University of Virginia Library

Women's Schools:
Have They A Future?

Yesterday we discussed the breaking of
Yale's tentative engagement with Vassar
from the point of view of the University's
own quest to reconcile itself with new theories
about the education of women. We should
like to continue this discussion today with
some reflections on the future of the women's
school.

Despite Yale's enthusiastic wooing, the
Vassar trustees declared their "desire to be
mistress in our own house." They reached
this decision on more than just nostalgia
for their traditional campus in the Hudson
Valley. After a thorough review of the expenditure
and the far-reaching changes such
a move to New Haven would entail, the
trustees overruled Vassar President Alan
Simpson's decision that the advantages of
the merger would outweigh the obstacles.

They did not quarrel with President
Simpson's conclusion that the "for women
only" approach to undergraduate education
has outlived its usefulness, however. In place
of the merger with Yale, the trustees presented
an exciting program of expansion—
both physically and philosophically—
for Vassar. Ironically, the projects they suggested
in the long run will cost somewhere
between $50 and $75 million, as opposed
to the $40 million estimated for a coalition
with Yale. It has been said that Mr. Simpson
wanted to shake up the complacent,
even if the negotiations with Yale failed; he
has certainly succeeded.

As Fred Hechinger wrote in The New
York Times, the predicament of running a
women's college in the genteel isolation of
a pleasant, usually rural campus is no
longer Vassar's problem alone. It is a problem
very much faced by such well-known
and oft-visited local institutions as Sweet
Briar, Hollins and Randolph-Macon. Vassar
is different in this context from the women's
schools that dot the Virginia countryside
only in that it has shown more imagination
and leadership in meeting the problems
of educating females in the latter half of
the twentieth century.

It seems to us that two matters are at
the basis of these problems: one a matter
of educational philosophy, the other a matter
of money.

When Vassar was founded in 1861 by a
rich brewer, the aim was to demonstrate
that women ought to be entitled to the same
kind of education as men. Today, on the
other hand, the strongest argument for a
women's college is that their education
should differ from that of men since their
"life style," their emotions, and their goals
differ.

With women competing on an equal
basis with men in just about every aspect
of society, this contemporary argument
loses much of its persuasiveness. President
Simpson thinks so, at least, and as a result
Vassar will be revolutionizing its curriculum,
involving its students much more deeply
in the urban world, and brining all sorts of
institutes and graduate centers to Poughkeepsie.
The feminist isolation, in short, will
be ended.

The matter of money may be even more
basic. Vassar and the other Seven Sister
schools have been comparatively well endowed,
as have several of the Virginia
colleges. Yet the financial pinch that is already
being felt by such enormously wealthy
private schools as Yale and Harvard will
hurt the small private liberal arts colleges
even more. Women's schools are particularly
vulnerable to financial woes since they
are less able to attract government or foundation
grants and since men are usually in a
much better position to contribute to their
alma maters than are their wives.

The results are already obvious in many
girls' schools: inadequate libraries, ill-equipped
laboratories, faculty members who are
either second-rate or who are very young
and promising but who will leave after a year
or two for better salaries and more
academic resources, a stifling intellectual atmosphere.

By working more closely with schools
like the State University of New York,
Vassar will be able to rely on public
funds to some degree; its new programs
doubtless will find generous private backing
as well. The Virginia schools would do well
to broaden this sort of inter-collegiate cooperation
themselves. The plan to join the
various Richmond schools is an important
step in this direction.

The women's schools of this country
have played an important role historically
and have contributed to the diversity that
has made American higher education unique.
We hope that in a time of change they will
continue to maintain their integrity and their
utility. We certainly never hope to see
several great centralized "trusts" monopolizing
the business of education. But if
the women's schools—particularly the Virginia
schools that University students have
known so well— are to survive, they must
follow the Vassar example of pioneering a
new approach.