Weighing the Strengths of the Black and Women’s Colleges

It’s that time of year. No, I’m not thinking of Halloween, but of the season that makes me glad I teach high school seniors: It’s the time to choose a college or university.

I enjoy observing students as they discuss the pluses and minuses of the nation’s campuses, and as they try to decide what they want from their educations.

I’m concerned, though, that two options that would suit many students will tend to be overlooked in Southern California: women’s colleges and historically black colleges.

These two types of colleges differ greatly from each other, but share an important trait: Each serves a portion of the college population that is often slighted or intimidated at mainstream schools.

Reasons for attending women’s colleges are many, but foremost is the sex discrimination that still occurs in most American college classrooms, despite hundreds of reports that document and discourage it.

It has been shown repeatedly, for example, that male students in coeducational classes demand and receive more attention from the faculty, and tend to dominate class discussions. Women, meanwhile, get less eye contact, less attention when they speak, and are interrupted more frequently by faculty and peers.

Now, consider some of the advantages of attending women’s schools, according to studies by the U.S. Department of Education, the Women’s College Coalition and other groups:

Women’s colleges produce a higher percentage of females with degrees in the physical sciences, life sciences, math, economics and business than do coeducational institutions.

Women attending all-female schools are twice as likely to pursue a doctoral degree.

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These schools also place a higher percentage of women in traditionally male career fields, and at a higher salary.

Graduates of women’s colleges are two or three times more likely to be higher career achievers than female graduates from coeducational schools. They are six times more likely to be on the boards of Fortune 500 companies or to be named in Business Week’s list of outstanding corporate women.

The median salary for graduates of women’s campuses is typically $8,000 more than for women from coeducational schools.

Finally, the overall benefits for students at all-women colleges are similar to those enjoyed by blacks at traditionally black colleges: freedom from discrimination and prejudice; more opportunities to practice leadership, decision-making and self-expression; more role models from one’s own group; a tailored curriculum that includes courses of special interest, in addition to the standard university curriculum, and development of self-esteem that fortifies them for encountering discrimination in the workplace.

The case for black colleges is best made with one stunning statistical contrast: 30% of black students attending predominantly white colleges will receive four-year degrees, but 70% in black colleges will.

Black colleges also give black students a chance to be part of the majority; for some students, that is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Student populations at black colleges tend to be smaller than those of predominantly white schools, so students can work more closely with staff and receive more attention.

Black campuses also provide more black role models, which are crucial for young people who are searching for goals and proof that they can succeed.

Students also seem to enjoy and find strength from a sense of legacy that they receive from attending colleges that so many black heroes attended--Spike Lee, Alice Walker, Martin Luther King Jr. and Oprah Winfrey, just to name a few.

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Finally, black colleges offer young blacks a respite from racial discrimination at a crucial period in their lives. Although mainstream academia has come a long way toward equality, many black students still complain of encountering lowered expectations from professors and various other subtle forms of discrimination at white institutions.

With academic and career competition getting tougher every year, it makes sense, I think, to at least consider a college or university that will treat as a strength a trait that larger society too often sees as a weakness.

For more information about women’s colleges or traditionally black colleges, ask the college counselor at your high school.

Mary Laine Yarber teaches English at Santa Monica High School.