Women's college

Throughout the 114-year history of the women's college Sweet Briar, students and alumnae have objected to calling it a finishing school.

[8] Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia was originally founded as a women's college in 1875, but became co-educational in 1967.

This includes the following universities: The following are female-only institutions: Mary Astell advocated the idea that women were just as rational as men, and just as deserving of education.

First published in 1694, her Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest[9] presents a plan for an all-female college where women could pursue a life of the mind.

The reform group, including Emma Willard, felt seminaries required reform through “strengthening teaching of the core academic subjects.” Others felt seminaries were insufficient, suggesting “a more durable institution--a women’s college--be founded, among them, Catharine E. Beecher.

In her True Remedy for the Wrongs of Women (1851),[14] Beecher points out how “seminaries could not offer sufficient, permanent endowments, buildings, and libraries; a corporation whose duty it is to perpetuate the institution on a given plan.”[13][15] Another notable figure was Mary Lyon (1797-1849), founder of Mount Holyoke College, whose contemporaries included Sarah Pierce (Litchfield Female Academy, 1792); Catharine Beecher (Hartford Female Seminary, 1823); Zilpah P. Grant Banister (Ipswich Female Seminary, 1828); George Washington Doane (St. Mary's Hall, 1837 now called Doane Academy).

These societal changes put increasing pressure of perceived "unpopularity" and "old fashioned" perceptions and opinions placing the concept of "single-sex education" for both women and men on the most drastic downward spiral in its history.

[citation needed] Drawing upon the findings of research conducted by the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and Hardwick-Day on levels of satisfaction among students and alumnae at women's colleges and coeducational institutions, as well as the Association of American Colleges and Universities, NAICU and others, the Coalition makes the case for women's education and women's high schools and colleges to prospective students, families, policy and opinion makers, the media, employers and the general public.