The College Fix

A teenage girl who hoped to gain admission to a tiny, all-male, Deep Springs College, has been denied. She has written an essay expounding on her disappointment for The Atlantic.

A legally-binding trust stipulates that the college must remain an all-male institution. The rejected female applicant doesn’t like this. Oddly, however, she has no problem with all-female institutions rejecting men.

Despite the complex trust law issues and the ongoing court case, the issue to me is simple. Young women aren’t able to apply to a school like Deep Springs, and we should be.

Joseph Liburt, Kinch Hoekstra’s attorney, told the website Inside Higher Ed that “The case is about asking the court ‘to uphold the value of diversity in higher education,’ so that those male and female students who want single-sex education can find it.” This argument troubles me.

The fact of the matter is that young women face a lack of diversity in their higher education. Young men do not pine over all-women schools like Bryn Mawr or Scripps because there are reasonably similar co-educational programs. However, there is not a school like Deep Springs that is available to young women.

Shouldn’t private colleges be allowed to decide whether or not they want to remain single-sex? Are we going to file lawsuits to abolish all single-sex colleges whether male or female? And why is it that all-male institutions are constantly pressured to go co-ed, but all-female institutions aren’t?

Our recommendation is: Leave Deep Springs alone. There are more than 4,000 other colleges to choose from.

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