Separate by Degree

In the nineteenth century, women's colleges provided many women with access to higher education, yet Susan B. Anthony and other women connected to the women's rights movement favored coeducation. In the late twentieth century, at a time that many single-sex institutions became coeducational, research has indicated the benefits for women of single-sex education. Separate by Degree compares the experiences of women students, in the past as well as in contemporary times, in four small, private liberal arts colleges - a women's college, a coordinate college, a long-time coeducational college, and a recently coeducational college - to determine how well women have fared with varying degrees of separation from male students.

The Author: Leslie Miller-Bernal is Professor of Sociology at Wells College. She began her undergraduate studies at Middlebury College, received her B.A. and M.A. from SUNY at Stony Brook, and her Ph.D. in sociology of development at Cornell University. Her previously published work focuses on the relative advantages for women of single-sex versus coeducational colleges.