Dollars, Scholars and Gender

By Susan Tifft

The earthquake that rattled the San Francisco Bay Area last fall caused $7 million worth of damage at Mills College, a 138-year-old women's school in Oakland. But the tremors set off by the college's decision to boost revenue by accepting men have shaken Mills' foundations more severely than any natural disaster.

Last week students, many sporting yellow armbands and BETTER DEAD THAN COED T shirts, continued to boycott classes and blockade buildings. The faculty (51% women, 49% men) volunteered to recruit more female students and teach more courses at no extra cost if the trustees would permit Mills to remain an all-female enclave. Alumnae pledged to raise an additional $10 million in endowment over the next five years. In response to the pressure, Mills president Mary Metz announced that the trustees might reconsider their decision if faculty, staff and students came up with bolder proposals to bolster the school's finances.

There is scant precedent for such a reversal. Goaded by financial necessity, women's colleges have increasingly been forced to choose between two futures: going coed or going under. Since 1960 the number of such schools has dwindled from 298 to 93, with more dominoes poised to fall. "Women still perceive a need for separate-sex education," says Donna Shavlik, director of the office of women in higher education at the American Council on Education. "But whether colleges can continue to offer it and still maintain their economic health is another question."

Mills' health is especially precarious. The undergraduate student body has withered to 777, more than 200 shy of the 1,000 total the administration claims is necessary to balance its $23 million annual operating budget. Says Mills board chairman Warren Hellman: "In five or six years we would be heading into a death spiral." The school's location only intensifies its recruitment problems. With tuition at $11,900, Mills often loses students to well-regarded state schools like the University of California, Berkeley, just ten miles away, where yearly fees total only $1,500.

Women's colleges in general have been squeezed by two powerful trends. One is the baby bust of the late 1960s and '70s, which has meant a shrinking pool of college-age youngsters. Single-sex schools get a crack at only half that decreasing market. The other is the declining popularity of women-only education. Currently, just 3% to 11% of high school women say they would consider a women's college. Taken together, these changes have made it difficult for many all-female colleges to attract enough students to keep themselves afloat.

The demise of some women's colleges, however, has breathed new life into others. Although the total number of students at such schools has slipped from 250,000 to 125,000 during the past 20 years, these women today are spread over a smaller number of institutions, boosting head counts at many of them. Since 1970, undergraduate enrollment at the surviving women's colleges has shot up more than 18%. Two of the strongest, Wellesley and Bryn Mawr, enjoyed a 6% surge in applications this year.

Ironically, the case for single-sex education for women has never been more compelling. According to the Washington-based Women's College Coalition, all- female schools have produced one-third of the female board members of FORTUNE 1000 companies. In science and math, a single-gender environment has proved particularly nurturing. More than 5% of women at all-female schools major in the life sciences, for instance, compared with only 3.6% of women at coed schools.

| The financial gains that go along with coeducation may come at the price of women's achievement. A recent study of Wheaton College, which went coed in 1988, showed that the school's men tended to get the lion's share of attention from faculty. "You lose something in the process of going coed," says Peter Mirijanian, spokesman for the Women's College Coalition. "You can't have it both ways."

For the all-female schools that remain, survival will require tough choices. To help brighten its bottom line, Bryn Mawr decided three years ago to phase out several graduate departments, pare faculty and staff, and gradually increase its undergraduate enrollment from 1,000 to 1,200. Russell Sage, in Troy, N.Y., has repositioned itself, aggressively courting "resumers" -- women over 25 -- who make up 22% of its undergraduates.

At fiscally weakened schools, such tactics may only postpone the inevitable. The turmoil at Mills could soon be repeated at Pittsburgh's Chatham College, a tiny (615 students) liberal arts school, whose trustees are scheduled to vote in October on whether to admit men. To many young women the rush to coeducation has created a disturbing, and unjustified, diminution of educational choices. "Women's colleges have not become obsolete," maintains Catie Hancock, 21, a Bryn Mawr junior. "It is other factors that kill these schools. It's so sad."

With reporting by Kathleen Brady/New York and Paul A. Witteman/Oakland