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INTRODUCTION
In 1990, Mills College, an all-women’s college, and the Virginia Military Institute (VMI)
– an all-men’s college, faced challenges to their single-sex policies of education. The
Board of Trustees at Mills announced their decision to admit men in an effort to stem the
tide of enrollment declines and offset budget shortfalls. Faculty and students at Mills
united under the slogan ‘Better Dead than Coed’ to fight the Board’s decision. After a
two-week siege of the campus, the trustees reversed their decision, reaffirming Mills
commitment to women’s education (Zajac & Kraatz, 1993). In the case of VMI, the
Department of Justice brought suit against the Commonwealth of Virginia, arguing that
VMI’s exclusion of women violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment. In an effort to keep VMI single-sex, the Commonwealth of Virginia
established the Virginia Women’s Institute for Leadership (VWIL) to provide women
with an opportunity equivalent to that afforded men at VMI. The Department of Justice
subsequently challenged VWIL as an inappropriate remedy, taking their case before the
Supreme Court. In 1996, the Court ruled that VMI had to admit women (Cowan, 1997).
Mills College stands as an exception to the norm in the dramatic decline of single-
sex colleges in the United States. In 1970, there were 230 women’s colleges and 174
men’s colleges that offered at least a two-year program of college-level studies. In 2000,
only 63 women’s colleges remained in existence, while no equivalent figures are
available for men’s colleges. Between 1970 and 1980 alone, 108 women’s colleges and
101 men’s colleges converted to coeducation, while another 46 women’s colleges and 27
men’s colleges closed their doors (U.S. Department of Education, 1970; 1980). To date,
there has been little exploration of the forces that may have contributed to both the
survival and decline of these organizational forms (though see Zajac & Kraatz, 1993). As
such, the first contribution of the present study will be to look at the population of single-
sex colleges in the United States in an effort to identify such contributing factors.
Convention