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The following is a timeline of women's colleges in the United States . These are institutions of higher education in the United States whose student population comprises exclusively, or almost exclusively, women. They are often liberal arts colleges. There are approximately 35 active women's colleges in the U.S. as of 2021. [1]
The colleges are listed by the date when they opened to students.
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Many of the schools began as either school for girls, academies (which during the late 18th and early 19th centuries was the equivalent of secondary schools), or as a teaching seminary (which during the early 19th century were forms of secular higher education), rather than as a chartered college. During the 19th century in the United States, "Seminaries educated women for the only socially acceptable occupation: teaching. Only unmarried women could be teachers. Many early women's colleges began as female seminaries and were responsible for producing an important corps of educators." [2]
The following is a list of "oldest" and "first" schools, by the date that they opened for students:
Blue Mountain Christian University (BMCU), formerly Blue Mountain College, is a private Baptist college in Blue Mountain, Mississippi. Founded as a women's college in 1873, the college's board of trustees voted unanimously for the college to become coeducational in 2005. The university offers baccalaureate degrees as well as graduate programs.
The Seven Sisters are a group of seven private liberal arts colleges in the Northeastern United States that are historically women's colleges. Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and Wellesley College are still women's colleges. Vassar College became coeducational in 1969 and Radcliffe College was absorbed in 1999 by Harvard College and now offers programs in advanced study.
Mixed-sex education, also known as mixed-gender education, co-education, or coeducation, is a system of education where males and females are educated together. Whereas single-sex education was more common up to the 19th century, mixed-sex education has since become standard in many cultures, particularly in western countries. Single-sex education remains prevalent in many Muslim countries. The relative merits of both systems have been the subject of debate.
A normal school or normal college is an institution created to train teachers by educating them in the norms of pedagogy and curriculum. Many such schools have since been called teacher training colleges or teachers' colleges, but in Mexico, continue to be called normal schools, with student-teachers being known as normalistas. Many schools require a high school diploma for entry, and may be part of a comprehensive university. Normal schools in the United States, Canada, and Argentina trained teachers for primary schools, while in Europe, the equivalent colleges typically educated teachers for primary schools and later extended their curricula to also cover secondary schools.
Clarke University is a private Catholic university in Dubuque, Iowa. It was founded in 1843 as St. Mary's Female Academy by Mother Mary Frances Clarke, foundress of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Women's colleges in higher education are undergraduate, bachelor's degree-granting institutions, often liberal arts colleges, whose student populations are composed exclusively or almost exclusively of women. Some women's colleges admit male students to their graduate schools or in smaller numbers to undergraduate programs, but all serve a primarily female student body.
Erskine College is a private Christian college in Due West, South Carolina, United States. It is an undergraduate liberal arts college and a graduate theological seminary. The college was founded in 1839 by the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. Its sports teams compete in NCAA Division II as a member of Conference Carolinas.
The Ursulines, also known as the Order of Saint Ursula, is an enclosed religious order of women that in 1572 branched off from the Angelines, also known as the Company of Saint Ursula. The Ursulines trace their origins to the Angeline foundress Angela Merici and likewise place themselves under the patronage of Saint Ursula. While the Ursulines took up a monastic way of life under the Rule of Saint Augustine, the Angelines operate as a secular institute. The largest group within the Ursulines is the Ursulines of the Roman Union.
Women's colleges in the Southern United States refers to undergraduate, bachelor's degree–granting institutions, often liberal arts colleges, whose student populations consist exclusively or almost exclusively of women, located in the Southern United States. Many started first as girls' seminaries or academies. Salem College is the oldest female educational institution in the South and Wesleyan College is the first that was established specifically as a college for women, closely followed by Judson College in 1838. Some schools, such as Salem College, offer coeducational courses at the graduate level.
Women's colleges in the United States are private single-sex U.S. institutions of higher education that only admit female students. They are often liberal arts colleges. There are approximately 26 active women's colleges in the United States in 2024, down from a peak of 281 such colleges in the 1960s.
The University of Mary Hardin–Baylor (UMHB) is a private Christian university in Belton, Texas. UMHB was chartered by the Republic of Texas in 1845 as Baylor Female College, the female department of what is now Baylor University. It has since become its own institution and grown to 3,914 students and awards degrees at the baccalaureate, master's, and doctoral levels. It is affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas and accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
The history of Florida State University dates to the 19th century and is deeply intertwined with the history of education in the state of Florida and in the city of Tallahassee. Florida State University, known colloquially as Florida State and FSU, is one of the oldest and largest of the institutions in the State University System of Florida. It traces its origins to the West Florida Seminary, one of two state-funded seminaries the Florida Legislature voted to establish in 1851.
In the early colonial history of the United States, higher education was designed for men only. Since the 1800s, women's positions and opportunities in the educational sphere have increased. Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, women have surpassed men in number of bachelor's degrees and master's degrees conferred annually in the United States and women have continuously been the growing majority ever since, with men comprising a continuously lower minority in earning either degree. The same asymmetry has occurred with Doctorate degrees since 2005 with women being the continuously growing majority and men a continuously lower minority.
The history of the University of Florida is firmly tied to the history of public education in the state of Florida. The University of Florida originated as several distinct institutions that were consolidated to create a single state-supported university by the Buckman Act of 1905. The oldest of these was the East Florida Seminary, one of two seminaries of higher learning established by the Florida Legislature. The East Florida Seminary opened in Ocala 1853, becoming the first state-supported institution of higher learning in the state of Florida. As it is the oldest of the modern University of Florida's predecessor institutions, the school traces its founding date to that year. The East Florida Seminary closed its Ocala campus at the outbreak of the American Civil War and reopened in Gainesville in 1866.
The East Tennessee Female Institute was an all-female institution of higher learning that operated in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States, from 1827 until 1911. Originally chartered as the Knoxville Female Academy, the school offered high school and college-level courses to the women of Knoxville and surrounding counties in the years before the University of Tennessee became coeducational. With the rise of free public education in Knoxville in the early 1900s, enrollment at the institute, which was tuition-based, gradually declined.
A female seminary is a private educational institution for women, popular especially in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when opportunities in educational institutions for women were scarce. The movement was a significant part of a remarkable transformation in American education in the period 1820–1850. Supporting academic education for women, the seminaries were part of a large and growing trend toward women's equality. Some trace its roots to 1815, and characterize it as at the confluence of various liberation movements. Some of the seminaries gradually developed as four-year colleges.
Chappell Hill Female College was a private college in Chappell Hill, a rural community in Washington County, Texas, United States. It was founded in 1850 as part of the coeducational school Chappell Hill Male and Female Institute. First chartered by the Texas Legislature in 1852 as a non-denominational preparatory school, the charter was amended to affiliate the school with the Methodist Church in 1854, and was rechartered as a women's college after the male department was spun off as Soule University in 1856. It was closed in 1912 and the building became a public school until a replacement was built in 1927 that preserves the college's bell. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.