By Darlene Superville, Associated Press, 06/01/01

WASHINGTON -- When Trinity College in Burlington, Vt., holds its final commencement Sunday, it will become the latest casualty in the decline of women's colleges.

Recruitment problems have led many to admit men, merge with coed institutions or close. Their ranks now are one-quarter of what they were in 1960.

Even the "Seven Sisters" are down to five.

"Women's colleges now are not thought of as being cool and that's what high school students want," said Christen Diehl, a recruiter at Cottey College, a women's school in Nevada, Mo.

Just since the fall of 1999, one nationally known women's school has merged with a coed university and a second college has begun accepting male undergraduates. A third school welcomes its first crop of undergraduate men in September and a fourth has a merger planned for 2002.

Small, liberal arts schools in general are having difficulty attracting students and donations, officials say, but women's colleges appear to be taking the hardest hit.

Some predict women's colleges will continue to shrink, serving the small number of girls -- surveys indicate less than 5 percent -- willing to consider attending one.

That's too bad as far as some academic leaders are concerned.

"Women still aren't taken seriously in the classroom in coed environments," said Emily Langdon, vice president for student affairs and dean of students at Chatham College in Pittsburgh.

"Women's education is very different at a women's college and no one has been able to replicate it in a coed setting."

Another view is that women's schools may have passed their time.

"If women's colleges become unnecessary, if women's colleges become irrelevant, then that's a sign of our success," said Wendy Kaminer, a scholar on politics and culture at the Radcliffe Institute and a graduate of Smith College, a women's school. "They should declare victory and go home."

There will be 74 women's schools after Trinity closes, down from 298 in 1960.

"We hoped to be the exception to the prevailing trend," Jacqueline Marie Kieslich, Trinity's president, said in announcing the closure.

In a farewell message to students and staff, she said: "We pray that the light that has brightened Trinity's 75 years will illuminate your future path."

Chatham resorted to faculty and staff cuts in the early 1990s, when enrollment and finances faltered after students and alumnae rejected the idea of becoming coed. Since then, enrollment has doubled along with the budget, to about 1,000 students and $24 million this year.

But other troubled schools choose to go coed.

Despite a record enrollment of about 878 last school year, Notre Dame College of Ohio ended its 80 years as a women's school when six male undergraduates arrived in January.

Emmanuel College in Boston recorded its largest freshman class in a decade last year, 195 students. But it will become coed in September because of the difficulty attracting women over the long run, said Patricia Rissmeyer, vice president for student affairs and dean of students.

"Girls aren't buying it," she said.

Radcliffe College, one of the famed Seven Sisters, became the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study after merging with Harvard, its brother institution, in October 1999. Radcliffe now provides graduate education to women and men.

In fact, the Seven Sisters are now five: Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Smith and Wellesley, alma mater of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. The seventh sister, Vassar, became coed in 1969.

Next year, Marymount College, a Catholic school near New York City, plans to merge with Fordham University, also Catholic, but continue as a women's entity.

Since 1997, four other schools have gone coed: the College of Our Lady of the Elms, Chicopee, Mass.; Lasell College, Newton, Mass.; William Woods University, Fulton, Mo., and Fisher College in Boston.

Women's colleges were essential when they were founded in the 18th and 19th centuries to provide women with the education that male-only schools denied them.

Scholars part company over whether they are still useful. Critics say they present an unrealistic view of society. Advocates say they boost self-esteem and teach leadership skills.

They began to lose influence about 40 years ago as schools once closed to women began accepting them, particularly during the social changes of the 1960s.

During that time, more than 150 women's colleges closed or became coed, said Jadwiga Sebrechts, president of the Women's College Coalition, an advocacy group.

Three all-male colleges continue: Hampden-Sydney in Hampden-Sydney, Va.; Morehouse in Atlanta and Wabash in Crawfordsville, Ind.

Total undergraduate enrollment at women's colleges last year was about 115,000, with an average student body of about 1,000, Sebrechts said. (Men have enrolled in graduate programs at women's colleges since the 1970s.)

Some women's schools are going strong.

Lesley College renamed itself Lesley University, reflecting growth since its founding as a teacher's college in Boston in 1909. Sweet Briar College in Sweet Briar, Va., and Randolph Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Va., have seen modest increases in applications and enrollment.

"This is not a picture of complete gloom and doom," said Richard Ekman, president of the Council of Independent Colleges, which represents about 50 women's colleges.

Applications to Spelman, the historically black women's college in Atlanta, have increased to 3,673 for this fall from 2,933 five years ago.

Wellesley College in Wellesley, Mass., is getting more applicants, too, and its endowment exceeds $1.2 billion, compared with $528 million in 1995.