldn’t envision
myself anywhere else. Single sex education may not be the “right” choice for everyone, but at the
time, it was the only choice for me.

Reply

5. laura Novak says:

March 28, 2011 at 11:55 am

0 0

Boy, no one made me breakfast at midnight before my exams. But FWIW, my Barnard and my
 Columbia (grad school) diplomas are identical. IDENTICAL. The seal at the bottom represents the
college under the university umbrella from which you get the diploma. And the dean/president of
that college signs it. My Barnard diploma is in Latin, the J school one in English. Otherwise, they
are interchangeable. I also lived on all female floors at Barnard but co-ed floors were above and
below me. I just didn’t want to share a bathroom with guys. The courses are all interchangeable
and my russian classes with 7 kids were a mix of Columbia College (all male at the time) and
Barnard. IMHO, it truly is the best of all worlds, though cold as hell when that wind whips up
116th street.

Reply

6. Rebecca says:

March 28, 2011 at 11:56 am

0 0

When I was a junior in high school, my parents also took me on an East Coast college tour, and I
was adamantly against going to an all-women’s college – until my Mount Holyoke College tour.
Not only was the campus beautiful, and don’t think that wasn’t a big factor, but the rhetoric they
used, while reminiscent of the army’s “Be all you can be”, made me stop and think.

As an athlete (competitive swimmer) and as a girl with a lot of guy friends, I assumed a co-ed
school would be the place for me. But my guide made me reconsider when she brought up living
four years in an environment that focused all of its efforts on ME. I would learn uniquely, I would
grow uniquely, I would be supported and encouraged and built up to be the very best version of
the woman I could be.

No other school had offered me that.

They had talked about on-campus parking, meal plans, large-and-small class sizes, but none of
them had made me think about what that college could do for me as a person. Only Mount
Holyoke did. And Natasha (re: post above), it also helped that at the time (the numbers have since
grown) MHC had an 11% international student population, with 13% of MHC students being
women of color; numbers that were much higher than your average co-ed institution. I am not a
woman of color, but having grown up living in other countries and around the U.S., I wanted a
student community that would reflect the world around me.

In the end, I applied to only 2 colleges. I chose to go to Mount Holyoke, and in my junior year, I
became a tour guide so I could help encourage other young women to make the similar choice I
made – choose an all women’s college, if that’s the right choice, for YOU. For the education of
you, to grow into being the absolute best, most well-rounded, self-focused (NOT self-centered)
woman you can be.

There will always be men around as both potential dates (depending on your sexual orientation)
and potential friends – all women’s colleges are not cloistered nunneries accessible only through
impenetrable forests or on mountain tops. But take the time to consider that four years in college
may be the only time an entire institution will be devoted to developing a girl into a woman.
Oh, and Mr. Matlack? Yes, pillow fights in our pajamas may occasionally happen as well.

Reply