page_title: Women's colleges in the United States
section_title: Coeducation
hierarchical_section_title: Women's colleges in the United States / History / 20th-century / Coeducation
caption_attribution_description: Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts
context_page_description: Women's colleges in the United States are single-sex U.S. institutions of higher education that only admit female students. They are often liberal arts colleges. There were approximately 34 active women's colleges in the United States in 2018, down from a peak of 281 such colleges in the 1960s.
context_section_description: With several Supreme Court cases in the 1950s on the appellate court level determining that public single-sex universities violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, many women's colleges have decided to accept males. Following a peak of 281 women's colleges in the 1960s, the number of such schools has decreased dramatically.  Two of the Seven Sister colleges made transitions during and after the 1960s. The first, Radcliffe College, merged with Harvard University. Beginning in 1963, students at Radcliffe received Harvard diplomas signed by the presidents of Radcliffe and Harvard and joint commencement exercises began in 1970. The same year, several Harvard and Radcliffe dormitories began swapping students experimentally and in 1972 full co-residence was instituted. The departments of athletics of both schools merged shortly thereafter. In 1977, Harvard and Radcliffe signed an agreement that put undergraduate women entirely in Harvard College. In 1999 Radcliffe College was dissolved and Harvard University assumed full responsibility over the affairs of female undergraduates. Radcliffe is now the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in Women's Studies at Harvard University. The second, Vassar College, declined an offer to merge with Yale University and instead became coeducational in 1969. The remaining Seven Sisters decided against coeducation. Mount Holyoke College engaged in a lengthy debate under the presidency of David Truman over the issue of coeducation. On November 6, 1971, "after reviewing an exhaustive study on coeducation, the board of trustees decided unanimously that Mount Holyoke should remain a women's college, and a group of faculty was charged with recommending curricular changes that would support the decision." Smith College also made a similar decision in 1971. In 1969, Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College (then all-male) developed a system of sharing residential colleges. When Haverford became coeducational in 1980, Bryn Mawr discussed the possibly of coeducation as well, but decided against it. In 1983, Columbia University began admitting women after a decade of failed negotiations with Barnard College for a merger along the lines of Harvard and Radcliffe (Barnard has been affiliated with Columbia since 1900, but it continues to be independently governed). Wellesley College also decided against coeducation during this time.
  A few historically black women's colleges became coeducational: Barber-Scotia College adopted coeducation in 1954; Tillotson College (a women's college from 1926 to 1935) is now coeducational Huston-Tillotson University; Hartshorn Memorial College merged with Virginia Union University in 1932; and Mary Allen Seminary became coeducational in 1933. Bennett College, founded as a coeducational school, became a women's college in 1926.
  Many public women's schools also went coeducational in the postwar era. One of the first schools to make the transition in this era was Madison College in Virginia, known since 1976 as James Madison University. The school, founded as a women's college in 1908, admitted its first male day students in 1946, although it was not officially recognized as a coeducational institution until 1966. In 1947, Florida State College for Women returned to its original status as a coeducational institution and adopted its current name of Florida State University. Three other public women's schools in Virginia later followed Madison College in adopting coeducation—Mary Washington College, now the University of Mary Washington, in 1970; Radford College, now Radford University, in 1972; and Longwood College, now Longwood University, in 1976. In North Carolina, the Women's College of the University of North Carolina was converted to the coeducational University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1963, at the same time as women were finally admitted to all programs of its rival school, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1967, the school then known as the Women's College of Georgia became coeducational; it is now Georgia College & Stat
caption: Smith College
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