List of coordinate colleges

Prior to, and for some time after the Revolutionary War, America's colleges and universities catered almost exclusively to males, following the British and European model. These colleges and universities only gradually opened to co-ed participation at a time when, generally, women seeking to extend their educations would either attend finishing schools, equating to the final years of high school, or a type of women's vocational school: teachers, nursing or business schools that were designed for female students and task-oriented in outcome. For these, typically, curricula would be designed as two-year courses, providing teachers, nurses, typists, and secretaries for an expanding country where, still, occupational sex roles were culturally enforced, if not as a matter of legislation.

The rise of 4-year women's schools

Countering this and to meet growing demand, several academically vigorous women's colleges in the United States were established. While a few were fully independent, more commonly these were set up as "coordinate colleges", enjoying various levels of support or integration with established and nearby men's colleges in the years leading up to World War II. "Coordination" here refers to an array of linkages, including direct administrative connections and even a parent/subordinate school relationship, cross-registration, the award of diplomas from the parent school, and at the student level, desirable social connections. After World War II, the establishment of new coordinated colleges appears to have been curtailed, as these gave way to widespread mergers with men's colleges or the move to make most pre-war single-sex institutions coeducational. Out of this turbulent period some of the coordinated colleges emerged as independent women's or co-educational colleges, while others merged with their male counterparts, or closed.

Coordinate colleges versus other types

As a class, coordinate colleges were funded and structured quite differently from the finishing schools and business schools for women that had formed in the decades before WWII. Many of the latter were privately owned, for-profit institutions; today, most of these have vanished with only a few, perhaps one or two in each state, evolving into junior colleges themselves or merging into state college systems. Conversely, coordinate colleges can point to an affluent founder as their initial and primary supporters; these were structured at the start with the expectation of continuation as long-term foundation- or endowment-supported entities, though none could anticipate the rush to merge or become co-educational in the post-war period. None of the coordinate colleges were investor-owned.
Some, but not all, of the Seven Sisters can be classified as coordinate colleges with a specific originally male-only partner school. However, as a group, they have maintained an equivalent association with the Ivy League schools, conference-to-conference.
Where coordination continues it is most apparent in consortium school relationships to provide cross-registration and mutually accepted financial aid applications.

Coordinate colleges

These colleges include:

School name	Associated institution	Established and range	City	State	Co-ed status	Status	Notes
Bard College	Columbia University		Annandale-on-Hudson	New York	Co-ed	Independent, merged, then independent again
Barnard College	Columbia University		Manhattan	New York	Women's	Affiliated
Bethlehem Female Seminary	Moravian University		Germantown, then Bethlehem	Philadelphia	NA	Merged
College of Saint Benedict	Saint John's University	1913	St. Joseph	Minnesota	Women's	Semi-merged
Evelyn College for Women	Princeton University	1887–1897	Princeton	New Jersey	NA	Closed
H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College	Tulane University	1886	New Orleans	Louisiana	NA	Merged
Jackson College for Women	Tufts University		Medford/Somerville	Massachusetts	NA	Essentially merged
Mills College	Northeastern University		Oakland	California	NA	Merged
Mount Holyoke College	Andover Theological Seminary		South Hadley	Massachusetts	Women's	Independent
Ohio Wesleyan Female College	Ohio Wesleyan University	-1877	Delaware	Ohio	NA	Merged
Pembroke College	Brown University	1891	Providence	Rhode Island	NA	Merged
Radcliffe College	Harvard University		Cambridge	Massachusetts	NA	Merged
Scripps College	Claremont Colleges		Claremont	California	Women's	Consortium member
Spelman College	Morehouse College	1881	Atlanta	Georgia	Women's	Consortium member
Tift College	Mercer University	-1986	Forsyth, now Macon	Georgia	NA	Merged
Vassar College	Yale University		Poughkeepsie	New York	Co-ed	Formerly affiliated
Wellesley College	Massachusetts Institute of Technology		Wellesley	Massachusetts	Women's	Separate
Westhampton College	Richmond College	1914	Richmond	Virginia	Co-ed	Academic merger in 1990
William Smith College	Hobart College	1908	Geneva	New York	Women's/NA	Semi-merged