The Study Of The Development Of Women’s Higher Education In Postwar America (1945-1965)

Twenty years after World War Ⅱ is known as the golden time of American higher education,whose enrollments,finance and college numbers expand quickly.Its feature is three P’s, i.e. prosperity,prestige,and popularity.In contrast^American women’s higher education is static,and researchers pay little attention to it.The first part of the thesis discusses the background of American women’s higher education in 1945-1965.The speed of military,politic,economic,technological and cultural development is very fast.So many changeable factors produce different expectations to American women.The patriotic expectation to women is home defenders or technologic scholars.The economic expectation asserted that women should relinquish the jobs and economic status they had established as wartime workers. Where women’s labor was needed,they were expected to take subordinate roles and lesser pay.The cultural expectation touted women’s family role,continuing a long tradition of valuing maternalism and domesticity.The psychological expectation supported that women were best fulfilled through acceptance of their reproductive role.Taken together,these four expectations influence American women’s attitudes towards higher education and how they use it.The second part of the thesis discusses the development of American women’s hi gher education in 1945-1965 and analysis the reasons.This part uses charts and tables to present changes in numbers and percentages of women undergraduates, graduates and teachers in colleges and universities,and their distributions of different education institutions.This part also introduces their filelds and curriculum in detail and elaborates static state of American women’s higher education in 1945-1965. The static state is influenced by universities and colleges and their educators besides the background. After the war, the actual number of women in colleges and universities is growing up in the twenty years and the overall proportion is not less than 1/3. However, the policy and practice of postwar in colleges and universities often ignore the female groups, and rarely consider their needs. The reason mainly has two aspects: first, after the "G.I.Act", more and more veterans entering college, the chance for women is reducing.Secondly, the research university attracts a large number of federal and corporate fundings, female teachers and graduate students are difficult to integrate into it.The third part discusses the measures to improve the development of American women’s higher education in 1945-1965, taking the practice of Barnard College as an example. As this period of American women’s higher education is in static state,colleges and universities are criticized,esp.women colleges.Barnard college is one of the "Seven Sisters" women’s colleges in the United States. It is using practical action to prove to curb the "women back home" social trend, and improve women’s highereducation.This part includes the content of Millicent McIntosh works, the cour se of modern life" and policy for married women. It is about the gentle way of struggl e to assist women’s higher education out of the post-war downturn.