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Coeducation at Colleges and Universities

It was not until the second half of the 20th century that Ivy League universities and traditional women’s colleges truly confronted the potential need for coeducation. As Nancy Weiss Malkiel, author of “Keep the Damned Women Out” recognizes, the setting of the 1960s was instrumental in the advocacy for coeducation at prestigious colleges and universities. Malkiel claims that the civil rights movement, the student movement, the antiwar movement, and the women’s movement influenced the coming of coeducation to elite colleges and universities. She even goes so far as to claim that coeducation “had an element of inevitability about it” based on timing. Malkiel is professor emeritus of history at Princeton University, and her extensive scholarly skills are visible in her book.

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This image displays Dartmouth's enrollment by gender directly following their decision to become coed and then through the preceeding years. From 1980 to 1995, the ratio of men to women was essentially cut in half! 

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The data in this table shows the percentage of Vassar College Students from each graduating class from 1967-1983 that were in the first decile of their High School graduating class. It is revealed through the data that the women were more likely to have been at the top of their class in High School, demonstrating that women were most likely held to a higher standard than their male counterparts. 

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When women were initially admitted at schools like Princeton and Yale, they were significantly outnumbered. In 1969, 12.5% of the population of Yale was female and 4.4% of the Princeton students were female. It is clear that those numer steadily rose over the next 11 years, but even by 1980 Yale had only reached 41.8% female and 36.9% for Princeton. This illustrates how difficult it must have been for the first groups of women who entered these highly competitive ivy league schools outnumbered. 

In Nancy Weiss Malkiel's conclusion, she asserts that coeducation at elite colleges and Universities was the right decision:

"The one incontrovertible point is that co-education has opened educational opportunities for women that had not previously existed. Able to attend previously all-male colleges has given women access to a broader range of educational opportunities. Women now have full access, as men do, to the best university education in the anglo-american world: to faculty members at the cutting edge of their respective disciplines, as well as to the best libraries, laboratories, and other educational facilities. And women students have the opportunity to profit from the intellectual stimulation and interchange, as well as the social interactions, fostered in mixed-sex educational environments. Going to school together means learning to live and work together" (596). 

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Like Malkiel, historian Michael S. Hevel believes that coeducation was not simply an educational opportunity for women, but that it also enhanced women’s abilities to compete, debate, and interact alongside men. This practice better prepared them for the real world. It was not always easy, however, for women to be included in campus activities. The first women at coed institutions found that male professors were reluctant to teach them, that their male counterparts did not want to include them in extracurricular activities, and that landlords did not want to rent to them. Despite these challenges, women eventually paved their way into campus culture and established themselves on campuses across the nation.

Bowdoin College in Maine is a prime example of an institution that decided inviting women to enroll was necessary and would ultimately be beneficial. In 1969, the Bowdoin Study Committee  sent a report to the President, Trustees, and Overseers of Bowdoin College that advocated for the admission of women. In the report, written specifically by members of the governing boards, faculty, alums, and undergraduates, there is a demand for coeducation. The Study Committee argues that:

"Bowdoin should abandon its long tradition as an all-male college. We believe that some form of coeducation is one of the most pressing needs of the College and the step best calculated to give new vitality to the entire Bowdoin community. Bowdoin can no longer ignore the positive advantages to be derived from including women in the academic community. Nor can we afford to be complacent about our ability to continue to attract male students of high quality when in five years almost all of our principal competitors will have admitted women. It is noteworthy that both faculty and students are heartily in favor of some form of coeducation. We find no significant positive values in continuing as an all-male college."

This excerpt highlights a critical idea addressed by Malkiel, the Bowdoin Study Committee and many others: there was an element of “peer pressure” that drove many universities to pursue coeducation in order to stay competitive with other institutions. This competitive nature of universities allowed for positive change to reach most campuses, and was a crucial component of spreading coeducation.