Middle East: As numbers decline in US, women's colleges boom globally

Students from women's colleges around the globe are descending on the idyllic Massachusetts campus of Mount Holyoke College this week, a symbolic meeting where America's oldest women's college will welcome the newest members of a movement it helped inspire.

As their numbers decline in the United States, women's colleges are booming in much of the developing world _ places such as Africa, Asia and the Middle East. They've become a trendy tool for jump-starting economic growth and political development, and for helping break down barriers in the same way their U.S. counterparts have been doing since the 19th century.

U.S. women's colleges have sometimes struggled to find a new role in the era of coeducation. One that some are embracing is to mentor the new wave of women's institutions. The leadership conference at Mount Holyoke's South Hadley campus is part of a growing collaboration between the established U.S. women's colleges and their newer counterparts elsewhere.

"If you educate a woman, you have educated the whole world," said Elleen Mazorodze, a student at the Women's University in Africa, a six-year-old institution trying to keep its feet in tumultuous Zimbabwe, and one of the students at the conference.

Her arguments echo those of experts who believe the returns on educating women in developing countries are higher than those on educating men _ though there is still much debate about whether more primary education or colleges should be the priority.

Women's colleges began appearing in the United States in the 19th century, when women had few avenues to education, and when many thought that's the way it should be.

"You have, 150 years later in these developing countries, a very similar situation," said Patti McGill Peterson, a senior associate at Institute for Higher Education Policy, and the former president of Wells College, a women's school in New York. But as college access and the value in educating women become clear, "Suddenly people say, 'How can we do that?'"

In the U.S., the number of women's colleges has declined from well over 200 to around 60.
Overseas, women's colleges have existed for decades in Asian countries like Japan and India. But experts say the number trying to emulate the American model is growing rapidly _ though the trend is hard to quantify, given varying definitions of what comprises a college.

Among those emerging in recent years are Zimbabwe's Women's University in Africa, the Kiriri Women's University of Science and Technology in Kenya, and Effat College in Saudi Arabia. Pakistan and Dubai also have made a big push.

One getting particular attention is the Asian University for Women in Bangladesh, the brainchild of social entrepreneur Kamal Ahmad, which plans to open in the fall of 2009. He's enlisted the former president of Oberlin College to lead the school and a former manager of Harvard University's multli-billion-dollar endowment to help reach an initial fundraising target of $50 million.

Ahmed believes aid organizations and the World Bank have harmed developing countries by focusing too much on early education. That may get more citizens into factory jobs but it doesn't produce enough leaders. Ramping up higher education for women, Ahmed said, is the best way to have a broad impact _ even on people who won't attend the college but see others succeed.

"The signaling effect is when you're a 12- or 13-year-old girl in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Bangladesh nobody really tells you you're going to go anywhere," he said.

There's always a bond between students of women's colleges, no matter how different they are.
"It's very strange. I don't know how to explain it," said Seung Yeon "Christine" Chung, a student at Ewha Womans University in South Korea visiting Mount Holyoke. Ewha, founded by an American missionary, is highly ranked and produced the country's first female prime minister.

"We come from different backgrounds, different education, but we have this determination and the good will to change the world and take a leading role in everything we're involved in," she said.

The benefits cut both ways. Facing a diminishing applicant pool, American women's colleges have also recruited many women from developing countries, like Nana Yaa Boakyewaa Amoah, who attended Mt. Holyoke from Ghana.

"Institutions like Mt. Holyoke definitely have helped. They've given women back home the opportunity to realize they can make a difference," she said. Only recently have girls in her country gotten any educational opportunities, she said, and there are still no women's colleges, though she thinks one would be valuable.

Other schools broadening international ties include Chatham College in Pittsburgh, which has a range of international partnerships. Neighboring Smith College recently joined Mount Holyoke to found a group called Women's Education Worldwide, which is working on programs such as faculty and student exchanges and curriculum development.

"When we talk to these people founding these colleges, it feels a lot like the U.S. in the 19th century," said Jesse Lytle, an assistant to Mount Holyoke's president and coordinator of Women's Education Worldwide.

"They're pioneers. They're really scrappy and innovative, and they're really having to dig down deep to get these institutions up and running," he said.

U.S. women's colleges "have a fair amount of history and institutional strength from being around for so long," Lytle said. "We don't think the American model can just be imposed on everyone, but we hope they'll draw from inspiration from those that have made it work."

Officials from a new Saudi Arabian women's college recently told Lytle they were still struggling to develop a sense of cohesiveness among their students.

"They want to build up this feeling that they're part of something bigger," he said. "They're tapping into this women's college tradition they thought would be really powerful, to help their students understand what they're doing now and what it might look like in a century."

By JUSTIN POPE, The Associated Press