In higher education, particularly in the United States, a women's college is a college (that is, a primarily undergraduate, bachelor's degree-granting institution) whose students are exclusively women. The Seven Sisters are among the best-known women's colleges, but some are now coeducational. Some women's colleges admit small numbers of male students in their graduate schools, but all serve exclusively female undergraduate populations. Higher education is education provided by universities and other institutions that award academic degrees, such as university colleges, and liberal arts colleges. ... A college (Latin collegium) can be the name of any group of colleagues; originally it meant a group of people living together under a common set of rules (con-, together + leg-, law). As a consequence members of colleges were originally styled fellows and still are in some places. ... In some educational systems, an undergraduate is a post-secondary student pursuing a Bachelors degree. ... A bachelors degree is usually an undergraduate academic degree awarded for a course or major that generally lasts three or four years. ... Image of a woman on the Pioneer plaque sent to outer space. ... The Seven Sisters are a historic group of American womens colleges. ... Coeducation is the integrated education of men and women. ... A graduate school is the school that a college student may attend after completion of his or her undergraduate education in order to obtain a degree higher than a bachelors degree. ...

History

Women's colleges filled the need for higher education for women, because most early colleges in the United States admitted only men. (The first coeducational college was Oberlin College, founded in 1833; by 1860, only five colleges or universities were coeducational.) Among the first all-women's colleges in the United States were the Oread Institute, founded in 1849, which closed in 1881, and Wesleyan College in Georgia, founded (as the "Georgia Female College") in 1836. Coeducation is the integrated education of men and women. ... Students passing through the Oberlin Memorial Arch in front of Peters Hall on the Oberlin College campus Oberlin College is a small liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio. ... 1833 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... The Oread Institute, founded in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1849 by Eli Thayer, was the first all-female college in the United States, and only the second college to admit women (the first being Oberlin). ... Wesleyan College is a private, liberal arts college for women located in Macon, Georgia. ...

See also

• List of current and historical women's universities and colleges

This is a list of current and historical womens universities and colleges. ...

References

• Lynn D. Gordon. "Women's Colleges (http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/women/html/wm_040000_womenscolleg.htm)." In Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History. Ed. Wilma Mankiller et al.. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
• Irene Harwarth, Mindi Maline, Elizabeth DeBra. "Women's Colleges in the United States: History, Issues, and Challenges (http://www.ed.gov/offices/OERI/PLLI/webreprt.html): Executive Summary." U.S. Department of Education National Institute on Postsecondary Education, Libraries, and Lifelong Learning.
• Rosalind Rosenberg. "The Limits of Access: The History Of Coeducation in America (http://beatl.barnard.columbia.edu/learn/documents/coeducation.htm)." In Women and Higher Education: Essays from the Mount Holyoke College Sesquicentennial Symposia. Ed. John Mack Faragher and Florence Howe. New York: Norton, 1988.

The United States Department of Education was created in 1979 (by PL 96-88) as a Cabinet-level department of the United States government, and began operating in 1980. ... Mount Holyoke College, a liberal arts college in South Hadley, Massachusetts, is the oldest institution of higher education for women in the world. ...

External links

• A timeline of women's education from Barnard College (http://beatl.barnard.columbia.edu/learn/timelines/women.htm)