Continuing our fight
A letter to the Editor in University of California at San Diego's The Guardian from the husband of one of our alumnae sisters -
http://tinyurl.com/p48qw
Women’s Colleges Serve Valuable Purpose
Dear Editor,
As the husband of a Randolph-Macon Woman’s College (R-MWC) alumna and a once-frequent visitor to women’s colleges, I feel obliged to set the record straight and question Ms. Naraghi’s conclusions in “Casting a Wider Net” (Oct. 2) that going coed is about simple economics and her implication that women at a single-sex school are disadvantaged in the real world.
Women’s schools are neither “finishing schools” nor elitist Stepford-Wife cloisters, Hollywood’s stereotyped misconceptions a la “Mona Lisa Smile” notwithstanding. Women-only classrooms are best suited to the unique learning styles of women — often incompatible with male-oriented teaching — without the distractions of male dominance issues or sexual tension. Women who are educated without men in the classroom are arguably better prepared to compete in the real world than female coed graduates who have been socialized to accept inequality in male-dominated classrooms run by majority-male faculties (women’s colleges are much more likely to have a near-50-50 male-female faculty ratio). A recent national survey of student engagement found that women who graduate from women’s colleges are on average more successful, happier and more satisfied with their education than their coed-graduate peers.
The decision to go coed is not just about economics, and the economics do not add up. R-MWC’s endowment eclipses its peers. It has experienced steadily growing enrollment (only in the late 1960s did it see higher enrollment numbers). Its main attraction to prospective students is its academic excellence, and while few enroll just because of its single-sex nature, nearly all who graduate credit the all-women status for the college’s academic strengths.
Unfortunately, the R-MWC trustees have for years ignored criticisms of the college’s poor admissions outreach efforts and the root causes of its poor retention (such as draconian “big sister” social policies, poor administration engagement with students, slashed budgets for on-campus social events and cuts to popular academic programs). The trustees’ decision was based upon a questionable “study” they commissioned, whose pro-coed conclusion erroneously assumed continued economic support by alumnae, continued low interest in single-sex colleges, unabated competition by other women’s colleges and static admissions and retention problems, and postulated that the academic excellence which has served as the school’s main selling point would be unaffected by a coed student body (which is directly at odds with all available evidence). The R-MWC controversy continues to date (despite little ongoing press coverage) with student blockades, protests, alumnae revolts and threatened litigation.
That the New York Times saw fit to treat the subject with inexcusable superficiality in its article cited in “Casting a Wider Net” demonstrates amply that “All the news that’s fit to print” is rarely fitted to print.
Most of today’s remaining women’s colleges would agree that “casting a wider net” to include men would in fact destroy the essential identity of their schools, obliterate their uniqueness, dry up their revenues, diffuse their academic rigor and give literal meaning to that most fervent chant of the recently disenfranchised Randolph-Macon Woman’s College students and alumnae, “Better Dead Than Coed.”
— Patrick McRee
Hollywood, California
http://tinyurl.com/p48qw
Women’s Colleges Serve Valuable Purpose
Dear Editor,
As the husband of a Randolph-Macon Woman’s College (R-MWC) alumna and a once-frequent visitor to women’s colleges, I feel obliged to set the record straight and question Ms. Naraghi’s conclusions in “Casting a Wider Net” (Oct. 2) that going coed is about simple economics and her implication that women at a single-sex school are disadvantaged in the real world.
Women’s schools are neither “finishing schools” nor elitist Stepford-Wife cloisters, Hollywood’s stereotyped misconceptions a la “Mona Lisa Smile” notwithstanding. Women-only classrooms are best suited to the unique learning styles of women — often incompatible with male-oriented teaching — without the distractions of male dominance issues or sexual tension. Women who are educated without men in the classroom are arguably better prepared to compete in the real world than female coed graduates who have been socialized to accept inequality in male-dominated classrooms run by majority-male faculties (women’s colleges are much more likely to have a near-50-50 male-female faculty ratio). A recent national survey of student engagement found that women who graduate from women’s colleges are on average more successful, happier and more satisfied with their education than their coed-graduate peers.
The decision to go coed is not just about economics, and the economics do not add up. R-MWC’s endowment eclipses its peers. It has experienced steadily growing enrollment (only in the late 1960s did it see higher enrollment numbers). Its main attraction to prospective students is its academic excellence, and while few enroll just because of its single-sex nature, nearly all who graduate credit the all-women status for the college’s academic strengths.
Unfortunately, the R-MWC trustees have for years ignored criticisms of the college’s poor admissions outreach efforts and the root causes of its poor retention (such as draconian “big sister” social policies, poor administration engagement with students, slashed budgets for on-campus social events and cuts to popular academic programs). The trustees’ decision was based upon a questionable “study” they commissioned, whose pro-coed conclusion erroneously assumed continued economic support by alumnae, continued low interest in single-sex colleges, unabated competition by other women’s colleges and static admissions and retention problems, and postulated that the academic excellence which has served as the school’s main selling point would be unaffected by a coed student body (which is directly at odds with all available evidence). The R-MWC controversy continues to date (despite little ongoing press coverage) with student blockades, protests, alumnae revolts and threatened litigation.
That the New York Times saw fit to treat the subject with inexcusable superficiality in its article cited in “Casting a Wider Net” demonstrates amply that “All the news that’s fit to print” is rarely fitted to print.
Most of today’s remaining women’s colleges would agree that “casting a wider net” to include men would in fact destroy the essential identity of their schools, obliterate their uniqueness, dry up their revenues, diffuse their academic rigor and give literal meaning to that most fervent chant of the recently disenfranchised Randolph-Macon Woman’s College students and alumnae, “Better Dead Than Coed.”
— Patrick McRee
Hollywood, California
