Separate by Degree (History of Schools and Schooling, V. 9) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Leslie Miller-Bernal's Separate By Degree is a timely, engaging and accessible book about the important differences in the educational experiences of women who attend women's colleges compared to those who attend coeducational institutions. The book is timely because it calls on the reader to reconsider the value of single-sex education at a critical moment of decline in the history of women's colleges. The book is engaging because Miller-Bernal tells an exciting and frustrating story of the struggle of women for gender equity in higher education. And the book is accessible, thanks to the easily understood manner in which the author writes.
Professor Miller-Bernal argues that single-sex education still has advantages for women. Those advantages include: a high proportion of women faculty who can act as role models for students; more opportunities for young women to develop leadership skills; and a supportive atmosphere where women do not have to defer to men. Her argument is based on quality research, including longitudinal surveys of women students at four Northeastern colleges: Wells, Middlebury, William Smith and Hamilton. The histories of the colleges are described in rich detail, the differences in the experiences of women students at the four institutions are carefully compared and contrasted, and the most recent literature on single-sex education is well presented and thoughtfully critiqued.
Although Professor Miller-Bernal asks the reader to reconsider the value of single-sex education for women, she does not fall into the nostalgia trap. She recognizes some of the past and current limitations of women's colleges, and she details the many factors that have made coeducational institutions more viable than women's colleges. She ends Separate By Degree with a set of recommendations for applying the beneficial aspects of women's colleges to coeducational institutions and a caveat--If colleges are really concerned about women and equality, they will have to attend carefully to meeting the needs of all women students and never waiver from the goal of achieving gender equity.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Separate by Degree (History of Schools and Schooling, V. 9)

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.

Click here for more information about Separate by Degree (History of Schools and Schooling, V. 9)