By Armine Kardashyan and Sofia Hofmann

During the Second Wave of Feminism in the 1960s-1970s, the push for gender equality in higher education led most male-only universities in the United States to transition into coeducational institutions. Aligned with this trend, in 1976, 30 years after its founding, Claremont McKenna College (CMC) welcomed its first female students, now marking nearly 50 years of coeducation at the college. As colleges like CMC embraced coeducation, women’s increasing presence within these institutions began to influence not only academic and leadership spaces but also alumni networks and patterns of philanthropic giving. This raises the question: how did endowment trends and philanthropic patterns differ between colleges that were founded as coeducational institutions (SACs) and those, like CMC, that transitioned from male-only to coeducation (MTCs)?

A study conducted at Union College reveals striking gender differences in philanthropic behavior among small liberal arts college alums. Across all donors, women are five percent more likely to donate, yet men contribute significantly larger amounts—total male giving is nearly five times total female giving. This discrepancy reflects differing motivations: women often prioritize charitable, reciprocal giving, while men are more likely to donate for recognition, seeking titles or status tied to larger gifts. These patterns are further shaped by historical factors, as men’s greater access to wealth and power established a longstanding base of influential male donors. Moreover, older alumni—typically men for MTC—are generally more inclined to give.

Combining data on coeducational institutions from Nobel Laureate Claudia Goldin’s paper “Putting the ‘Co’ in Education: Timing, Reasons, and Consequences of College Coeducation in the US from 1835 to the Present,” with Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) data on endowments, we were able to identify differences between liberal arts colleges that started off as coeducational and those who transitioned from male-only to coeducational.

By comparing MTC and SAC categories, we saw that 93% of MTC institutions opened before 1900 compared to 78% of SAC institutions opening before that date. This trend exists when looking at institutions as a whole (liberal arts colleges – LAC and non-LAC), and holds true when solely observing LAC. 

This suggests that the MTC institutions had a head start in establishing alumni networks, financial resources, and academic reputations. In contrast, SAC institutions, more commonly established later, faced a reputational disadvantage. 

      

The aging donor population of MTCs and the passing of early alumni suggest that their donations only made a significant impact initially. Over time, however, we observe that while SAC start our sample period with lower average endowments, they exhibit similar growth rates over 25 years, indicating that the stronger foundation established early on likely accounts for the level difference between MTC and SAC. 

Now, with a comparable gender composition in the observed donor populations of both institutions, this suggests that between 1970 and 1995, SACs and MTCs received annual gifts in proportion to their existing endowments, with the former attracting only half the gifts of the latter.

In addition to the time advantage, MTCs’ other advantage was the aforementioned larger donations, attributed to the greater prevalence of men in their alumni bases. Although SAC institutions had an additional populus of women, their higher frequency, but smaller donations meant the institutions which started-as-coed had lower yearly aggregate donations compared to MTC. Ultimately, this suggests that the SAC colleges put themselves at a disadvantage relative to the MTC institutions. Nearly identical growth rates suggest similar endowment strategies but with SACs operating in a less fertile environment, SAC institutions were unable to close the median endowment gap.

Article by Armine Kardashyan ’26 and Sofia Hofmann ’27 Junior Data Journalist Manager and Sophomore Data Journalist