Early this year, Joanne Vanish Creighton left behind a career as a teacher, literary scholar and administrator in the world of co-educational universities to take the helm of Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., (enrollment: 1,952, tuition $21,150). Founded in 1837 it is the nation’s oldest continuous running women’s college, and a model for many others. Creighton has committed herself to advancing the mission and vision of Mt. Holyoke’s founder, Mary Lyon, to mold the intellect, character and ethics of young women from all walks of life, emboldening them, as Lyons said, “to go where no one else will go; do what no one else will do.” It has been predicted that the first woman U.S. president may well come from the school.
Q: In 1969 there were 228 women’s colleges, now there are 84. Are we looking at the eventual extinction of women’s colleges?
A: Certainly not the top tier of women’s colleges. It’s true some schools have found the need to go co-educational. But in fact, Mt. Holyoke and others such as Wellesley have seen a dramatic increase in applications in the last five to seven years. There are schools going against the trend (to become co-educational), and I think it has a lot to do with the excellence of the college. The fact that Mt. Holyoke and others have a distinguished tradition–that continues to be a very strong drawing card.
Q: Why should an all-female environment make for a better educational environment for young women?
A: It works. That’s the bottom line. I think of it as a kind of coming to selfhood that they experience. One of the really striking qualities on our campus is the sense of happiness and well-being. In an all-woman environment, they feel validated. They feel that they have full opportunities to achieve their sense of self. There are no restrictions, no gender stereotypes. Leadership positions are open to them. And the majors that are traditionally affiliated with male students are not closed to them. Women (at Mt. Holyoke) major more in fields traditionally associated with men: economics, computer science, math and sciences.
Q: Why should a young woman who will be competing in what is still a man’s world attend a women’s college?
A: The world is male-dominated. But there is this opportunity for this brief period to focus on self-development in a way that seems to be very effective for young women. We have passionately loyal, grateful alumni who say, “This experience transformed me, made me self-confident, made me assertive, made me take myself seriously.”
Q: By college age, isn’t it too late to separate boys and girls and give them a stronger sense of self-confidence? Doesn’t that happen during the formative years, by age 12?
A: A lot happens after age 12. In fact, studies suggest that women in adolescent years start to lose confidence. It’s important to keep recognizing that we live in a world that is overwhelmingly dominated by stereotypes about gender.
Q: In the last five years there has been something of renaissance of interest in women’s colleges. What’s driving it?
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A: I think that the prominence of a number of women who are graduates of women’s colleges, such as Hillary Rodham Clinton, (Secretary of Health and Human Services) Donna Shalala, (TV journalist) Diane Sawyer. You can go on and on. I think that helps. Women are coming into their own in so many fields–athletics, for example. I think there is a kind of pride in being the new, more self-fulfilled woman.
Q: Not too many years ago, feminist thinkers saw co-ed colleges as a way to level the playing field for women. How do feminists view colleges that have chosen to continue the single-gender tradition?
A: Certainly there are a lot of thinkers, feminists and non-feminists alike, who think that what happens in women’s colleges is very good for women. It is not so much leveling the playing field–I don’t like that term. I prefer a more celebratory sense, a validation of women and their capacity for self-development. They are honing their own strengths.
Q: Mt. Holyoke’s faculty is 50 percent male. Isn’t that inconsistent with the idea of finding a stronger sense of self in a community of women?
A: The faculty are chosen for their excellence. We want to have (more) women faculty members, but there are a lot of fields where there are not a lot of women. One of the roles we play is to encourage more women to become academics so there will be more in fields like physics, math and chemistry. But we have significantly more women faculty than most co-educational institutions. We feel that men are excellent teachers. And that the opportunity for students to interact with a variety of mentors is good. We certainly have had some outstanding men on our faculty, including Anthony Lake (national security adviser in the Clinton administration); Joseph Brodsky, the late Nobel Prize winning poet; Joseph Ellis, who has written a major book on Thomas Jefferson. . . . We have distinguished women as well. But I think it is important for students to interact with people of that caliber. It’s another way of taking them seriously.
Q: How can you claim the right to remain a single-gender college yourselves, but in 1993 not support the right of the men of the Virginia Military Institute to have the same exclusive experience?
A: First, they (VMI) are a public institution, and we are private. Also the situation is really not complementary. An all-male military college is not the counterpart to an all-female (liberal arts) college for women. The issue was that VMI was offering to male students a special opportunity (that could lead to a military career) that was not available to women through any other means. Men can go to any number of institutions that offer the same kind of liberal arts education.
Q: Your own educational background, University of Wisconsin, University of Michigan, Harvard–none of these are women’s colleges, and you’re a very successful woman. Would life have been any different for you if you’d gone to a women’s college?
A: I’m not trying to suggest that all-women’s colleges are the answer for every woman. In fact, only about 5 percent of college-aged women go to all-women’s colleges. My own experience was quite different from what I would have had at Mt. Holyoke. I think it’s the finest educational environment I’ve seen in the sense of its intellectual seriousness and intensity. At my schools, you would have to sort of find your seriousness. I joined the honors program at the University of Wisconsin because that was a way of finding students more like myself. At Mt. Holyoke there is this intensity about the intellectual life and a moral dimension, as well. There is commitment to playing a meaningful role in the world, the idea that young women can make a difference and should go out and change the world. I envy them this experience.
Q: Is homosexuality any more of a presence at all-women’s colleges than at co-ed schools?
A: I don’t think so. We welcome diversity of all sorts. We have tolerance and an inclusive community. We are not holding a particular ideological position. And we are not a nunnery. Our campus is part of a five-campus system (Smith, Amherst, Hampshire College, the University of Massachusetts). We have all sorts of shared activities with co-educational institutions.
Q: Is there a co-ed Mt. Holyoke in the college’s future?
A: I doubt it. As part of our planning process, we considered that, and we came to the conclusion that we can thrive by maintaining our distinctive niche.
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An edited transcript