Are women's colleges still necessary?

• Position: Debate

Fifty years ago, there were more than 200 women's colleges in the U.S. But in the 1960s and 70s, many all-male colleges began opening their doors to women, and some women's colleges merged with their affiliated men's colleges. (Radcliffe, for example, became part of Harvard.) Today, the vast majority of colleges are coed, and some people question whether the 44 remaining women's colleges in the U.S. still have a meaningful role to play.

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YES Every year for the past eight years, the number of applications to Smith College, an all-women's college founded in 1871, has increased. This tells me that young women today believe that women's colleges continue to have a vital role to play.

When I ask Smith students why they selected Smith, they often tell me they wanted to study at a school where there are no boundaries limiting what is acceptable for women. Studies show that at all-women's colleges, students are more likely to major in traditionally male-dominated fields like the sciences than women at coed schools. They are also more likely to participate in class discussions.

Beyond an outstanding education, students at all-women's colleges get something else even more valuable: the benefit of living in a women-focused environment. This experience creates not just high-achievers, but leaders. More than 20 percent of the women in Congress are graduates of all-women's colleges--impressive, considering that we enroll just 2 percent of female undergraduates. In a recent Bloomberg Businessweek list of the 50 female rising stars in corporate America, 30 percent went to women's colleges.

Is living and learning in an all-female community "the real world"? No, and that's precisely the point. You'll have the opportunity to stockpile the confidence that comes from being seen and valued for your ideas and abilities, free of society's negative stereotypes about women. And that makes single-sex colleges as relevant today as ever.

--KATHLEEN MCCARTNEY

President, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.

NO The existence of single-sex schools perpetulates the myth that males and females think and learn differently. This is just one reason why they are outdated and ultimately not beneficial in preparing young people for today's gender-integrated society.

Overall, women have done very well academically since the 1972 passage of Title IX, the federal law requiring gender equality in...