| The dissertation examines the causes and the consequences of the unexpected transformation of women's higher education that took place in the late 1960s and 1970s. The years from 1965 to 1980 saw a remarkable set of changes on campus: the opening of nearly all men's universities to women, the large-scale movement of college women out of traditionally female fields such as education into more remunerative fields, a dramatic increase in women's representation in professional schools, and an increase in the labor force attachment of college-educated women. These complementary changes tightened the link between women's higher education and their labor force participation.; The first chapter traces the history of women's higher education in the United States up to 1965. Rather than a gradual expansion of opportunity, the historical record reveals an uneven pattern of women's participation in higher education, shaped by economic, social and political forces as well as competitive conditions within higher education. As of the early 1960s, institutional structures and attitudes within higher education suggested that the existing pattern of gender division would continue.; However, in the late 1960s and early 1970s the gender divide in higher education narrowed rapidly. The second chapter of the dissertation offers an explanation of why we might expect to see unexpected and rapid rather than gradual change in women's role in higher education. The dynamic social norms hypothesis developed in chapter two draws upon a theory of social change developed by Timur Kuran that predicts revolutionary rather than incremental shifts in social norms. Critical to the argument is the claim that in some settings, the choices of individuals are shaped in part by the choices of others. In the presence of interdependencies, the potential exists for rapid transformations such as that occurring in higher education between 1965 and 1980.; The final chapter consists of an empirical investigation of the labor market consequences of change within higher education. The findings suggest that the narrowing of the gender gap in higher education contributed significantly to the narrowing of the gender gap in the wages of college graduates. |
