Vassar Quarterly - Fall/Winter 2019 - 52

THE RISE OF COEDUCATION

though, Brewster realized that Yale was losing to Harvard in the
pursuit of the best and brightest young men. Those young men, it
seemed, increasingly preferred to go to Harvard, where they could
socialize with the women of Radcliffe.
Malkiel-who served as Dean of the College at Princeton from
1987 to 2011-found that, as of 1960, the cross-applications among
Harvard, Yale, and Princeton were approximately equal. However, by
1965 the preference of high school boys to attend college with girls
tipped the balance heavily in favor of Harvard. In his book The
Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard,
Yale, and Princeton (2005), sociologist Jerome Karabel reported that
Harvard lost only one admit in seven to other institutions, but Yale
lost one in three. "Even more disturbing," he wrote, "Yale was losing
86 percent of students who had also been admitted to Harvard."
The students who were accepted by Yale to enter as freshmen in the
fall of 1965 but matriculated elsewhere responded to a Yale survey,
saying they preferred "proximity to girls' colleges ... [and] coeducational undergraduate programs." Brewster and the Yale Corporation
(their board of trustees) realized their fundamental dilemma. They
began to consider two options: (1) identify an independent
"coordinate" women's college, or (2) begin admitting women to Yale.
In January 1967, Robert Goheen, President of Princeton,
reported to his board of trustees that Yale was trying to persuade
Vassar to move to New Haven. If Yale succeeded, it would become
nearly impossible for Princeton to compete with Yale and Harvard
for undergraduate men. Princeton's director of admission was
quoted in the Daily Princetonian explaining that Princeton "would

FA L L / W I N T E R 2 0 1 9

definitely suffer" in competition with Yale.
Indeed, E. Alden Dunham II, Princeton's
former Director of Admission, told the Daily
Princetonian that about 75 percent of the
students admitted to both colleges typically
chose Harvard over Princeton.

"INDECENT PROPOSALS":
YALE TO VASSAR AND PR INCETON TO SAR AH LAWR ENCE

After hearing
about Yale's newly
coed status, these
Radcliffe students
(shown with their
house residents)
were eager to give
up their single-sex
affiliation and
transfer to Yale
in fall 1969.

Even before the coeducation wave hit, Yale
and Princeton considered ways of partnering with women's colleges, largely with the
goal of becoming more attractive to men.
In 1957, Goheen realized that his
institution was losing excellent public and
private school seniors because of Princeton's "monasticism." In a 1965 issue of the
Daily Princetonian, James Markham
(Princeton '65) reported that Princeton men
were "miserably unhappy," and their "social
illness" could be healed by "a sister college
across the lake." Goheen approached
Esther Raushenbush, President of Sarah
Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York,
about moving her women's college closer
to Princeton. But Raushenbush's trustees
quickly squashed Sarah Lawrence's "little
flirtation with Princeton." Goheen believed
all-male colleges would be "anachronistic"
in 20 years-a prediction that proved nearly
entirely accurate.
In 1961, the President of Yale, Alfred
Whitney Griswold, "proposed" to the
President of Vassar, Sarah Gibson Blanding,
that Vassar move to New Haven and
become Yale's coordinate women's college.
A Vassar '65 alumna recalls that "Miss"
Blanding rejected the "indecent proposal"
with the reply, "Griswold, I smell a rat!"
But just years later, their successors,
Kingman Brewster at Yale and Alan Simpson
at Vassar, agreed that such a move would
be "a brilliant partnership," in the words of
Simpson. The Carnegie Foundation and
Ford Foundation jointly funded a VassarYale study, which was conducted by a joint
committee of their respective trustees and
chaired by the two presidents. They held
their first meeting in January 1967 to
determine the topics they would investi-

Vassar Quarterly - Fall/Winter 2019

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