Some Questions About Coeducation

Some Questions About Coeducation

This year's argument about the entrance of men students to an Oxford College which till now has been a women students' college revives many questions about coeducation, the abilities and achievements of males and females and their attitudes towards scholastic work.

An earlier conversation of some of these questions was provided in the Galton Lecture of 1969 by Kathleen M Kenyon (St Hugh's College, Oxford). After outlining some factors influencing women's entry to universities, to Oxbridge predominantly, she recalled that women's colleges had been given the status of full colleges of the University of Oxford as recently as 1956. By 1969 the movement towards coeducational colleges had already begun though the motives the Galton Lecturer official to men's colleges may have changed over the years: the motives then mentioned were ``in part... a genuine desire to improve the proportion of women in the university. In part it is a belief that a number of girls are rejected who are better than boys who get in.'' She foresaw that ``mixed colleges will come, specially now that two Cambridge men's colleges have taken the decision'' and her opinion was that ``at apprentice level, it will not make a great deal of difference, as they (men and women students) could hardly spend more time together than they do.'' But she feared that ``gradually more and more men will be prearranged to the teaching and managerial posts.''

In fact, for higher education in general, women have remained in a very small minority in top academic and organizational posts. In UK universities they are 4.9 per cent of professors (research and teaching) (Univ. Stat. Record 1992) and are almost non-existent at the level of vice-chancellors, principals or directors. But since UK universities and (former) polytechnics have been coeducational for a long time now, this situation cannot be attributed to the effects of becoming coeducational. Where a general move to coeducation did apparently reduce women's chances of prior arrangement to leading positions was in the Colleges of Education in the post-Robbins era, when women's `reserved' posts as heads of women's colleges were lost as these colleges became coeducational: equally, in the secondary schools where coeducation was often the result of becoming comprehensives, women's former claims to headships of girls' syntax or secondary modern schools in England were lost - most comprehensives selected (and appoint) men as heads (Sutherland, 1985). By analogy, any teaching posts in higher education which formerly seemed the preserve of women could well be precious by university college moves to coeducation.

Present concerns about the desertion of single-sex colleges raise additional questions about effects on achievement and attitudes. Some research in the United States has suggested that women succeed better in all-women colleges, especially in their diligence in studying science and scheduled to postgraduate degrees. Similar arguments used to be voiced about secondary school coeducation in the UK when some research seemed to show that coeducation is good for boys but bad for girls - a finding which, if substantiated, would create a dilemma for those hoping to give equal opportunities in education. Yet although coeducation in secondary schools has become general in most European countries, analyses in many counties (e.g. OECD, 1986) show a growing trend for girls' academic performance to be rather better than boys' in secondary school leaving examinations. Yet very great differences persist in the gender groups' choice of subjects at school or in higher and further education (even in Sweden which has tried hard to reduce gender bias by specific teaching in its schools). The attitudes developed in coeducational establishments therefore still merit research.

unluckily for the investigator, the spread of coeducation makes it all the time more difficult to find control groups. There are simply fewer and fewer groups of children or adolescents who have experienced single-sex education. One might of course look for control groups in Saudi Arabia where, beyond pre-school playgroup level, there are entirely separate systems of education for males and females - but obviously other variables would complicate such comparison.

One such variable indeed might be worth investigation, that of possible gender differences in attitudes to study. It has often been suggested that women in higher and further education are more strongly motivated than men by the intrinsic values of the subjects studied - though men's it appears that greater concern for extrinsic rewards like good employment prospects and higher pay has been explained as due to social pressures on men to be the breadwinners for their families. In Saudi Arabia relatively few women graduates can expect to use their academic experience in a career: it would be enlightening to discover the effects of such disintegrated studies on their demands for education and on their families (assuming that cost effectiveness factors, even in Saudi Arabia, allow them to continue in higher education). But again control groups would be hard to find.

Yet apart from educational evils which still need investigation by research there remains the practical problem for students whose choice about the conditions in which they study is increasingly restricted. Those who have witnessed changes occurring in former girls' grammar schools since coeducation took over can see benefits in such changes - but also note the loss of some values. Even if there are still other forms of access to university studies in other places, and by other means, it seems deplorable if all colleges, succumbing to a domino effect, must be conventional to some outline.

BILAL HUSSAIN

References

Kathleen M Kenyon: ``Women in Academic Life'', The Galton Lecture 1969: J. Biosoc. Sci., 1970, pp 107-118.
OECD: Girls and Women in Education: Paris, 1968.
Nagat El Sanabary: ``Female Education in Saudi Arabia''. paper presented at World Congress of Comparative Education, Prague, July 1992.
Margaret B. Sutherland: ``Whatever happened about coeducation?''; Br. J. Educ. Studies, XXXIII, 2, 1985, pp 155-163.
Universities Statistical Record, 1992: Full-time academic staff at UK universities as at 31 December 1991.