Comments on New Evidence Bolsters Women's Colleges

• Alumnae associations
• Posted by Abbott Katz on March 4, 2008 at 7:25am EST

• The findings may be utterly well-founded, but do they reconcile the self-selection, sample-skew problem? Women who choose to attend all-female institutions may simply be more inclined to pursue graduate degrees than others.

• Missing the point
• Posted by SW on March 4, 2008 at 8:30am EST

• Katz is missing the point. As one of those women at a large public institution in the early 70s, the idea of earning a graduate degree never came up. Even when changing the focus of my undergraduate program, my advisor (male) gave me no "big picture" of the options available beyond my B.A. I didn't learn about opportunities for graduate study until years later, and even then the dean at the public institution I considered presented more roadblocks than encouragement.

• Posted by Susan E. Lennon , Executive Director at Women's College Coalition on March 4, 2008 at 9:10am EST

• Women who chose to attend women's colleges might have higher aspirations to earn a graduate degree; this is part of the body of knowledge the Women's College Coalition is building through its research agenda. Consider also the import of IHE's 2/28/08 story, The Mentoring Gap for Women in Science, Inside Higher Education; http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/02/28/mentor

• Diversity in Institutions is Good
• Posted by Bob on March 4, 2008 at 9:10am EST

• More good evidence that people are different and thrive in some environments more than others. Let's keep the diversity among institutions, then help students pick the best fit.

• Posted by IHE Reader on March 4, 2008 at 9:20am EST

• Muhlenfeld's comment that there are still many unanswered questions is crucial. Comparisons by institutional type can only go so far. The next step is to break out the three types by student profile because student-level effects are likely to play a significant role in explaining differences.

• Women's College vs. Other Liberal Arts
• Posted by M Frazier on March 4, 2008 at 9:45am EST

• As my life experience draws me further away from college, I'm more and more gratified that I received my A.B. from a women's college. I do believe that women are prepared for a longer horizon of challenges, be they academic, professional or personal, as you actually discuss the conscious choice you made to be part of a community the supports a woman's choice in every aspect of your life. It's not a discussion I can imagine having at a co-ed liberal arts college on a daily basis. As a graduate degree holder and mother of three girls, I can tell you I'll be encouraging my daughters to apply to at least one women's college--being part of half of your graduating class trying to get into law, medical or graduate school is quite a powerful wave. It's very gratifying to come back to reunions and see all the interesting careers, families, travel experiences and home lives your friends all have had and continue to enjoy. I'm sure it's similar at co-ed liberal arts colleges. It's just that coming from a women's college--it's different.

• So let me get this straight...
• Posted by Syllogism on March 4, 2008 at 10:05am EST

• Women who predetermined that a "Womens College" was the best place for them gave it higher marks. How many are likely to say, "no I really screwed up by going there"? if nothing else they would have to hear it from their fellow "women" alumni.

  I wonder how many of the women who earned graduate degrees also got them from a womens college?

  Why yes, more self excluding, self congratulatory "research" like this one please.

• And what about the men?
• Posted by Skeptic on March 4, 2008 at 10:05am EST

• Did the researchers also examine patterns
  for men from these same colleges?
  Are the results for women significantly
  different from those for the men?

  What about other factors, such as
  family income, test scores, high school
  grades, parent's educational level, type
  of major? All of these are critical and
  are very likely to be important contributors
  to a person's decision to pursue graduate study.

  The kind of univariate analysis presented
  here oversimplifies a very complex
  process.

• More information and context
• Posted by PJM , Grad Student on March 4, 2008 at 10:05am EST

• A very interesting study. I would echo what one of the folks said - namely, it would be helpful and make the case stronger if there were some controls in place for the selectivity issues. The question is always: "All else being equal, what are the effects of attending institution X". If all of the respondents in this survey were high achievers (measured by high school GPA, for example), how can we meaningfully compare the results? I would only use this information anecdotally. Don't take this note as a slam on women's colleges. It's not.

• report doesn't show any "college effects"
• Posted by Joseph A. Soares , Associate Professor at Wake Forest University on March 4, 2008 at 10:15am EST

• On the key finding of this report, as summarized in this article, the case is not made. I just read the report and from it we cannot tell that going to a women’s college makes one more likely to attend graduate school; it really could be that women who aspire for graduate degrees are more likely to attend women’s colleges. And in terms of the supply pipeline for future female lawyers and Ph.D.s, we should not view this report as evidence that women’s colleges are doing a better job than public flagship universities. Even if 53% of women’s colleges alumnae have graduate degrees, their total number would be much smaller than the 28% of public flagship universities who do. There are a lot more women at public flagship universities than at women’s colleges. Much as I’d be happy to believe that women’s colleges provide a better education and life preparation than coed colleges, this report provides little, if any, evidence of that. The key problem is to distinguish between self-selection and treatment effects; and without any statistical controls for family SES, and prior academic and personal accomplishments, we cannot know.

• Questions about survey design and methodolgy
• Posted by Richard A Hesel , Principal at Art & Science Group on March 4, 2008 at 10:35am EST

• Katz's comment raises a very important question about the study that is not answered in the press coverage or on the Women's College Coalition web site. I'm a strong believer in women's education, but if this question has not been adequately answered, we are forced to treat the conclusions reached in the study with suspicion.

  The question is this: were controls applied to the sample for educational socialization of respondent's families, their household incomes, their career and graduate study goals, and the like when they entered college? In other words, if graduates of women's colleges entered college already better suited by their socioeconomic status and goals to pursue graduate study than their peers who entered coed schools, what they brought to college, not what happened to them in college, may very well account for the differences reported in the study. But if these controls were not applied, there's no way to know. I've looked over the entire public version of the research report and I could not find any evidence that such controls were applied.

  Elizabeth Tidball's often-cited 1972 study demonstrating that graduates of women's colleges were more likely to succeed than graduates of coed colleges was discredited by the lack of such controls. For example, at the time of Tidball's study, graduates of women's colleges were much more likely than graduates of coed schools to come from more affluent families with more highly educated parents. If the new study did not control for these and other important analytical factors, it can't be taken seriously.

• Posted by Greg on March 4, 2008 at 11:45am EST

• Learned to relate to people from different backgrounds
  52%all women, 40%other Lib Arts, 30%pubflag
  I wonder if this is backwards? Does a young rich white girl from South Carolina really have such a different backround than a young rich white girl from New Jersey? And I guess that men are not part of the "people" they learned to relate to :-)

• Graduates of women's colleges
• Posted by C. Herrera on March 4, 2008 at 12:05pm EST

• Having attended a women's college myself, and not returning for a graduate degree until more than 20 years later, I wouldn't say I had a graduate degree in mind at all when I was an undergraduate. But I chose a women's college so that I could focus more on academics in the classroom, rather than social life (in the classroom, anyway). This may be true of most women who attend single-sex schools. Does that make them more likely to attend grad school...probably...eventually.

• Posted by J Wilde , VP at Council for Higher Education Accreditation on March 4, 2008 at 2:05pm EST

• Let me comment from two different viewpoints. First, I'm another who attended a women's college. While my graduate degree and career are not at all related to my undergraduate major, I credit that school with providing me with the analytic skills and "thinking" skills that have allowed me to complete graduate degrees and pursue a higher-level career. I never considered such a course before entering the women's college. And, while many of our professors were men, they were there because they were interested in the education of women and they certainly encouraged us to consider further opportunities.

  I can understand some of the criticisms of the current research. However, as I've often told dissertation students - no study is perfect, no study is the be-all, end-all research in any given area. This study takes steps forward and provides new information that we can use as a jumping-off point for more research.

  As to the comments about upper-middle class white women being the only ones at women's colleges, I can only assume that you've never been on the campus of a women's college! Over half of the women at "my" college were receiving some type of financial aid; this is true of many such colleges.

• Diversity at Women's Colleges
• Posted by Christine Sistare on March 4, 2008 at 2:25pm EST

• Greg:

  In fact, women's colleges are doing far better than other schools at recruting a genuinely diverse student body. These colleges are leaders in attracting international students and usually enroll students from across the nation. They also are generous with scholarships for those who are neither 'rich' nor 'white.' And, because these are small schools, students do not retreat into 'Greek' houses or cliques of students just like themselves.
  True, there are no men enrolled in the colleges, but this does not mean that the students do not take classes with men or do not see men outside their classes.

• There is one quantifiable metric the authors omit
• Posted by Jeff on March 4, 2008 at 2:25pm EST

• Comparative earning capacity. Education is an economic investment, not simply a lifestyle purchase. Choice of major (and thus a career) is a bigger determinant of future standard of living than any other factor.
  Also, I question whether the length of time (postgraduate studies) required to obtain an economically useful education can be considered indicative of the quality of said education. I think there's a strong argument that it should be considered an inverse relationship.
  If college prepares you for... more college, it seems little more than an indulgence.

• Posted by Pamela Trotman Reid , President at Saint Joseph College on March 4, 2008 at 6:30pm EST

• What is very interesting is how the study, albeit flawed, seems to indicate that something positive is going on and that the context of a single-sex environment appears to be a strong factor. Let's understand that the colleges grouped under the rubric, "women's college" are as diverse in student population, mission, selectivity, etc., as are colleges under the heading, "independent." So, while you may recognize that the majority are not elite, please do not assume that they are all focused on liberal arts. At Saint Joseph College, the majority of students are first-generation college who aspire to start a career. The demographics in many graduate programs, ours included, are adults who have been away from the classroom for years. I am proud to see alumnae who return for another degree when they are ready to move to a new career or a new level in an existing career.

• Posted by Susan Lennon on March 4, 2008 at 7:10pm EST

• One of the first slides in the Coalition's data set (see link in Scott Jaschik's article) is a quote from John Pryor, Director of CIRP: "If you've done a good survey, you should have more questions. They will be well-informed questions." The Hardwick~Day Comparative Alumnae Research Study is a good survey. We have more questions (including those raised in today's comments). We will pursue many of them in our ongoing research agenda. Two responses to some of the comments:

  It is difficult to control for or provide objective proof of SES and/or academic qualification, as reliable data about entering academic, economic, or aspirational profiles for the range of graduate years in the study (1970-1997) are not available. Hardwick~Day used college selectivity as a proxy for academic ability. To the extent that selectivity is based on academic profile, this suggests that the women's college graduates were not of a more elite academic background than the other graduates.

  Comments about methodology have largely focused on only one dimension of outcomes: completing a graduate degree. What about the many other dimensions of educational effectiveness, including those skills that alumnae consider important to their lives following college and how they ranked the effectiveness of their alma mater in helping them to learn those skills? One might ask, as Jim Day of Hardwick~Day does, why are there differences in the skills alumnae from women's colleges, liberal arts colleges, and flagship public universities consider important? What is/is not happening in the educational experiences of these women that contributes to these differences? Many of these skills are the very ones considered by employers to be critical in the global, knowledge-based economy of the 21st Century.

• Posted by Elizabeth Ivey on March 4, 2008 at 8:25pm EST

• I earned my undergraduate B.S. at a women;s college and later taught for 20 years at another women's college. I have also taught and been an administrator at research I unviersities, both public and private, at coed liberal arts colleges, and at a mid-size comprehensive private university. From my experience in higher education, women's colleges have something they do for their students that other colleges do not do for their female students. There is something that can be learned from what goes on at women's colleges......as I thought at the time of the Tidball study. I left teaching at a women's college to take some of the wonderful teaching and mentoring ideas developed there to other coed institutions. I am still working to improve the educational experience for women, expecially in the STEM fields. Recent National Academies of Science reports encourage changes in higher education if women students are to reach their full potential. There is work to be done and women's colleges can be helpful in this task.

• Posted by Greg on March 5, 2008 at 6:15pm EST

• Hi Christine, your statements may be more true for this decade. but the cohort for the study was 1970-1997.

• Posted by Marian on January 24, 2009 at 2:35pm EST

• This is very interesting data. As a retired educator who was an advocate for women's colleges to occasional students and their parents, I am interested but discouraged with the current situation. Colleges and universities seem far too slow in equity for female students. Thank you.