There’s a Newfound Enthusiasm for Women’s Colleges. But Can They Keep It Going?

In a public high-school gymnasium in Yonkers, N.Y., four young women huddled around Barnard College’s information table during a recent college fair.

A small group of young men walked up to the table.

The girls turned to face the boys. “This is just for women,” the young women said.

Prospective Barnard students have always been confident, said Jennifer Fondiller, Barnard’s vice president for enrollment. Lately those young women, like the ones she saw in Yonkers, have become more self-assured, she said.

The confidence among young women, in part, is translating into record-breaking enrollment numbers for some women’s colleges. Barnard, which has joined several other women’s colleges in accepting applications from anyone who identifies as a woman, has had about an 80-percent increase in applicants since 2004. Sweet Briar College, which almost closed its doors in 2015, experienced a 42-percent bump in enrollment this fall. At institutions across the country, including Spelman College, Stephens College, Scripps College, and Bryn Mawr College, enrollment is also up.

The wave of enthusiasm for women’s colleges arrives at a time when public confidence in higher education is declining. About 48 percent of American adults are confident in higher education, down from 57 percent in 2015, according to a recent Gallup poll. Despite the growing mistrust of higher education, many young women remain excited by the promise of an all-women’s education.

Applications Are Up

Barnard’s admissions team has been overwhelmed by the recent surge in interest. “We’re pushed more and more every day,” Fondiller said.

The number of Barnard campus tours for prospective students has doubled, she said. Admissions interviews have also increased. This year’s on-campus prospective-student interviews were completely booked within just two weeks — forcing staff members to extend their usual interview period.

Scripps has seen a 32-percent increase in campus tours over the past three years. The number of prospective-student interviews conducted by alumnae has doubled since 2016.

Besides the logistics of fielding more prospective students, women’s colleges have observed a change in application-essay topics. Empowerment and classroom sexism are common themes, Fondiller said.

More students say they want an environment where they can be supported by other women’s voices, she said.

Seeking Empowering Environments

National conversations about the #MeToo movement and sexual assault have contributed to the enrollment bump, said Meredith Woo, Sweet Briar’s president. Young women want to pursue degrees in classroom environments that are free from misogyny and intimidation.

With the advent of women’s co-working spaces, like the Wing, and cultural conversations dominated by gender equity, it’s not a complete surprise that more young women are returning to women-only learning environments.

There’s a heightened sense of purpose for today’s women’s colleges. But until recently, those institutions had to work hard to explain that purpose, Fondiller said.

Now the colleges are striving to keep the momentum going.

“Students and their parents are paying attention to the kind of education that not only empowers women, but takes place in an environment that’s safe,” Woo said. “There has been a lot of talk and writing about sexual assault and excessive drinking on American campuses. … There’s a recognition that in women’s colleges you can bypass quite a bit of it.”

Scripps has always advertised itself as an empowering environment for women, said Victoria Romero, the college’s vice president for enrollment. That message hasn’t changed. Students’ perception is what’s different.

“High-school girls today have seen people in a number of different leadership positions talk about women in a negative and a positive way,” Romero said. “It’s given students an opportunity to understand the need to have a powerful voice.”

Students are also seeking out communities of care, said Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University. And young women are rejecting the outdated superwoman role in favor of support systems.

The Battle to Remain Relevant

Women’s institutions have often felt as if they were competing against coed colleges with their hands tied, Woo said. As a result, she said, women’s colleges tend to be more innovative.

Sweet Briar is no exception. “In order to remain competitive and to recruit excellent students,” Woo said, “we have gone out of our way to revise and reinvigorate our curriculum.”

To plan for long-term success, the college recently unveiled a core curriculum that has replaced its general-education program. The new curriculum is centered on women’s leadership and empowerment, which is a major draw for prospective students. The college has also doubled down on its engineering program.

Beyond academics, Sweet Briar wants to remain financially competitive. The cost of attendance is comparable to the state’s flagship public institution, the University of Virginia, Woo said.

In general, she said, “excellence, relevance, and affordability” make up the formula for staying power.

‘They Have No Time for Donald Trump’

Trinity Washington is another women’s college that was willing to make big changes to survive — before it was common to do so.

Sitting at a table in the new Payden Academic Center, with views of students in plush sneakers walking along the manicured lawns outside the floor-to-ceiling arched windows, Patricia McGuire, the institution’s president, described its history of reinvention.

The very decision to create the university, in Washington, D.C., was met with controversy, a theme that would follow it as it continues to reinvent itself over a century later.

Trinity was founded by nuns in 1897 because the nearby Catholic University of America refused to accept women, McGuire said. The right wing of the church was furious.

The university became an elite institution for well-to-do young women. Notable alumnae include Nancy Pelosi and Kellyanne Conway. But by the time McGuire became president, in 1989, Trinity was no longer the go-to institution for wealthy young women, and it was losing students to coed institutions like Georgetown and Penn, she said.

“The past was gone,” McGuire said. To ensure Trinity’s future, she began by confronting the university’s diversity problem. When she took office, there were no local students and just a few black women enrolled full time.

“This was the latent institutional racism that nobody talked about,” she said.

McGuire decided to focus on enrolling local women of color. “Trinity was founded to make education accessible for those who otherwise might not go to college,” she said. “And there were just thousands at our doorstep.”

By the late 1990s, Trinity’s student demographic changed from being about 95 percent white and Catholic to a predominantly black institution, she said.

Trinity’s most notable enrollment spike was not a result of the #MeToo movement or the 2016 presidential election, but of the decision, in 2007, to create a nursing program.

Many Trinity women are low-income students living on the margins, McGuire said. They are galvanized by the promise of economic empowerment and the desire not to be another statistic.

“They have no time for Donald Trump,” she said.

Persuading young women to choose a women-only institution beyond recent enrollment bumps won’t always be easy, McGuire said. Now college leaders are challenged with turning this new momentum into a permanent enthusiasm.

Follow Cailin Crowe on Twitter at @cailincrowe, or email her at cailin.crowe@chronicle.com.

Correction (10/18/2018, 10:30 a.m.): The original version of this article misattributed statements by a Scripps College administrator. The speaker was Victoria Romero, the college’s vice president for enrollment, not Binti Harvey, vice president for external relations and institutional advancement. The text has been corrected.