All Male Colleges?

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but why do they DEMAND admission to all-male schools?


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I think you may be confusing issues. I think the “demand” was in regards to public all-male schools. And I think those were public all male schools that didn’t and couldn’t have a female equivalent. I believe the issue were public military schools, like The Citadel.

Can you understand that by having a specialized type of public univ (like The Citadel) that is male-only would likely have the affect of causing those males to have an unfair advantage once they were in the military?

Imagine if your public high school only let boys take AP classes. Don’t you think that would give boys an unfair “leg up” in the college admissions process?

I really don’t see many women screaming to enter Hampden-Sydney; women want to go to Deep Spring because it is unique.

Honesty, you need to do a lot of growing up before you head to college.

I’m very much a feminist. However, the idea that most previously all-male colleges are now co-ed because men like to be around women, and that their co-ed nature has nothing to do with feminism, is ahistorical. There was a huge movement in the 1960s through 1980s to make the most elite universities and colleges (both public and private) in the U.S. co-ed for issues of access and gender equality - those were the universities and colleges with the best reputations and the best inroads into top careers, and it is very true that feminist and women’s rights movements put pressure on these institutions to begin admitting women. It’s no accident that most of the universities began admitting women in the 1960s and 1970s, which coincides with the women’s rights movement.

It has very little, historically speaking, to do with the fact that men like to be around women. If that was the case, Columbia would’ve never went co-ed, because Barnard is right across the street; and Harvard would’ve never gone co-ed, because Radcliffe was basically co-located. (However, that might be true now - few young men would want to attend a men’s college with no access to women. In fact, Columbia held out so long partially because Barnard WAS right across the street.)

However, the flip is true of Deep Springs. They’re going co-ed not because of feminist pressure; the trustees and the students wanted the college to go co-ed for a variety of reasons - including financial ones. Some prospective donors have declined to work with the college because of their single-sex status, and apparently, they also have lost potential faculty over it. Your admissions pool is deeper and more competitive when you can appeal to 100% of the population as opposed to 50% of it.

Tulane used to have Tulane and Newcomb, but I don’t think that’s the environment you’re looking for - plus they dissolved them into one anyway. Yeshiva University has the all-male Yeshiva College and the all-women Stern College, and they are in two different locations (Yeshiva is in Washington Heights in uptown Manhattan, and Stern is in Murray Hill in downtown Manhattan). There are a lot of Jewish yeshivas that are all-male.

There are also coordinate college arrangements - like Hobart College in upstate New York. Hobart is a separate, independent college from William Smith College (the women’s counterpart), but they are coordinate colleges that have a partnership and I think offer cross-registration and social events together - so while it is technically all-male, I think the experience is not quite like going to Wabash, Hampden-Sydney or even Morehouse (which is very distinct from Spelman, even though we do have some cross-registration and a lot of social overlap). Somebody also mentioned St. John’s University of Minnesota - which is a coordinate college with the College of St. Benedict. However, these two are also separate schools nominally but share a single academic program, and men and women take classes together. Again, it’s not quite like going to a traditional men’s college.

And some military colleges are still predominantly male - The Citadel, a military college in South Carolina, is 92% male, and the Virginia Military Institute is 89% male. If you are interested in STEM majors, many science/tech colleges are primarily male - Colorado School of Mines is 73% male, and the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology is 77% male.

Has the OP expressed why he feels that an all-male environment is better?

The all-male Saint John’s is 3 1/2 miles from the women’s College of Saint Benedict, so that is a separating factor there. But nice analysis, @juillet.

I’m also interested in a response to @mom2collegekids question. What are the OP’s personal considerations for this strong preference? You will only be attending one college, and you can choose it to be all male. The larger societal questions should not have too great a bearing your personal choice. Though I understand that your options are more limited than they would have been in the past.

Re: post #25 - @juillet: most of your points are well-taken, but I have to dispute your allegations regarding Barnard and Columbia. I was at Barnard when the entire drama played out. Columbia finally voted to admit women several years after I graduated, but “The College” was pressuring Barnard relentlessly, and those durned feminists adamantly refused to merge with them. Barnard had its own Board of Trustees, its own endowment, and separate requirements (no “Core Curriculum”). It did not want to surrender its identity and independence to Columbia College. I was not an ardent separatist, myself. I would not have been attracted to Barnard were it not for the Columbia affiliation; I actually liked the notion of the Core Curriculum, and might have liked having to take those classes; and I majored in Russian, which was entirely “cross-listed.” The Barnard community did not want it to go the way of Radcliffe (which was just being subsumed into Harvard at the time). Who now even remembers Pembroke (Brown), when trying to list the “Seven Sisters,” or Jackson (Tufts)? Nobody knew quite how things would work out with Barnard, but it appears to be thriving, just as Bryn Mawr, Smith, and Mt. Holyoke have survived co-education at Haverford and Amherst.

Women now outnumber men among college students almost everywhere, other than STEM programs. The disparity is especially stark at liberal arts colleges, which often have at least a 60-40 female-to-male ratio. That might also be a reason for fewer surviving all-male institutions: the colleges that went co-ed doubled (at least) their applicant pool, making them more selective, and there are simply more qualified girls seeking slots at liberal arts colleges.

Is the 60/40 female/male ratio noticeable, anyone who goes to a lopsided LAC?

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It’s probably more noticeable in certain majors.

^^^Or at the winter formal.

Some majors like physics and psychology do have lopsided gender ratios, regardless of whether the school is a LAC or not.

My younger son is at a college with a ratio close to 60-40, but it doesn’t seem to bother or affect him from day to day.

@chris:3499: I read, I think it was an admissions officers’ opinion, that 60/40 is the limit of what potential applicants regard as a roughly gender balanced college.

Upthread: Not sure if Pembroke was being put forth as a former Seven Sister. The college was not a member of this association.

merc81 - You’re right. I mis-counted, and presumed that like Barnard and Radcliffe, it was a “Sister.”

I agree with @juillet. Feminist ideas did play a role in the demise of all-male colleges. A lot of formerly all-male schools went coed in part because their leadership felt it was unfair to restrict which students could receive the opportunities they offered.

And yes, market forces started pushing towards coed environments in the late 60s and early 70s. But why was that? Of course young men nowadays want to be around young women, but they wanted that since time immemorial, and yet the market didn’t demand coeducation until about 45 years ago. So it’s not just boys liking girls that brought about this change. Feminist ideas about women’s role in the classroom and the workplace impacted young men’s choices about the college community they wanted.

I don’t share the OP’s perspective on the whole story, but I think he’s largely right about the history.

I obtained one interesting perspective when touring prep schools with my younger son. We visited Portsmouth Abbey, a Benedictine Catholic boarding school which did not admit girls until the 1990s. While my son was being interviewed, an older gentleman - an alumnus, parent, and trustee - initiated a conversation with me. The Benedictine monks on campus had veto power in the decision to go co-ed, and fought it through the 1980s. Their number and influence had dwindled considerably, and they finally relented in the early 1990s. The man I spoke to says that the “Brothers” are now unanimous in their belief that co-education is the best thing that ever happened to the school. In the first place, it immediately doubled the applicant pool, thereby elevating the aggregate scholastic profile. The monks also were impressed by how much better the boys behaved, and the improvement in overall academic discourse, once girls arrived. I other words, even monks are now convinced that monasticism isn’t necessarily a good thing.

And by the way…since you really went out of your way to call Morehouse terrible, I think I’ll respond again @Kdkhan

Morehouse succeeds mainly as a recruiter school. It, as a top-ranked HBCU, is aligned with various corporations looking to specifically recruit black applicants. It certainly isnt the most “prestigious” school (neither is Hampden-Sydney or any other school that you mentioned) but it does succeed in serving its purpose.

The reason I said you wouldnt fit in there is because it offers literally nothing that you want. The atmosphere is not preppy. The student body is not rich. They are not homogenous in the way that you want. Though some do have conservative leanings, the school is very anti-GOP or tend to vote democrat consistently.

In my opinion, no school is too good for you at this point because your behavior on this thread shows how little you know about the world. Also, it may be good for you to go to a more left-leaning school, because the views you expressed here are objectively (not subjectively) incorrect, and you may need people to push back against you.

@TheAtlantic
You are wrong about Hampden-Sydney not being “prestigious”. It may not be prestigious nationally, but it is elite in the South A lot of their students come from top prep schools in VA. No one in the Northeast or on the West Coast knows about the school, that doesn’t mean it’s not prestigious. I find it funny that you recommend I go to a Leftist school. I’ve had a terrible experience in high school, and you recommend I spend 4 years with tree-hugging, socialist fools. Not going to happen. Why is it always conservatives that should go to Leftist schools. Why not send a Atheist Liberal to Bob Jones so they can have THIER views challenged? From my research, and this forum, I have created a top 5 list of colleges at this point.

  1. Patrick Henry College (elite Evangelical institution that sends students to Harvard Law School every year.)
  2. Hampden-Sydney College
  3. Hillsdale College (it has been called the “conservative Harvard” by the National Review
  4. Sewanee: The University of the South (strong Southern, conservative school.)
  5. Wofford College (good preppy conservative school in South Carolina)

@Kdkhan 3 of those schools are co-ed… Is it really that important to you that Hampden-Syndney is all-male?

  1. PHC - good for what it is, but **very** small. I know several grads (none of them lawyers, all doing low-level nonprofit or administrative work in DC) who all feel they outgrew it by the end. PHC isn't just conservative, it's a very specific kind of conservative. If you aren't exactly that kind of conservative, it's not a comfortable place. If you grow into, say, Straussianism or paleolibertarianism or something other than what they support there, it becomes less fun.
  2. Hampden-Sydney - excellent writing program. I am deeply impressed by what I have read from its graduates online. On the downside, it has a poor freshman retention rate. Many students used it as a safety for UVA or UNC, and transfer out as soon as they can.
  3. Hillsdale - don't know anything about it.
  4. Sewanee - beautiful campus, although very isolated. More conservative than the average LAC, although less conservative than the other schools on this list. Probably went about 50/50 Obama/Romney, which is fire-breathing conservative by LAC standards.

I really have a soft spot for Hampden-Sydney and hope my son applies there when the time comes. Have you also considered Wabash?