All women, and thriving

Meredith and Peace show women's colleges can prosper

RALEIGH -- Women's colleges have been folding or going coed in this country since the late 1960s, when women were allowed in universities in large numbers. There are just 51 women's colleges left in the United States, two fewer than a year ago. But in Raleigh, there is an unusual countercurrent: Single-sex education appears to be thriving.

This fall, Meredith College enrolled its largest ever freshman class. Both Meredith and Peace College have raised tens of millions of dollars, recruited many more minority students and started international partnerships. They're planning for growth and marketing themselves to high school students as places for women to become empowered leaders.

In the survival-of-the-fittest world of private higher education, Meredith and Peace are rising above the forces that have driven some women's colleges out of business. They have broadened their reach and reshaped their mission to serve women in a changing world.

But another element of their success is that old real estate adage: location, location, location.

Laura Bingham, president of Peace College, said her school is rising with Wake County's economic boom and Raleigh's increasingly robust downtown. The school is located just north of the legislative mall and is adjacent to a new housing development that was previously the site of public housing.

"It's been fabulous," Bingham said. "The neighborhood is helping us for the first time in 50 years."

Last month, Meredith President Maureen Hartford celebrated the end of a fundraising campaign that brought in more than $41 million, about half of which will go to student scholarships and financial aid for study abroad. Later this month, the Meredith board will consider a plan to build an apartment-style dorm on the West Raleigh campus on Hillsborough Street. First-year students reached a record 434 this fall, though total undergraduate enrollment is 1,770, down from 1,890 in 2000.

Meredith has altered the way it sells itself. Word-of-mouth attention, passed down through the generations, doesn't work in a state with a lot of newcomers, Hartford said.

"We have really changed our focus on marketing in the past few years to focus on as much the outcomes of women's education, things we know -- women who have stronger voices, greater self-confidence, a trust in their own leadership skills as a result of having been at a single-gender institution," she said. "But also focusing on the fact that this is a place that does understand how women learn and how that may be different than how men learn."

It's ironic, she said, that at a time when women make up 57 percent of U.S. higher-education students, many universities aren't doing more to adapt to women's learning styles, which are more collaborative and flourish in small settings.

"I have seen very little going on in coeducational institutions that suggests that there's a passion for taking care of what is now their majority," said Hartford, who was an administrator at the University of Michigan before she came to Meredith in 1999.

Three years ago, Duke University added a program that operates almost like a mini-women's college within a university. The Baldwin Scholars Program grew out of former Duke President Nan Keohane's Women's Initiative, which found that female students at Duke felt social pressure to be perfect, yet not outshine the men.

Women have been the majority on many campuses for more than 20 years, said Susan Lennon, executive director of the Connecticut-based Women's College Coalition. "It doesn't mean the culture has changed," Lennon said. "I think we still have a long way to go."