When I look at colleges, I notice that every women’s college is also a designated Liberal Arts school and I have been wondering why that is? Is there a history? I am just kinda curious tbh
That’s a classification but for example, Agnes Scott has a business major. Smith engineering.
I imagine historically these type majors had fewer women than men.
I would look at what a college offers bs its classification.
I believe the high level answer to this question is that graduate programs often started granting degrees to women long before prominent undergraduate programs. So, for example, the first female graduate of Yale was a law student in 1886, and seven women graduated with PhDs in 1894, and the first female MD graduated in 1920. But Yale College did not graduate any women until 1971.
So most women’s colleges ended up sort of focused on filling that gap, as opposed to trying to convert to full research universities with extensive graduate programs.
In terms of majors, I do think the relative scarcity of engineering majors was partially a demand thing, but also engineering has a somewhat different history. It arose as a major undergraduate area in conjunction with the modern university/land grant movement, and most of the major engineering powerhouses were at such colleges, and many of them started granting degrees to female undergraduates relatively early, including Cal, Michigan, Ohio State, Purdue, Cornell, and so on. So I think there simply wasn’t the same sort of perceived gap in opportunity for female undergraduates.
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There are not enough females interested in attending a single sex institution to sustain a university.
Simmons University is a women’s college with a coed grad school. It is more preprofessional than liberal arts.
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The high-water mark for the establishment of single-sex colleges probably peaked somewhere in the 1860s, well before universities had taken hold in their modern form. Until then, almost all American colleges began as liberal arts colleges. Some added professional schools like medicine and law over time, but it was a slow process. Universities didn’t really take off until the Morrill Act (1865?) started granting land-grant status to states to establish their own and eastern colleges like Yale and harvard started remodeling themselves along an organizational model pioneered in Germany that emphasized advanced research conducted by professors and graduate students.
Women’s colleges simply chose not to follow the crowd.
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Good points. It is really more a question of why they mostly chose the same route as other classical colleges that evolved into modern LACs, as opposed to the once-similar classical colleges that evolved into modern research universities.
I think the basic issue of highest perceived need for women in US higher education that I identified above still applies, but I agree it is helpful to understand that in most cases this was basically just a decision to continue their original mission (understanding that how they performed that mission evolved in detail over time).
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This is an insane answer. Hollins University for example is a women’s college. Mississippi University for women is another. Almost all women’s colleges offer some graduate degrees regardless of their name. Smith College has more than 3000 students.
And I just looked this up Texas Woman’s University has 16,000 students.
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Texas Women’s U enrolls men as does Miss U of Women
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Sure, but check those populations. Enrolled men make up a fraction of their students.
23% at Miss U (of first year 2025 enrollees. The point is that it’s not a Woman’s College. It was …many years ago.
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My grandmother went there and I just saw their men’s team play in the D3 bsketball tournament last year. I know there are men there. Thanks. The terminology is historically women’s colleges. And almost all women’s colleges admit students across the gender spectrum.
I’m just answering this way because theOP asked about women’s colleges, of which these mentioned aren’t. That’s all.
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There weren’t really engineering colleges or anything BUT liberal arts schools when most of the famous women’s colleges were started:)
A better question might be why none of them grew larger, and the answer is likely $$, the women got married and family donations, etc, went to their spouse’s alma mater - by and large (obviously there were exceptions). Tradition is another reason…
(And yes there were a couple of engineering colleges, but not many at all!)
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The tell for me is always the use of the word “females” to refer to women 
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Again, lack of interest of enough female women.
There are some women’s colleges that aren’t LACs – some pre-professional and some universities. However, I believe the highly selective women’s colleges that are regularly discussed on this forum are all LACs, which fits with why you’ve only heard of all-women LACs. The all women 4-year colleges that are selective enough to not admit majority of applicants include
- Barnard
- Bryn Mawr
- Mount Holyoke
- Scripps
- Smith
- Spelman
- Wellesley
These 7 colleges were all founded >100 years ago during a time when a large portion of colleges did not admit women. In the late 1800s, the majority of colleges did not admit women. The colleges above all had a related mission. For example, Barnard was founded in relation to Columbia not admitting women. Men could go to Columbia, and women could go to Barnard. Their original mission did not include graduate study, hence the LAC designation. Many all women colleges from the 1800s no longer exist, but the ones above still exist and thrive.
Depending on the depth of your interest, consider reading Coordinate Colleges for American Women: A Convergence of Interests, 1947-78 (Morice), which covers much of the history of women’s colleges, including those that were (e.g., Radcliffe) or are (e.g., Barnard) affiliated with universities.
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