Miller-Bernal, Leslie. Separate by Degree: Women Students' Experiences in Single-Sex and Coeducational Colleges

Adolescence, Summer, 2005

MILLER-BERNAL, Leslie. Separate by Degree: Women Students' Experiences in Single-Sex and Coeducational Colleges. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2000. 375pp. $29.95 (p).

In the 19th century, women's colleges provided many women with access to higher education, yet Susan B. Anthony and other women connected to the women's rights movement favored coeducation. In the late 20th century, at a time that many single-sex institutions became coeducational, research has indicated the benefits for women of single-sex education. Separate by Degree compares the experiences of women students, in the past as well as in contemporary times, in four small, private liberal arts colleges--a women's college, a coordinate college, a long-time coeducational college, and a recently coeducational college--to determine how well women have fared with varying degrees of separation from male students.