Women's College Benefits
Women's colleges prepare women for the many excellent roles they will assume in life, by offering an excellent academic education, by challenging them to become whatever they want to become and by connecting them into a network that will serve these women for most of their professional and personal lives. Going to a women's college greatly increases the chances that a woman will become a leader in a traditionally male (and hence better paid) field, that she will become a scientist or elected official and that she will keep her sights high. Academically, professionally and personally, the advantages of a women's college are hard to match in the co-ed world.
Studies have found that, by attending women's colleges, women*:
- Participate more fully in and out of class.
- Have more opportunities to hold leadership positions and are able to observe women functioning in top jobs (90% of the presidents and 55% of the faculty are women).
- Report greater satisfaction than their coed counterparts with their college experience in almost all measures - academically, developmentally, and personally.
- Develop measurably higher levels of self-esteem than other achieving women in coeducational institutions. After two years in coeducational institutions, women have been shown to have lower levels of self-esteem than when they entered college.
- Score higher on standardized achievement tests.
- Tend to choose traditionally male disciplines, like the sciences, as their academic major, in greater numbers.
- Are more likely to graduate.
- Are more successful in careers; that is, they tend to hold higher positions, are happier and earn more money.
- Tend to be more involved in philanthropic activities after college.
