week 4 discussion edu525

Week 4 Discussion

Access and Growth of Adult Education, Training, and Lifelong Learning” Please respond to the following:

· From the readings, suggest at least three (3) ways that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had an impact on access to higher education for American citizens.

· Investigate the impact that the law has had on your career as a student, or as a current or future educator.

Need at least 2 references and please cite

Reads are attached

Week 4 Discussion

Access and Growth of Adult Education, Training, and Lifelong Learning” Please respond to the following:

· From the readings, suggest at least three (3) ways that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had an impact on access to higher education for American citizens.

· Investigate the impact that the law has had on your career as a student, or as a current or future educator.

Need at least 2 references and please cite

Reads are attached

Database:

Record: 1

The 1964 Civil Rights Act. By: Williams, Juan. Human Rights.
Summer2004, Vol. 31 Issue 3, p6-8. 3p.

Research Starters – Education

The 1964 Civil Rights Act

Then and Now
Forty years after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, it is hard to understand and even remember the
furious battle over the passage of that law. Today, in 2004, with more than a third of the nation made up of
African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians, it seems as if the impassioned filibuster in Congress took place
in a different century and maybe on a distant galaxy. How could well-respected senators ranging from West
Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd to Arizona Republican Barry Goldwater really oppose the idea of ending
legal racial discrimination against blacks at hotels, restaurants, and department stores? How could they
view it as a threat to the nation?

In 1964, however, opponents of the Civil Rights Act (Act) argued that it was a gross violation of every
American’s freedom to decide who they wanted to work with, do business with, and even eat with. Southern
Democrats, also known as Dixiecrats, portrayed the law as an attack on the “southern way of life” and prime
evidence of the federal government’s intent to force racial mixing on the South. The idea of a civil rights act
stirred old resentments among segregationists. Just ten years earlier, southern separatists had sparked the
so-called “massive resistance” movement in an attempt to halt the implementation of the Supreme Court’s
Brown v. Board of Education decision, which ended the legal segregation of public schools. Using
Confederate rhetoric from the Civil War era, Senator Strom Thurmond mounted a historic filibuster effort to
block the Act. Speaking for twenty-four straight hours on the Senate floor, he charged that the federal
government was once again intruding in the affairs of sovereign states and, even worse, interfering in the
lives of free citizens.

When the filibuster finally ended and the Senate passed the Act by a vote of seventy-three to twenty-seven,
the nation’s racial and political landscape was reshaped. Senator Goldwater, who voted against the Civil
Rights Act, made it the basis of his GOP campaign for president in 1964. Senator Thurmond, once a
Democrat, threw his support to Goldwater in a show of political solidarity. Thurmond also encouraged a
steady stream of southern Democrats to leave their party and join Goldwater and the Republicans. Forty
years later, we understand this switch as the first step toward the Republicans’ absolute political control of
the South. The GOP has made the South its base for the election of every Republican president since 1964.

Meanwhile, the Act’s key provisions banning racial discrimination by employers remain at the heart of
politically explosive arguments over affirmative action. At the start of the twenty-first century, most people
accept the fact that all Americans, regardless of race, sex, or religion, have the right to eat in any restaurant
and stay in any hotel. Today, this is beyond debate, at least in acceptable company. Instead, the Act
triggered key racial debates that have continued for more than forty years. These range from whether
minority students should be given preference in college admissions to whether minority businesspeople
should have access to contract set-asides. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 also opened the door to years of
legal and political fights over court-ordered plans for hiring blacks and women previously excluded from
some police and fire departments as well as some labor unions.

In Search of “Elementary Rights”

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The advocates of the 1964 Civil Rights Act simply wanted a law to strengthen the government’s meager
efforts to protect the rights of freed slaves after the Civil War. In 1868, just after the end of the “War
Between the States,” Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment requiring equal rights for all citizens
without regard for race. But nearly a hundred years later, the reality of American life was “separate but
equal,” as reflected in the Supreme Court’s 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which ruled that it was
legal for a Louisiana passenger train line to separate black and white travelers in different rail cars.

The key to the Plessy ruling was separation–not equality. Once separated, blacks never experienced
equality. They always got inferior facilities, second-class treatment, and even outright harassment, right
down to being lynched. That oppression by private businesses and the government, as well as the likes of
the Ku Klux Klan, flouted the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court acted only in 1954,
when the Brown decision outlawed segregation in public schools on the basis of the Fourteenth
Amendment’s requirement of equal rights. Still, serious questions remained about the government’s power
to undo racial discrimination in employment and other areas. A similarly thorny set of questions existed
about the rules of racial equality at private businesses such as hotels, restaurants, and department stores.

But in the aftermath of the Brown decision, black citizens and their allies in the integrationist movement had
a heightened expectation that the federal government would act to protect their rights. The Supreme Court
demonstrated its willingness to do so with the Brown case. Later, President Eisenhower offered further proof
by sending the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas, to protect black schoolchildren as they integrated
Central High School.

In the meantime, however, Congress was paralyzed on the race issue because of the presence of southern
Democrats, all white and many holding important positions as heads of leading committees in the Senate.
President Eisenhower and later President Kennedy feared risking major political fights with leading
senators, much less opening old wounds with voters in the South. It was clear that there was a high political
price to pay for formally proclaiming through federal law that blacks had a right to equality in public as well
as private areas of American life. President Kennedy, narrowly elected to office in 1960 with 70 percent of
the black vote, settled on a strategy of having the attorney general press the federal courts to review cases
of discrimination against blacks. His plan ran into trouble because the federal judges he had appointed to
the bench to satisfy southern Democrats were segregationists, generally indifferent or in some cases hostile
to the idea of mandating equal rights for blacks.

Faced with the political stalemate in Congress and the courts, civil rights activists developed their own
strategy. They pursued a series of highly visible protests and boycotts intended to force the Kennedy
administration and those in Congress who supported civil rights to defend the rights of blacks to eat at lunch
counters, to ride buses without sitting in the back, and to spend the night in any hotel. Civil rights groups
were also pushing for an end to employment discrimination.

Despite the pressure, Congress and the federal courts–even those courts free of segregationist
thinking–had trouble dealing with the question of a private business’s right to choose its own employees
without government interference. Housing presented a similar issue, with owners and landlords of
apartment buildings and housing developments arguing that their decisions on whom to rent or sell to were
based on business. In areas where whites preferred to flee the neighborhood instead of living with blacks,
there was a real cost attached to selling property to African Americans.

On June 11, 1963, President Kennedy appeared on national television and said that the country was facing
a “moral crisis” over the issue of civil rights. Earlier that day, Alabama Governor George Wallace had

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stopped two black students from registering at the University of Alabama, literally positioning himself to
block them from walking through the doors. A month earlier, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had led
demonstrations to end segregation in stores in downtown Birmingham; Eugene “Bull” Connor, the police
chief of the city, responded by attacking the protestors with vicious dogs and painful blasts of water from
firemen’s hoses. Connor and Robert Shelton, the grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, even tried to get local
businessmen to refrain from negotiating a settlement with the protestors. All the while, the federal
government feared that the widespread media coverage of arrests and physical abuse might spark
nationwide race riots.

While King was in jail in Birmingham for leading the protests against segregation, he wrote a letter that
directly challenged the Kennedy administration’s cautious approach to civil rights. In emotional language,
King wrote, “We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The
nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed towards gaining political independence but we still
creep at horse and buggy pace towards gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.” King’s letter was
published in The New York Times and widely circulated in churches.

During this period of racial confrontations in the South, Kennedy addressed the topic at a White House
news conference, saying that he couldn’t understand why some southern leaders refused to negotiate a
settlement with civil rights leaders. Speaking with exasperation of a man who had introduced a civil rights
act in 1961 and seen it die in Congress, the president said it should be possible for Americans of different
races to negotiate at a time when “the U.S. government is involved in sitting down at Geneva with the
Soviet Union.” Later, speaking on television, Kennedy announced a new plan to deal with racial discontent
in the country: “I am therefore asking the Congress to enact legislation giving all Americans the right to be
served in facilities which are open to the public–hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar
establishments. This seems to me to be an elementary right. Its denial is an arbitrary indignity that no
American in 1963 should have to endure…”

The president was caught between the moral power of the civil rights protests and the political power of
segregationists. He had seen his 1961 effort at a civil rights act go down in defeat. He was not convinced
that he could be any more successful with a new act. But King and Clarence Mitchell, National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) lobbyist on Capitol Hill, insisted on a new attempt.

On June 19, 1963, Kennedy sent a civil rights act to Congress. It asked for an end to segregation on
interstate buses and trains and also gave the attorney general the power to end federal funding for any
state or local government program that practiced discrimination. Kennedy also requested that the Justice
Department be empowered to begin filing suits against school districts that refused to integrate.

The bill stalled through the summer of 1963. A. Philip Randolph, the union leader who was then the senior
leader of the civil rights movement, got King and the leadership of the NAACP, the Urban League, and other
major civil rights groups to agree to participate in a massive March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
(March). The Kennedy administration and Congress opposed the March.

Administration officials told civil rights leaders that a major gathering of black people might turn into a riot
and set back the cause of civil rights. Members of Congress told reporters that the march was an attempt to
intimidate them. The administration, sensing that it could not stop the march, switched tactics and
convinced white religious leaders and major trade unions to join the protest. They also alerted the National
Guard and persuaded the March’s organizers to hold it on one day in the middle of the week. That way,
people coming to Washington would be more likely to go home on the same day. The March was a success,

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and President Kennedy met with its leaders afterwards. Once again, they pressed him to put his name and
political muscle behind the Civil Rights Act.

In the months following the March, however, the act appeared to be stalled. In November, President
Kennedy was assassinated. In early 1964, as pressure continued to build over civil rights protests, the new
president, Lyndon B. Johnson, asked Congress to honor Kennedy by passing the Civil Rights Act. But first,
President Johnson, a former Senate majority leader, got his supporters in Congress to strip provisions on
voting rights out of the bill to reduce opposition from segregationists. They also assured employers that the
act did not institute any racial quotas for hiring employees. The two major provisions were found in Titles II
and VII. Title II made it federal law to open hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and stadiums to all Americans
without regard to their race. Title VII banned racial, sexual, or religious discrimination in hiring, promotions,
or assignments. Congress voted to approve the Civil Rights Act on July 2.

Looking Forward
In 2004, it seems as though the days of public support for denying blacks the right to have a hamburger or
go to the movies took place more than forty years ago. But the political arguments at the heart of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 continue to be relevant. The controversy surrounding the debate over whether colleges
and universities can engage in affirmative action to diversify their student bodies is only one example. The
broader argument on civil rights for blacks still exists as well, as when Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi
praised South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond for his lifetime of political leadership by saying that the
nation would not have had “all these problems over the years” if Thurmond–who ran for president on a
segregationist ticket in 1948 and later voted against the Civil Rights Act–had won that race.

In a nation that is now one-third people of color, the issue of ending discrimination is even more critical
today than it was in 1964, although the deep-seated racism of years past is not the norm today. The
arguments over how to heal those wounds of race continue to be debated and most of them rise out of the
historic 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Stats: Politics
• Number of African American elected officials in 1970:1,469; in 2002: 9,101

• States with highest numbers of black elected officials in 2001: Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana

Source: http://www.census.gov/ Press-Release/www/releases/archives/ facts_for_features_special_
editions/001800.html

Stats: Economics
• Poverty rate for African Americans in 1966: 41.8%; in 2002: 23.9%

• Median family income for African Americans in 1964: $18,859; in 2002: $33,634 (both figures show
inflation-adjusted 2002 dollars)

Source: http://www.census.gov/ Press-Release/www/releases/archives/ facts_for_features_special_
editions/001800.html

~~~~~~~~
By Juan Williams

Juan Williams is a senior correspondent for National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. He is the author of My

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Soul Looks Back in Wonder: Voices of the Civil Rights Experience (Sterling 2004) and Eyes on the Prize:
America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 (Penguin 1988), among others.

Copyright of Human Rights is the property of American Bar Association and its content may not be copied
or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s express written permission.
However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

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RESEARCH STARTERS
ACADEMIC TOPIC OVERVIEWS

Education of Women in the U.S.
History of Education > Education of Women in the U.S.

Abstract

Through the Colonial years, the majority of women were illiter-
ate and formal schooling was nonexistent. The first schools for
girls were founded in the early 1800s. Many of the early women’s
academies became the first women’s colleges or normal schools
for teachers. The late 19th century saw industrialization peak and
the introduction of many labor saving devices. The post-World
War II years brought new opportunities for young women as
the Baby Boom children of veterans flooded higher educational
institutions. Fueled by the women’s movement of the late 1960s,
and backed by legislation, women realized historical educational
and economic equity in the late 20th century. Equity issues of

the 21st century center on encouraging young women to take full
advantage of opportunities and social scientists continue to study
gender differences.

Overview

Although women have traditionally not had the same opportuni-
ties for education and employment as men, it is too simplistic to
paint them as victims of history. There is a rich legacy of women’s
education in the United States and it is at once a story of strug-
gle and achievement. From the earliest years of the Republic,
many promising opportunities arose for women. The majority
of school teachers in America were women, and academies and
women’s colleges came to the fore through the nineteenth cen-
tury. The women’s rights movement, begun in the same century,
began to raise awareness of the status of women and won for
them the right to vote.

For decades, women were restricted from the getting the edu-
cation required for entry into the professions, and in teaching,
their pay differed significantly. In Maine, for example, in the
1840s, male teachers earned $15.40 a month, while women
earned $4.80. The pattern was much the same in Ohio, where
men received $15.42 to women’s $8.73 (Matthews, 1976, p. 51).

The colonial elite was interested in education for men to meet
its needs for the “higher professions” of law, medicine, or reli-
gion, and their sons filled the elite eastern schools, but “by the
time of the Revolutionary War, people were less homogeneous,
and there was a commonly held belief that the democratic rep-
resentative government would fail unless the state book a real
responsibility in educating the children of all people” (Cheek,
2004). The Republic demanded a public education for social,
economic, democratic, and national reasons.

From the signing of the Declaration of Independence and Con-
stitution in the late eighteenth century, through most of the
nineteenth century, the rights of citizens were never intended for
women. Most public schools that were established were intended
for boys and only a handful of colleges, public or private, were
coeducational even by 1900 (Harwarth, Maline, & DeBra, n.d.).
The first public high school opened in Boston in 1821 for boys
only; a high school for girls did not open until 1857.

Abstract
Overview

Changes in the Nineteenth Century

The Early Twentieth Century

World War II & Beyond

Further Insights

Colonial Times & the Early Republic

The Republic: 1820 to 1870

Emma Hart Willard

The Women’s Liberation Movement

Viewpoints

Current Issues in Women’s Education

Terms & Concepts

Bibliography

Suggested Reading

Table of Contents

Education of Women in the U.S.

Changes in the Nineteenth Century
Early nineteenth-century lives were short, girls married young,
and the time allotted for formal education in an agrarian society
where families were big was very limited for both sexes. A high
school education came to mean two years of post-elementary
education for those between the ages of twelve and sixteen. As
the nineteenth century progressed, private academies were joined
by “common schools” and the public education propagated by
education reformer Horace Mann spread. Female academies and
seminaries opened, initially in private homes, between 1800 to
1875. “The seminaries in general… devoted themselves to pro-
viding religious training, home making skills and a degree of
intellectual development for women” (Matthews, 1976, p. 49).

Although they might be criticized for their limited vision of edu-
cating women, many of the early seminaries became women’s
colleges and the normal schools (colleges for teachers) that pro-
vided a foundation of states’ higher education systems. By 1888,
63 percent of American teachers were women (Matthews, 1976,
p. 51). Emma Willard’s seminary in Troy, New York, founded in
1822, emphasized preparing girls to become teachers, and her
school became a model for teacher’s programs (“Emma Hart
Willard, 1787-1870,” n.d.).

The first women’s rights movement was inaugurated in 1848
with the primary objective of suffrage — obtaining the right of
women to vote — which did not happen until 1920. Although
it had little impact on education, it was symptomatic of cultural
change at work and paralleled the impact of industrializa-
tion. By the turn of the twentieth century, the concept of the
modern high school was forged, and girls were in the majority
of the high school population, even though the total number of
those enrolled in high school was very low (with only around
8 percent of the population enrolled) and fewer graduating.
By the turn of the century, during the 1899–1900 school year,
for example, a disproportionate number of the graduates were
women (57,000) vs. men (38,000). As the twentieth century
progressed, the proportion was less marked and has, since
World War II, approximately paralleled the percentage of the
general population (National Center for Education Statistics,
2006).

Between 1840 and 1890, the public high school had emerged
from the shadow of the private academy. While enrollments
were still small by today’s standards, by the 1870s and 1880s
the number of public secondary schools was expanding (Mirel,
2006).

The history of education is inextricably tied to economic history.
The decision to pursue education voluntarily involves economic
considerations, and the ability for a society to provide education
to its young people is an economic one as well. The opportu-
nities for higher education, and even mandatory high school
education, is a twentieth-century concept, and a post–World War
II one at that.

The Early Twentieth Century
Through the turn of the century into the Depression era,
“compulsory schooling requirements and child labor laws
were typically weak or poorly enforced, … whether children
attended school or worked for wages was a decision that had
to be made by individual families” (Tolnay & Bailey, 2006, p.
254). Industrialization in the late nineteenth century drew mas-
sive immigration from Europe, and migration of blacks from the
South to the urban North, called the Great Migration, changed
literacy and educational demands from the nineteenth into the
twentieth century. Young immigrant women filled the mills and
factories. The inventions of electrical machinery, typewriters,
sewing machines, etc. created a demand for new kinds of skills,
and women were needed to participate in the workforce.

Tolnay and Bailey (2006) studied educational persistence of
immigrant populations in 1920. They found that the economic
pressures on families were so great “that immigrant children
in nearly every group and in every city throughout the United
States chose work when it was available over extended school-
ing prior to the 1930s. Blacks, conversely, appear to have placed
a high value on education and sent their children to school at
unusually high rates …” (p. 256). Their study also revealed that
female blacks were disproportionately represented in the school
population in 1920, possibly due to the lack of employment
opportunities for them.

Educators and industrialists began to advocate for integrating
training into the curriculum to suit job demands. In 1918, the
National Education Association Curriculum and the Commission
on the Reorganization of Secondary Education called for differ-
entiated high school programs with tracks, defined as academic
(college preparatory), vocational, commercial (secretarial), and
general. Women flocked into the commercial curriculums as new
opportunities for secretary or office worker were coming avail-
able (Mirel, 2006).

In 1930 an announcement appeared in American School and
University stating, “For the first time in the history of the coun-
try, the number of boys and girls of high-school age who are in
attendance upon our secondary schools has passed the 50-per-
cent mark” (“Celebrating 70 years,” p. 10). As the world sank
into Depression during the 1930s and there were fewer jobs, par-
ticularly for young people, many turned to schooling. Attendance
grew rapidly through the decade, until the beginning of United
States participation in World War II, when more than seven mil-
lion students aged 14 to 17 were in school (Mirel, 2006).

World War II & Beyond
By the end of 1941, the United States was embroiled in war.
Young men went off to fight as mothers and daughters took their
jobs in the factories and mills to keep the economy going and
to fuel the war effort. Although most women deferred to the
men when they returned and left their wartime jobs, what they
did subsequently with their lives was not so predictable. Linda

Education of Women in the U.S.

Eisenmann, in her 2002 study of postwar female citizens, found
studies from the early 1950s that argued that women continued
to constitute an important part of America’s workforce. She also
points to a national embarrassment during the Cold War when
American women compared unfavorably to Soviet women who
were very well represented in their ranks of scientists, engi-
neers, and physicians that defies the image of 1950s housebound
women (Eisenmann, 2002, p. 135).

Eisenmann’s thesis in “Educating the Female Citizen in a
Post-War World: Competing Ideologies for American Women,
1945–1965” (2002) is that although it is generally thought
that women followed the advice of social and political leaders
and abandoned college and labor after the war, the numbers of
women who stayed in the workforce and continued with their
education grew steadily after the war. “By 1957, college had
attracted one in every five U.S. women between ages 18–21”
(Eisenmann, 2002, p. 134).

The idealization of domestic life in the 1950s belied the fester-
ing social unrest that would soon reveal itself. Eisenmann (2002)
believes that it was the tension of expectations versus the reality
of the force of women in education and labor force that provoked
the women’s movement of the late 1960s. “Post-war women
were caught between competing patriotic, economic, cultural,
and psychological ideologies that sometimes recognized but
never resolved the contradictions facing them as female citizens”
(p. 134).

The subsequent decades put affordable higher education within
reach of all who were capable, and gave rise to the women’s
movement that demanded new freedoms. The nation anticipated
the major population influx in colleges in the 1960s and 1970s,
and rushed to meet the expectation that higher education would
be there for the huge population bubble of students who moved
through the system. Between 1960 and 1970, college enrollment
doubled, and by 1980 female enrollment exceed that of males
(NCES, 2005).

The women’s movement of the late 1960s into the 1970s helped
force the doors open for major equity gains for women. The
Civil Rights Act of 1965 had mandated equity for the sexes,
and the amendments to it in the early 1970s, including Title IX,
applied the law to education and specifically expanded the rights
of women to participate in intercollegiate athletics. The Women’s
Equal Education Act legislated funds that supported efforts to
achieve equity.

During this period, feminists and social scientists also began
to study gender differences in earnest. A 1975 report on male-
female achievement by the National Assessment of Educational
Progress (NAEP) indicated that, at age nine, males and females
perform at about the same level in all subjects but, “by age 13,
girls have begun a decline in achievement which continues
downward through age 17 and into adulthood” (Bornstein, 1979,

p. 337). Bornstein (1979) went on to point out how essential
education is to women, particularly as so many end up finding
themselves alone and self-supporting. The article, typical of its
time period, pointed out how critical education is to every wom-
an’s economic survival.

Equity issues are not necessarily resolved today, and writers and
social scientists continue to analyze opportunities for women
and their place in society. Although women now outnumber men
in colleges and most graduate programs, there is a continued
concern about why they continue to lag behind in entering the
sciences, engineering, and computer science. It is thought that
this issue is not helped when an esteemed academic such as Har-
vard president Larry Summers commented that women lack the
genetic gifts to achieve in the sciences (Pollitt, 2005). Summers
later apologized, but not until after many women cried foul and
he was loudly accused of sexism.

Further Insights
Colonial Times & the Early Republic
Colonial women led hard lives. They married as teenagers and
bore many children. There was little time for learning. It is esti-
mated that 60 percent of Puritan women could not sign their
names, while 11 percent of men were illiterate (p. 48).

In 1667, the Farmington, Connecticut, town council opened a
school for children to learn to read and write English. At the next
town meeting, they rewrote their provision to state that only boys
will attend the school. It was not until the end of the 1790s that
girls went to town schools, and only at times when the school
was not used for educating boys, and it was not until the early
1800s that they were attending year-round (Matthews, 1976, p.
48).

The Republic: 1820 to 1870
Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence
and founder of Dickinson College, believed that women needed
to have a broad utilitarian education because they had to serve
as educators of their children, particularly their sons. He did
believe, however, that women should learn English, bookkeep-
ing, geography, and natural philosophy and de-emphasized the
arts and French so as “to embellish the homes and societies of
their husbands” (cited in Matthews, 1976, p. 49).

Emma Hart Willard
At the same time, new currents were at work in the country that
offered new opportunities for women. Educational groundbreaker
Emma Hart Willard (1787–1870) was about to open her female
seminary in Troy, New York. Willard had opened the Middle
Female Seminary in her home in 1814, from which she demon-
strated the ability of her students to “master classical and scientific
subjects, areas of study which were at the time largely considered
appropriate only for young men” (“Emma Hart Willard,” n.d.).

Education of Women in the U.S.

Willard achieved international success and was invited by Gov-
ernor DeWitt Clinton to start a school in New York. She opened
the short-lived Waterford Academy in Waterford, New York,
but then moved to Troy, where she opened a girl’s preparatory
school in 1822 that survives to this day as the Emma Willard
School. Women’s public high schools in Boston and New York
opened five years after Willard opened her school, and Mary
Lyon’s Mount Holyoke Seminary in Massachusetts opened six-
teen years later.

Female academies and seminaries had their heyday from 1800
to 1875; there were nearly 6,000 of them that enrolled 250,000
women by 1850 (Stevenson, 1995). They provided “religious
training, homemaking skills, and a degree of intellectual devel-
opment for women” (Matthews, 1976, p. 49). Catherine Beecher,
who founded the Hartford Female Seminary in Connecticut,
was one of the most renowned of seminary teachers. Attendees
ranged in age from twelve to sixteen and studied a wide variety
of subjects. The schools were criticized by some as frivolous, and
completion rates were low, but they did produce some teachers
and were precursors of the normal schools that sprang up at the
end of the century to educate teachers (Matthews, 1976, p. 50).

The Women’s Liberation Movement
The sheer numbers of women moving through post–World War II
society forced social and educational equality for young women.
Likewise, postwar prosperity and the expansion of the middle
class also allowed young people the opportunity and freedom to
explore and pursue career alternatives and even extend the time
before they would have to earn a living. Other factors came into
play that also allowed women the freedom to pursue new direc-
tions on a par with men. One was the availability of the birth
control pill in the late 1950s, that for the first time in history
allowed a woman to be in control of her reproductive capabili-
ties. Secondly, women also benefited from the civil rights and
resultant women’s liberation movement of the late 1960s, which
secured for them the freedoms, mandated by legislation and
precedents, to seek the education and careers of their choosing
and capabilities.

Margaret Sanger was an angry young woman who had watched
her mother suffer from the effects of poverty and the burden of
mothering eleven children. She founded Planned Parenthood to
keep other women from experiencing the same fate. Sanger, with
the financial backing of Katherine McCormick, contracted with
physician Gregory Pinks’ laboratory to develop the first oral con-
traceptive. “The pill” was approved by the FDA in 1957. With
control of their fertility, women could concentrate on other aspects
of their lives, and “by 1990, 80 percent of all American women
born since 1945 had tried [the pill]” (Leitzell, 2007, par. 8).

The feminist movement of the late 1960s brought issues of
gender inequity to the fore. Betty Freidan’s book The Feminine
Mystique, published in 1963, helped inaugurate the movement
and gave the likes of Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, and legions
of others the impetus to push for women’s rights. The women

were vocal and had to share the stage along with those demand-
ing civil rights for blacks and others protesting the Vietnam War,
but managed to help open the flood gates for young women of
the 1970s and beyond to take advantage of new and potentially
equal educational and employment opportunities.

Viewpoints
Current Issues in Women’s Education
In 1979, Rita Bornstein called the history of women in America
“a sorry record of deprivation and oppression, guised in protec-
tion” (Bornstein, 1979, p. 331). She points out that as late as
1945, most medical schools had quotas for women that were set
around 5 percent, and although Oberlin was the first college to
admit women along with men, the female students had to wash
the men’s clothes, clean their rooms, and serve them meals. Born-
stein observed that, “Those women were not being prepared for
careers, but to be more intelligent wives and mothers” (p. 332).

Few twenty-first-century feminists would take as cynical a tone
as Bornstein. The lot of most American women today has of
course improved, and those who partake of advanced education
expect to enjoy equal employment, or at least equal economic
opportunity. A study by Dr. Laura Perna of the University of
Maryland shows that women reap more benefits from education
than their male counterparts. Although men with college degrees
average incomes comparable to men who have no postsecond-
ary education, women who attain an associates, bachelor’s, or
advanced degree “average incomes that are 32, 45, and 81 per-
centage points higher than women with no secondary education”
(cited in Troumpoucis, 2004, par. 8).

It has been pointed out that women have entered law and medi-
cine because they are the most conspicuous routes into high
paying, prestigious careers. Society, however, still struggles with
gender equity in other fields. Teaching and nursing, for example,
are still predominately female professions. Likewise, attracting
women into science fields, computer science, and engineering
continues to prove particularly challenging.

Sullivan (2007) quotes a National Science Foundation study that
showed that at 16 percent, the number of college women major-
ing in engineering was down 20 percent from a decade earlier.
This was despite the fact that high school girls take as many sci-
ence courses as boys.

Sullivan cites research by Donna Ginther and Shulami Kahn,
who found that when male scientists marry, they increase their
chances of landing a tenure-track position, but when women do
the same, their chances decrease. Further, having a child under
the age of five lowers the probability further for women scien-
tists by 8 percent (Sullivan, 2007, p. 27). Sullivan also reports
on efforts to recruit young people into engineering with a multi-
media campaign that will change the stereotypes of engineering
“as too nerdy, or that it’s too difficult, or for boys only” (p. 27).

Education of Women in the U.S.

Some think the solution for women to overcome sexism and
achieve their full potential lies in single-sex education. Baskin
(2004) differs with this viewpoint. A graduate of all-female
Mount Holyoke College, she says she attended the school for
“the brainpower of the students and the caliber of the professors”
(p. 34). She goes on to say that the school was “outstanding in
spite of … [its] single-sex status.… Claiming otherwise only
condescends to [its] highly capable students and reinforces the
absurdity that succeeding in a co-ed world first demands steel-
ing oneself in gender isolation.… It’s the twenty-first century.
I thought women were done sacrificing” (Baskin, 2004, p. 34).

Terms & Concepts

Academies / Seminaries: Single-sex secondary schools were
established in the nineteenth century and were called either
“academies” or “seminaries.” As the word “seminary” implies,
religious education was part of the curriculum, typical of schools
in the first half of the century.

Baby Boom: Baby boom is the term for the surge in population
growth between 1946 and 1964. Baby boomers are children of
the post–World War II era who crowded schools and colleges
through the 1950s into the 1980s.

Beecher, Catherine, 1800–1878: Catherine Beecher founded
the Hartford Female Seminary (Connecticut) and was one of a
number of New England female educators who fought to improve
education and educational opportunities for young women in the
nineteenth century.

Civil Rights Act of 1964 & Title IX: The Civil Rights Act of
1964 ensures equal educational opportunity by outlawing
segregation in education. Title VII of the act “prohibits dis-
crimination by covered employers on the basis of race, color,
religion, sex or national origin.” The 1972 amendments to the
act included educational institutions. Title IX was significant
legislation for women students in that it ensured that they have
the same opportunity for men to participate in athletics pro-
grams.

Curricular Differentiation: Based on a proposal by the NEA in
1918 that high schools be “comprehensive” and offer different
curricula to meet different societal and economic needs, most
urban high schools were employing curricular differentiation by
1920 by offering academic, vocational, general and commercial
(secretarial) programs (Mirel, 2006).

Lyon, Mary, 1797–1849: Mary Lyon was the founder of Mount
Holyoke Seminary in 1837, later to become Mount Holyoke Col-
lege. She created a disciplined educational environment, which
although unaffiliated, was Christian based, but emphasized the
sciences, including chemistry, and other subjects that young
women of the time were generally not taught.

Mann, Horace, 1796–1859: Horace Mann is sometimes called
the “father of American education,” who was the first secre-
tary of the Massachusetts Board of Education. He promoted
“common education” and opened fifty schools as well as estab-
lishing a mandatory six-month minimum school year. He later
became president of Antioch College in Ohio.

Normal Schools: Normal schools were institutes of advanced
learning whose primary objective was to train teachers. Early
normal schools sprang from nineteenth-century academies for
women and most today are integrated into states’ systems of
higher education. They were called “normal schools” because
their curricular objective was to set teaching standards or
norms. Some high schools also had a “normal curriculum,”
which trained young women to teach in the local elementary
schools.

Willard, Emma, 1787–1870: New England educator Emma Wil-
lard is credited with opening the first U.S. academy for girls
in Troy, New York in 1822. Originally called the Troy Female
Seminary, and later named after her, the Emma Willard School
is open to this day.

Women’s Educational Equity Act (WEEA): Legislation enacted
to help fund equity for women’s education and support the tenets
of Title IX of 1972. The WEEA was part of the Special Projects
Act contained in the Education Amendments of 1974. Federal
grants were appropriated for equity programs.

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National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). (2006). High
school graduates by sex and control of school: selected
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dt06_099.asp?referrer=report

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Sax, L. J., Riggers, T. A., & Eagan, M. (2013). The role of sin-
gle-sex education in the academic engagement of college-
bound women: A multilevel analysis. Teachers College
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ehh&AN=84956242

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work in Antebellum America. History Today, 45(3), 26.
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Sullivan, B. (2007). Closing the engineering gender gap:
Viewers like you. New England Journal of Higher
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Variation in educational persistence in the Northern
United States in 1920. Sociology of Education, 79(3),
253–279. Retrieved November 27, 2007, from EBSCO
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Troumpoucis, P. (2004). Women reap more benefits from
higher education, study finds. Black Issues in Higher
Education, 21(10), 9. Retrieved November 27, 2007, from
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AN=13865758&site=ehost-live

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make room in unfriendly field. (cover story). Chronicle
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true&db=ehh&AN=85033338

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undergraduate gender gap. Review of Higher Education,
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Suggested Reading

Beadie, N. (1993). Emma Willard’s idea put to the test: The
consequences of state support of female education in
New York, 1819–67. History of Education Quarterly,
33(4), 543.

Carter, S., & Prus, M. (1982). The labor market and the
American high school girl 1890–1928. Journal of
Economic History, 42(1), 163.

Chisholm, A. (2005). Incarnations and practices of feminine
rectitude: Nineteenth-century gymnastics for U.S. women.
Journal of Social History, 38(3), 737–763. Retrieved
November 27, 2007, from EBSCO online database,
Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/
login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=16733239&site=
ehost-live

Flexner, E. (1959). Century of struggle. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.

Katz, S. (2013). “Give us a chance to get an education”:
Single mothers’ survival narratives and strategies for
pursuing higher education on welfare. Journal Of Poverty,
17(3), 273–304. Retrieved October 9, 2014 from EBSCO
Online Database Education Research Complete. http://
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&AN=89047916

Langdon, E. (2001). Women’s colleges then and now: Access
then, equity now. Peabody Journal of Education, 76(1),
5–30. Retrieved November 27, 2007, from EBSCO online
database, Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.
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=ehost-live

Moroney, S. (2000). Widows and orphans: Women’s education
beyond the domestic ideal. Journal of Family History,
25(1), 26–39.

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12(2), 333.

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Education Digest, 41(9), 39–42.

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Education of Women in the U.S.

Essay by Barbara Hornick-Lockard, M.L.S., M.B.A

Barbara Hornick-Lockard is emeritus library director of Corning Community College, Corning, New York. She holds an M.L.S. from
the University of Pittsburgh and an M.B.A. from Syracuse University. Her subject background is eclectic, but a common denominator in
her career as a professional librarian is work with undergraduate students for whom she developed information literacy programs. She
held professional positions at the libraries of the University of Pittsburgh (Johnstown and Bradford campuses), the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, and at Corning. She has also taught composition and was the recipient of several writing awards when she was
a student.

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RESEARCH STARTERS
ACADEMIC TOPIC OVERVIEWS

The G. I. Bill & American Education
History of Education > The G. I. Bill & American Education

Abstract

While the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act wasn’t the first “G.
I. Bill” to be passed by the U.S. Congress, in terms of its wide-
ranging impact on American public life, it was certainly the
most significant. This article discusses the impact of the Service-
men’s Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G. I.
Bill, on American society and the lives of returning World War
II veterans. The law, administered through the U.S. Veteran’s
Administration, proved enormously successful in staving off

an anticipated postwar recession or depression and igniting the
U.S. postwar economy. It also helped grow the suburbs and dra-
matically increase the college graduation rate. Hoping to repeat
the success of the 1944 G. I. Bill, Congress acted in the 1952
Veterans’ Adjustment Act and the 1966 Veterans Readjustment
Benefits Act for Korean War and Vietnam War veterans, respec-
tively. Following the abolition of the military draft in 1973, The
Veterans Education Assistance Program (VEAP) was established
in 1976 and ran until 1987. The current incarnation of the G. I.
Bill, signed into law in 1985, is known as the Montgomery G.
I. Bill.

Overview

While most equate the G. I. Bill with World War II veterans, the
reality is that Americans have a long history of providing for
their veterans. Initially these benefits were for injured soldiers.
Beginning in 1636, long before the United States existed, the
leaders of the Plymouth Colony decreed that they would take
care of soldiers injured in the war with the neighboring Pequot
Indians. The Continental Congress made the same promise in
1776 to encourage colonists to enlist in the war against the Brit-
ish. Abraham Lincoln, in his second inaugural address in March
1865, spoke about the American pledge toward disabled veterans
and their families. “To care for him who shall have borne the
battle, and his widow and orphan” (Lincoln, 1865, as cited in “G
I Bill,” n.d., par. 3). Congress acted on these words once again
during World War I, passing comprehensive benefits for disabled
veterans. Since 1930, the benefits have been administered by the
Veterans Administration. (“GI Bill,” n.d.).

The Making of the G. I. Bill

One of the catalysts for the passage of the G. I. Bill of 1944
was the Bonus March of 1932. In 1924, Congress gave “bonus”
certificates to World War I veterans. Though the certificates
were worth $1,000, akin to a U.S. savings bond, they couldn’t
be cashed until 1945. When the Great Depression began with
the stock market crash of 1929, many millions of Americans –
including hundreds of thousands of veterans – found themselves
out of work and unable to provide for their families. This des-
perate situation sparked riots and protests across the country, as
workers demanded relief from the state and federal governments.
Meanwhile in 1932, the World War I veterans, who were in pos-

Abstract
Overview
The Making of the G. I. Bill

The Bonus March

The G. I. Bill Legacy

The 1944 G. I. Bill

Further Insights

Education Opportunities

Other Opportunities

Other G. I. Bills Since 1944

Benefits for a Volunteer Military

Viewpoints

The G. I. Bill & American Culture

The G. I. Bill & Women

Terms & Concepts

Bibliography

Suggested Reading

Table of Contents

The G. I. Bill & American Education

session of bonus certificates worth $1,000 per person, marched
on Washington demanding early payment. Journalist Joseph C.
Harsch described the march and the marchers this way:

This was not a revolutionary situation. This was a bunch of
people in great distress wanting help…. These were simply vet-
erans from World War I who were out of luck, out of money, and
wanted to get their bonus — and they needed the money at that
moment (as cited in “The Bonus March,” n.d.).

The Bonus March
The veterans set up camp, military-style, in tents and aban-
doned buildings in Washington, D.C., pledging not to leave until
Congress passed a bill to meet their demands for early bonus
payment. President Herbert Hoover vowed to veto any such
legislation should it cross his desk. The number of protesting
veterans swelled to 20,000 strong by June 1932 (“The Bonus
March,” n.d.), and they were temporarily encouraged to see the
House pass the Patman Veteran’s Bill, only to have their hopes
dashed when the Senate failed to act in a similar fashion. Though
some were lured back home when Congress promised to pay for
their return trips, others stayed to continue the protest. Among
the remaining protestors tempers flared, stoked by frustration and
the hot Washington summer, and in July federal troops moved
in to clear out the protestors from neighboring buildings and
local encampments across the Anacostia River. Many hundreds
of veterans were injured in the melee, and some reports indi-
cated that a handful were killed. Many Americans supported the
law enforcement officials, while the New York Times noted that
“Flames rose high over the desolate Anacostia flats at midnight
tonight, and a pitiful stream of refugee veterans of the World
War walked out of their home of the past two months, going they
knew not where” (cited in “The Bonus March,” n.d.). It was the
worst violence in Washington since the British burned the city
during the War of 1812.

Some historians have suggested that the aftermath of the Bonus
March once and for all sank the reelection prospects of Presi-
dent Hoover and paved the way for the election of Franklin D.
Roosevelt and his promise of a New Deal for all Americans. But
on the issue of paying bonuses, Hoover and Roosevelt were of
one mind. With the Great Depression continuing and veterans
still pressing their case to the new administration, Roosevelt
attempted to placate them by giving them federal jobs building a
new highway in the Florida Keys. A hurricane struck south Flor-
ida in 1935, killing over 200 veterans. As another election year,
1936, dawned, Congress finally succumbed to public pressure
and gave the World War I veterans what they had long demanded
– early redemption of their bonuses.

The G. I. Bill Legacy
As it turned out, the efforts of the World War I veterans made life
far easier for World War II veterans. Historian Jennifer D. Keene
(2001) describes the notion that military veterans could now
expect a more prosperous life upon their return from service:

The GI Bill is rarely remembered as the final legacy of World
War I to the nation. Yet ignoring Great War veterans’ authorship
of the GI Bill results in an imperfect understanding of why the
law took the form it did when it did. Line by line, the most com-
prehensive piece of social welfare legislation the United States
has ever known, it illustrated in vivid detail the struggles World
War I veterans had endured to give meaning to their social con-
tract with the state. For the first and perhaps only time, wartime
military service became a steppingstone to a better life. The
final legacy of World War I created one of the most prosper-
ous, advantaged generations in American history (Keene, 2001,
“Doughboys to be”).

With the U.S. entering World War II late in 1941, and the
American economy becoming a war economy, many business
leaders and economists began predicting that the end of Amer-
ica’s involvement in the war would bring about an economic
recession or even depression. They reasoned this way because
those wartime industries, which had been providing employment
for millions of stateside Americans, would be slowed or even
idled at the conclusion of the war. The prospect of another Great
Depression and Bonus March was unpalatable to all concerned,
and talk began of ways to avert a repeat occurrence.

As the war continued in both Europe and the Pacific, discussion
in official Washington turned to job training and unemployment
compensation for returning veterans. President Roosevelt, per-
haps with still-fresh memories of the Bonus March a decade
earlier, insisted in a July 1943 “fireside chat” to the nation that
the country needed to do right by its veterans through unem-
ployment insurance, job training and quality medical care. His
proposals enjoyed wide support among the American people,
with 70 percent telling Gallup pollsters in 1944 that they’d even
pay higher taxes to support such benefits (Keene, 2001).

The 1944 G. I. Bill
With the help of the American Legion, the U.S. Congress unani-
mously passed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, an
omnibus bill with provisions designed to help returning World
War II veterans make an easier transition back to civilian life
in the United States. As former American Legion commander
Harry Colmery stated during the debate on the bill, returning
GIs “should be aided in reaching that place, position, or status
which they had normally expected to achieve, and probably
would have achieved, had their war service not interrupted their
careers” (quoted in Keene, 2001, “Combat Veterans”). This is an
important point, especially when one considers that the United
States did not have an all-volunteer force until the military draft
was banned in 1973.

The GI Bill signed into law by President Roosevelt had the fol-
lowing key provisions:

• Up to $500 a year for college tuition or training, paid
directly to the college or university

The G. I. Bill & American Education

• Unmarried veterans would get a $50-a-month allowance
for each month they spent in uniform. A married veteran
would get $75, and a married veteran with children would
get $90.

• Mortgage subsidies that made it quite easy to buy a home
• Unemployment compensation benefits of $20 per week

for up to 52 weeks

• Women and African-Americans serving in the military
were also eligible

The postwar economy was far healthier than some policymakers
and economists had predicted, and therefore only about 20 per-
cent of the unemployment funds allocated were used (U.S. Dept.
of Veteran’s Affairs, n.d.). Returning servicemen and women did
take full advantage of the education and housing benefits avail-
able to them.

Further Insights

The immediate effects of the G. I. Bill were dramatic. By pro-
viding money for college, the seats in American colleges and
universities were filled with returning veterans.

Education Opportunities
The average veteran had finished two years of high school
before going off to war (Keene, 2001), and the GI Bill let them
continue their education. “By the time the original GI Bill ended
on July 25, 1956, 7.8 million of 16 million World War II veter-
ans had participated in an education or training program” (U.S.
Dept. of Veteran’s Affairs, n.d.). Contrary to what seemed to
be a general misperception, especially among female veterans
(Oakes, 2006, p. 27), the GI Bill was also intended to help those
who had been in college or university before they went overseas
to fight.

Bennett (1996) reported that 88,000 veterans were enrolled
in 1945. By the fall of 1946 their numbers had jumped to
1,013,000. Enrollment in colleges and universities increased
from 1.6 million in 1945 to 2.1 million students in 1946. More
than one million or 48.7 percent of the 2,078,095 students and
71.5 percent of all the males enrolled in universities and col-
leges were veterans (Bennett, 1996). Harvard University’s
enrollment almost doubled in 1946. As veterans continued to
enroll over the next five years, the total enrollments in colleges
and universities continued to increase. The deadline for vets
to enroll was July 15, 1951. The number of graduating seniors
in higher education jumped from around 160,000 in 1940 to
around 500,000 ten years later. This increase is especially inter-
esting considering that only a quarter of a century earlier the
total number of degrees awarded (to primarily wealthy young
men) in the United States was 53,515 (Bennett, 1996) (cited in
Oakes, 2006, p. 26).

Other Opportunities
In addition to educational opportunities, the Bill allowed more
returning GIs to buy homes, helping them flee to the suburbs
and escape some of the problems afflicting American cities. The
loans, which were given out through 1962, totaled over $50 bil-
lion (“Veterans Benefit History,” 2005). Because of lingering
prejudice, however, many of African-American veterans were
not given the chance to buy homes in the suburbs, and they
tended to remain in cities with their families.

By the time the G. I. Bill expired in 1956, it had profoundly
impacted the American educational and economic landscape.
Home ownership rates rose. The suburbs grew. College gradu-
ation rates increased. In a very real sense, it led to America’s
postwar economic prosperity, the birth of the Baby Boom Gen-
eration, and the “white flight” from the inner cities that continues
to have wide socioeconomic and political consequences. Humes
(2006) summed up the 1944 G. I. Bill’s impact:

A nation of renters would become a nation of homeowners. Col-
lege would be transformed from an elite bastion to a middle
class entitlement. Suburbia would be born amid the clatter of
bulldozers and the smell of new asphalt linking it all together.
Inner cities would collapse. The Cold War would find its war-
riors not in the trenches or the barracks, but at the laboratory
and the wind tunnel and the drafting board. Educations would
be made possible for fourteen future Nobel Prize winners, three
Supreme Court justices, three presidents, a dozen senators, two
dozen Pulitzer Prize winners, 238,000 teachers, 91,000 scien-
tists, 67,000 doctors, 450,000 engineers, 240,000 accountants,
17,000 journalists, 22,000 dentists – along with a million law-
yers, nurses, businessmen, artists, actors, writers, pilots and
others (Humes, 2006).

Given this enormous impact, the conclusion that the 1944 G.
I. Bill has had “more impact on the American way of life than
any law since the Homestead Act more than a century ago” (“GI
Bill,” n.d.) seems entirely plausible.

Other G. I. Bills Since 1944
The 1944 G. I. Bill was not the last. In July 1952, in the midst
of the Korean War, President Dwight D. Eisenhower – himself
a former general who led American forces in Europe during
World War II – signed into law the Veterans’ Adjustment Act,
which was similar to the 1944 G. I. Bill but did not pay unem-
ployment benefits. Also, unlike the G. I. Bill, which paid
benefits directly to colleges and universities, it instead offered
veterans $110 per month for the purpose of paying the costs of
higher education until 1965. The reason for the change was a
1950 House select committee investigation that found that some
colleges and universities were price gouging. Over a million
Korean War veterans took advantage of home loan programs
under the legislation.

The G. I. Bill & American Education

As the Vietnam War heated up in 1966, Congress again passed
G. I. Bill legislation aimed at helping returning soldiers reinte-
grate into American society. This time the legislation was much
broader than that of the 1944 G. I. Bill or the 1952 Veterans’
Adjustment Act. The Veterans Readjustment Benefits Acts of
1966 extended benefits for veterans who served in and out of
conflict zones, as well as during peacetime and war. This idea
of providing wartime and peacetime personnel serving in the
armed forces the same benefits was similar to a proposal rejected
by President Eisenhower in 1959 after the government’s Brad-
ley Commission said military service was not to be a means
to secure government handouts. President Lydon B. Johnson,
forced by the bill’s unanimous passage by Congress, signed it
into law in 1966.

Still, the law did not provide the same scope of benefits as the
1944 and 1952 laws did. It provided only $100 per month for
education for honorably discharged veterans, which many critics
said was insufficient. However, Congress, acting three separate
times during the next decade, increased the monthly education
benefit to $311 per month by 1977. In the end, 66 percent (6.8
of 10.3 million) of Vietnam era veterans took advantage of the
education benefits available to them. By comparison, the educa-
tion benefits in the bill were used by 2.4 of the 5.5 million (40
percent) eligible Korean War veterans under the 1952 G. I. Bill.

Benefits for a Volunteer Military
After the draft was abolished in 1973, the U.S. military became an
all-volunteer force. The Veterans Education Assistance Program
(VEAP) was established in 1977 and ran until 1987. Unlike pre-
vious G. I. Bills passed in 1944, 1952 and 1966, VEAP allowed
voluntary deductions of up to $2,700 that would be matched $2
for every $1 through the Veteran’s Administration, rather than
paying a monthly education benefit. Veterans who contributed
between 1977 and 1987 remain eligible to apply for matching
funds for higher education.

Beginning in July 1985, the Montgomery G. I. Bill (MGIB)
allows current active soldiers to put aside $100 per month in
their first year of military service. Then, when they leave service,
they get a tuition allowance and monthly stipend for up to 36
months of job training, distance education or classroom educa-
tion. As of 2007, that monthly stipend was $1,101 a month for
full-time college attendance. There are also benefits packages for
part-time students and reservists.

At the end of 2007, there were moves to update the Montgomery
G. I. Bill (Salemme, 2007, pp. 51-52). The Veterans Education
Assistance Act, or Post-9/11 G. I. Bill, was passed in 2008. It
provides up to 36 months financial support for education to hon-
orably discharged veterans. In 2013, the Department of Veteran
Affairs reported that since mid-2009 it had paid more than $23.6
billion in benefits to more than 860,000 veterans, servicemem-
bers, and dependents. In the fall of 2012, more than 470,000
veterans enrolled in 3,630 institutions. The bill covers both grad-
uate and undergraduate degree programs, as well as vocational

and technical training, including flight training, correspondence
training, licensing programs and national testing programs, and
entrepreneurship training (Reynolds, 2013).

Viewpoints
The G. I. Bill & American Culture
While the 1944 G. I. Bill transformed the American economy
and the American higher education system, it also had a trickle-
down effect on American culture.

Humes (2006) lists the many artists, novelists, poets, actors, and
other creative talents who were educated and trained through the
G. I. Bill, including Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller,
Frank McCourt, Art Buchwald, Pete Hamill, Edward Abbey,
Elmore Leonard, Mario Puzo. Poets James Dickey, James
Wright, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Randall Jarrell, Frank O’Hara,
Anthony Hecht, Richard Wilbur, A.R. Ammons. Stage and screen
writers Paddy Chayevsky, Rod Serling, Aaron Spelling, Terry
Southern. Actors Walter Matthau, Robert Duvall, Tony Curtis,
Harry Belafonte, Rod Steiger, Gene Hackman, Clint Eastwood,
Paul Newman, Jason Robards, Charles Bronson, Ernest Borg-
nine. Artists Robert Rauschenberg, Leo Krikorian, Dan Spiegle,
Robert Miles Runyan, Kenneth Noland, LeRoy Nieman, Richard
Callner, Ed Rossbach, Robert Perine (Humes, 2006).

The G. I. Bill & Women
One of the underreported impacts of the G. I. Bill was the way it
led, for a time, to the re-segregation of American society along
gender lines. While during World War II millions of men were
fighting overseas, the women who were left stateside began to
take the college and career slots that were left vacant. However,
in the wake of the G. I. Bill, all that changed. Feminist writer
Betty Friedan in her 1963 The Feminine Mystique observed,

When the war ended, of course, GI’s came back to take the jobs
and fill the seats in colleges and universities that for a while had
been occupied largely by girls. For a short time, competition was
keen and the resurgence of the old anti-feminine prejudices in
business and the professions made it difficult for a girl to keep or
advance in a job. This undoubtedly sent many women scurrying
for the cover of marriage and home (Friedan, 1963, p. 185, as
cited in Oakes, 2006, p. 26).

While feminism made a comeback in the 1960s and 1970s, it has
taken women considerable time to regain even a portion of the
ground they gained when the men of the “greatest generation”
were at war.

Terms & Concepts

American Legion: A U.S. veterans organization founded in 1919
and dedicated to the advocating on behalf of veterans. A major
mover behind the passage of the 1944 G. I. Bill.

The G. I. Bill & American Education

Bonus March of 1932: An act of civil disobedience that took
place in 1932 when World War I veterans, who were in posses-
sion of bonus certificates worth $1,000 per person that would
become payable in 1945, marched on Washington demanding
early payment.

G. I. Bill: A popular name for the Servicemen’s Readjustment
Act of 1944. It was also been applied to subsequent military ben-
efit bills passed in 1952, 1966 and 1985. Sometimes it is referred
to as the G. I. Bill of Rights.

Montgomery G. I. Bill: A federal G. I. Bil law passed in 1985
that allows current active soldiers to put aside $100 per month
for their first year of military service. Then, when they leave ser-
vice, they get a tuition allowance and monthly stipend for up
to 36 months of job training, distance education or classroom
education.

Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944: Popularly known as
the “G. I. Bill,” it provided government-paid benefits for college
tuition, job training, mortgage subsidies and unemployment.

U.S. Veteran’s Administration: The department of the federal
government tasked with administering veteran’s benefit pro-
grams.

Veterans’ Adjustment Act of 1952: Federal G. I. Bill legislation
that, in addition to mortgage subsidies, offered veterans $110 per
month for the purpose of paying the costs of higher education
until 1965.

Veterans Education Assistance Program: A G. I. Bill that
allowed active duty military personnel to voluntarily contribute
up to $2700 for educational purposes, and the money would be
matched $2 for every $1 through the Veteran’s Administration,
rather than paying a monthly education benefit. Veterans who
contributed between 1977 and 1987 remain eligible to apply for
matching funds for higher education.

Veterans Readjustment Benefits Act of 1966: A federal G. I. Bill
that extended benefits for veterans who served in and out of con-
flict zones, and during peacetime and war.

Bibliography

G I Bill. (n.d.). Retrieved December 15, 2007 from Medal of
Honor website http://www.medalof honor.com/GIBill.htm.

Humes, E. (2006). Nixon and Kennedy, Bonnie and Clyde:
The G. I. Bill and the arts. Adapted from Over Here:
How the G. I. Bill Transformed the American Dream
(2006). Harcourt. Retrieved December 15, 2007 from
CaliforniaAuthors.com: http://www.californiaauthors.com/
excerpt-humes-3.shtml.

Keene, J. D. (2001). Doughboys, the Great War and the
Remaking of America. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press. Excerpt retrieved December 15, 2007
from the Doughboy Center: http://www.worldwar1.com/
dbc/j%5f keene.htm.

McChesney, J. (2007, September 26). G. I. Bill’s impact slip-
ping in recent years. NPR’s Morning

McChesney, J. (2007, September 26). G. I. Bill’s impact slip-
ping in recent years. NPR’s Morning Edition .
Retrieved December 14, 2007 from NPR: http://www.npr.
org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14715263.

Oakes, J.W. (2006). How the Servicemen’s Readjustment
Act of 1944 (GI Bill) impacted women artists’ career
opportunities. Visual Culture & Gender, 1. 23-31.
Retrieved December 15, 2007 from CyberFeminist House:
http://146.186.186.74/vcg/1vol/oakes .

Olson, K.W. (1973). The G. I. Bill and higher education:
Success and surprise. American Quarterly, 25 (5) pp. 596-
610.

Reynolds, C. V. (2013). From combat to campus. Chronicle
of Higher Education, 21-26. Retrieved December 15,
2013, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research
Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=t
rue&db=ehh&AN=85944556&site=ehost-live

Salemme, E. (2007). Fighting for a diploma. Time, 170 (9),
51-52. Retrieved December 16, 2007, from EBSCO online
database, Academic Search Premier http://search.ebsco-
host.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=26260548
&site=ehost-live

Sander, L. (2013). Veterans tell elite colleges: ‘We belong’.
(cover story). Chronicle of Higher Education, 59(18),
A1-A7. Retrieved December 15, 2013, from EBSCO
Online Database Education Research Complete. http://
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&A
N=84680218&site=ehost-live

The Bonus March (May-July, 1932). (n.d.). In American
Experience: MacArthur. Retrieved December15, 2007,
from PBS: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/macarthur/peo-
pleevents/pandeAMEX89.html.

U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs. (n.d.). Born of contro-
versy: The GI Bill of Rights. GI-BILL History. Retrieved
December 15, 2077 from GI Bill website: http://www.
gibill.va.gov/GI%5f Bill%5f Info/history.htm.

Wurster, K.G., Rinaldi, A.P., Woods, T.S., & Liu, W. (2013).
First-generation student veterans: Implications of poverty
for psychotherapy. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 69(2),

The G. I. Bill & American Education

127-137. Retrieved December 15, 2013, from EBSCO
Online Database Education Research Complete. http://
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&A
N=84637542&site=ehost-live

Suggested Reading

Gates, B, Sr., & Collins, C. (2004, June 21). A GI Bill for the
next generation. Houston Chronicle. Retrieved December

15, 2007 from Faireconomy.org: http://www.faireconomy.
org/press/2004/GIBill%5foped.html.

Humes, E. (2006). Over here: How the G. I. Bill transformed
the American dream. New York: Harcourt.

Mettler, S. (2005). Soldiers to citizens: The G. I. Bill and the
making of the greatest generation. New York: Oxford
University Press.

Essay by Matt Donnelly, M.A.

Matt Donnelly received his Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and a graduate degree in theology. He is the author of Theodore
Roosevelt: Larger than Life, which was included in the New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age and the Voice of Youth Advo-
cates’ Nonfiction Honor List. A Massachusetts native and diehard Boston Red Sox fan, he enjoys reading, writing, computers, sports,
and spending time with his wife and two children. He welcomes comments at donnellymp@gmail.com.

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Great Neck Publishing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or
posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s express written permission. However, users
may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

RESEARCH STARTERS
ACADEMIC TOPIC OVERVIEWS

Title IX
Education & the Law > Title IX

Abstract

Title IX of the Educational Amendments to the 1964 Civil Rights
Act was signed into law in 1972. It bans any educational institu-
tion that receives federal funds from discriminating on the basis
of sex, and applies to all academic and extra-curricular programs.

Title IX has been praised as the chief factor behind the advances
made in gender equity in education over the past three decades.
In addition, the significant advances of women in higher educa-
tion and in the workplace since the 1970s have been attributed
by some to Title IX. Despite all this, Title IX is most well known
for the impact it has had on intercollegiate athletics. The scale
of women’s collegiate athletic programs has increased exponen-
tially during the past three decades, principally as a result of Title
IX.

Overview

Title IX has been called “the most controversial topic in col-
lege sports,” and its legacy has likewise been called “a legacy
of debate” (Suggs, 2002). A component of the 1972 Educational
Amendments to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Title IX was designed
to end discrimination on the basis of sex in education, just as
Title IV of the original 1964 Civil Rights Act had been designed
to end discrimination on the basis of race. While many claims
have been made about the exact impact Title IX has had on
gender equity in education, one result of Title IX is overwhelm-
ingly clear: it began, and continues to fuel, a vigorous debate
about funding for, participation in, and the purpose of intercol-
legiate athletics.

After the passage of Title IX, educational institutions accepted
and applied the legislation to their academic programs without
any resistance or debate (Suggs, 2002). Most college and second-
ary school athletic programs, however, virtually ignored Title IX
until a series of Supreme Court decisions during the 1990s made
it clear that lack of compliance left schools vulnerable to lawsuits
with monetary-damage claims. Partly as a result of this threat
of prosecution, educational institutions increased their efforts to
comply with Title IX’s athletic provisions throughout the 1990s
(Anderson, Cheslock, & Ehrenberg, 2006, p. 227). These efforts
persist, albeit not without continued controversy.

Over the first four decades of its existence, Title IX has gar-
nered many vocal supporters and critics. The supporters praise
Title IX for expanding women’s educational opportunities and
changing American culture’s expectations of what women
can achieve. The critics charge Title IX with discriminating
against men, as efforts to comply with the legislation have

Abstract
Overview

History

The Political Climate Surrounding Title IX

Title IX & Athletics

Enforcing Title IX

Applications

Content of Title IX

What Is Sex-Based Discrimination?

Title IX & College Athletics

The Three-Prong Test

Viewpoints

Impact of Title IX: The First 25 Years

Title IX at 40

The Debate over Title IX

Men’s Athletics

Changing Athletic Models

Terms & Concepts

Bibliography

Suggested Reading

Table of Contents

Title IX

led some institutions to eliminate men’s teams in less widely
popular sports such as wrestling and swimming. Despite these
accusations, Title IX is legislation with which all educational
institutions must comply.

History
The Political Climate Surrounding Title IX
During the late 1960s and the 1970s, the women’s movement,
what many refer to as the second wave of feminism, succeeded
in focusing national attention on the sex-based inequalities that
hampered American women’s lives. One of the most deleteri-
ous of these inequalities was the earning gap between men and
women. Although women had, by this time, become a vital part
of the American workforce, female wage earners were rarely
paid as much as their male peers. Women’s organizations and
advocacy groups asserted that this earnings gap could be traced
back to sex-based inequalities in education. Women filed class
action lawsuits against colleges, universities, and the US fed-
eral government, alleging that these institutions discriminated
against women. All this encouraged Congress to focus on sexual
discrimination in education and hold hearings on the subject in
the summer of 1970 (U.S. Department of Justice, 2001).

This was the political climate out of which Title IX was born.
Hoping to build on the momentum gained by the special hearings
a year before, Representative Edith Green made an unsuccessful
attempt to add a ban on sex-based discrimination to the 1971
Education Amendments. The next year, in an attempt to derail
the renewal of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, conservative Southern
congressmen added gender to the categories protected against
discrimination. They hoped that the idea of equal opportunities
for women would be distasteful enough to prevent the passage of
the entire bill (Suggs, 2002). To their chagrin, the legislation was
passed and Title IX became law.

Title IX & Athletics
Title IX prohibits any educational institution receiving federal
funds from discriminating in any activity or program on the
basis of sex. In all academic and extra-curricular fields except
athletics, Title IX was adopted and applied with little or no
controversy (Suggs, 2002). In contrast, decades passed before
Title IX was effectively enforced in the field of athletics. When
Title IX became law in 1972, most colleges simply did not have
varsity sports teams for women. According to the National Col-
legiate Athletic Association (NCAA), while approximately
170,000 men participated in college sports programs in 1972,
just under 30,000 women also participated (Suggs, 2002). In the
first few years after Title IX was passed, it was unclear what,
if anything, colleges and universities would be required to do
to remedy this situation. The first interpretation of how Title IX
applies to intercollegiate athletics was not issued until 1975, with
a delayed compliance date of 1978. These initial instructions
were generally felt to be too vague, so a more comprehensive

plan was issued by the US Department of Education’s Office for
Civil Rights in 1979 (Anderson et al., 2006).

Enforcing Title IX
Although the 1979 plan included a three-part test to prove compli-
ance with the portion of Title IX dealing with athletics, the test was
ignored throughout most of the 1980s. The Carter, Reagan, and
George H. W. Bush administrations put a low priority on enforcing
Title IX, and as a result, educational programs felt no real need to
comply with the law (Anderson et al., 2006). When, in 1984, the
Supreme Court ruled that Title IX was only applicable to the spe-
cific programs that directly received federal aid, athletic programs
became legally exempt from compliance (Suggs, 2002). This
situation lasted until 1988, when Congress, overriding a veto by
President Reagan, enacted the Civil Rights Restoration Act. This
law restored the broad interpretation of Title IX, in which Title IX
applied to all programs or activities at institutions that received
federal funds, whether or not a program was a direct recipient of
these funds (U.S. Department of Justice, 2001).

Efforts on the part of collegiate athletic programs to enforce Title
IX increased throughout the 1990s for several reasons. The US
Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is responsible
for enforcing Title IX, and does so on a complaint-driven basis
(Barnett, 2003). Until students started reporting discrimina-
tion, and doing so in such a way that threatened more than just
inconvenience for educational institutions, Title IX would not be
enforced. This process of upping the stakes of Title IX compli-
ance began in 1992 when the Supreme Court ruled in Franklin
v. Gwinnett County Public Schools that the plaintiff in a Title
IX lawsuit was entitled to monetary damages as long as the dis-
crimination was intentional. In 1996, Cohen v. Brown University
contributed to the increasing wariness on the part of colleges and
universities of Title IX lawsuits. In this case, the Supreme Court
held that Brown University was obliged to “adhere to strict cri-
teria for demonstrating gender equity in intercollegiate athletics”
(Anderson, et al., 2006, p. 228). This decision was particularly
startling because Brown already had more women’s sports teams
than any other university besides Harvard. The decision con-
vinced schools that until they were in strict compliance with
Title IX, they would be vulnerable to lawsuits. Another factor
that helped plaintiffs in such lawsuits was the Equity in Athletics
Disclosure Act, which Congress passed in 1994. This law man-
dated that institutions give free access to data about their men’s
and women’s athletics programs. Access to this data helped the
federal government more easily gauge compliance with Title IX.
Finally, unlike its predecessors, the Clinton administration made
enforcing Title IX a priority (Anderson et al., 2006).

Currently, educational institutions are generally committed to
enforcing Title IX in their educational programs. Compliance,
however, is not always easy. Much controversy has been caused
in recent years by schools who have decided to eliminate men’s
sports teams, especially wrestling teams, in order to attain com-
pliance with Title IX.

Title IX

Applications
Content of Title IX
According to the US Department of Education, Title IX “is
designed to eliminate (with certain exceptions) discrimination
on the basis of sex in any education program or activity receiv-
ing federal financial assistance” (Office for Civil Rights, 1980,
p. 375). This essentially means that institutions must provide
students with academic and extra-curricular opportunities on a
“gender-neutral basis” (Anderson et al., 2005, p. 225). While Title
IX is most well-known in relation to college athletics, the legis-
lation is applicable to myriad other aspects of education. The text
of Title IX specifies the law as being applicable to admission,
recruitment, housing, facilities (such as locker rooms), access to
course offerings, access to schools operated by local educational
agencies (LEAs), counseling, financial assistance, employment
assistance to students, health insurance benefits, athletics, text-
books and curricular materials, and marital/parental status. In
regards to this last category, Title IX has made it illegal for high
schools to prevent a pregnant teenager from finishing her degree
(U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, 1980).
Title IX additionally prohibits sexual harassment and requires,
“as a condition of receipt of federal financial assistance [that] if
a recipient is aware, or should be aware, of sexual harassment, it
must take reasonable steps to eliminate the harassment, prevent
its recurrence and, where appropriate, remedy the effects” (U.S.
Department of Justice, 2001, p. 100). Only educational insti-
tutions that are operated by an entity controlled by a religious
organization whose religious tenets are inconsistent with Title IX
are exempted from enforcing the legislation’s various provisions
(U.S. Department of Justice, 2001, p. 11).

What Is Sex-Based Discrimination?
Title IX prohibits three distinct types of sex-based discrimina-
tion: disparate treatment, disparate impact, and retaliation. The
US Department of Justice (2001) defines disparate treatment as
“actions that treat similarly situated persons differently on the
basis of a prohibited classification,” such as sex (p. 57). Dis-
parate impact “focuses on the result of the action taken, rather
than the intent” (p. 63). Disparate impact applies to a policy that
seems to be sex-neutral but that has the result of discriminating
on the basis of sex. For example, a successful lawsuit brought
against the National Merit Scholarship program claimed that by
relying solely on SAT scores in determining scholarship eligibil-
ity, the program discriminated against female applicants (p. 67).
Title IX’s prohibition of retaliation is designed to protect people
who file Title IX complaints as well as the people who investi-
gate these complaints from retaliation by the accused. In short,
it is intended to “preserve the integrity and effectiveness of the
enforcement process itself” (p. 71).

Title IX & College Athletics
Title IX is most well known for its provisions related to col-
lege athletic programs. Title IX specifically requires schools to
provide men’s and women’s sports programs with equal “ben-

efits and services.” This includes “scholarships, travel expenses,
practice and competitive facilities, equipment and supplies,
scheduling and practice times, and number and compensation of
coaches and locker rooms” (Burnett, 2003). The legislation also
contains more opaque compliance criteria. For this reason, the
US Department of Education has issued very specific guidelines
about what schools must do in order to be in compliance with
Title IX.

The Three-Prong Test
These guidelines include what was originally referred to as the
three-part test (U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil
Rights, 2005) but today is known as the “three-prong test.” The
three-prong test has become the primary measure used in law-
suits to gauge institutional compliance with Title IX (Anderson
et al., 2006). According to the Office for Civil Rights, an institu-
tion is judged to be in compliance if it meets any one of three
parts of the following test:

• “the percent of male and female athletes is substantially
proportionate to the percent of male and female students
enrolled at the school; or

• “the school has a history and continuing practice of
expanding participation opportunities for the underrepre-
sented sex; or

• “the school is fully and effectively accommodating the
interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex” (Dept.
of Education, 2005, p. iii).

The most effective way to prove compliance with the three-prong
test has long been considered to be the first criteria: ensuring that
the ratio of men to women who participate in the sports programs
is proportionate to the ratio of men to women enrolled in the
college or university. As long as a college has the same propor-
tion of female athletes as it does female students, it can claim
“substantial proportionality” and be safe from potential lawsuit
(Suggs, 2002). Recently, more schools have begun to explore
test three, often using surveys to prove that they are accommo-
dating female students’ interests and abilities. As a result, the
US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in 2005
offered new guidelines on how to properly compose and admin-
ister such a survey.

Viewpoints
Impact of Title IX: The First 25 Years
Significant disagreement exists as to the exact impact Title IX
has had on education, American culture, and college sports. The
Department of Education has credited Title IX with many of the
advancements women have made in education and in the work-
place (U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights,
1997). In a press release celebrating the 25th anniversary of Title
IX, it refers to women’s advancements in these fields as “the

Title IX

great untold story of success that resulted from the passage of
Title IX” (U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights,
1997). The report goes on to cite a number of statistics as evi-
dence of this claim:

• “In 1994, 63 percent of female high school graduates
aged 16-24 were enrolled in college, up 20 percentage
points from 43 percent in 1973.

• “In 1994, 27 percent of both men and women had earned
a bachelor’s degree. In 1971, 18 percent of young women
and 26 percent of young men had completed four or more
years of college.

• “In 1994, women received 38 percent of medical degrees.
When Title IX was enacted in 1972, only 9 percent of
medical degrees went to women.

• “In 1994 women earned 38 percent of dental degrees,
whereas in 1972 they earned only 1 percent of them.

• “In 1994 women accounted for 43 percent of law degrees,
up from 7 percent in 1972.

• “In 1993-94, 44 percent of all doctoral degrees awarded
to U.S. citizens went to women, up from only 25 percent
in 1977” (U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil
Rights, 1997).

The report also includes statistics on women’s involvement in
college athletics, the area in which Title IX is considered to have
had the biggest impact:

• “Today [in 1997], more than 100,000 women participate
in intercollegiate athletics–a fourfold increase since
1971.

• “In 1995, women comprised 37 percent of college student
athletes, compared to 15 percent in 1972.

• “In 1996, 2.4 million high school girls represented 39 per-
cent of all high school athletes, compared to only 300,000
or 7.5 percent in 1971. This represents an eightfold
increase” (U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil
Rights, 1997).

Since 1997, the percentage of women involved in high school
and college athletics has only increased (Suggs, 2002; Anderson
et al., 2006, p. 226).

Title IX at 40
Despite many the myths and misconceptions that still surround-
ing Title XI, quite a lot has changed in women’s participation in
athletics over the past forty years. For example,

• “The number of young women who played high school
sports was just under 300,000 in the early 1970s. By
2011, the figure was over 3 million (Kane, 2012, p. 3;
Ladda, 2012, p. 16).

• “Prior to Title IX, sports scholarships for women were
unheard of. By 2012, almost 43 percent of all college
athletes who received scholarships were women (Kane,
2012, p. 3).

• “Of the gold medals won by the American team during
the 2012 Olympic Games in London, England, 66 percent
were won by women (Kane, 2012, p. 3).

The Debate over Title IX
As is evidenced by the above statistics, most commentators on
the debate over Title IX, and especially Title IX’s supporters, tout
the legislation as causing a sea of change in American culture’s
attitude towards women. The most common debate about Title
IX is not over whether the legislation has been effective, but over
whether its gains have been worth the cost. Namely, have male
students and men’s athletic programs suffered as a result of Title
IX?

Men’s Athletics
Critics of Title IX charge that it has “spawned resentment and
confusion” and led to a state of affairs where there is “serious dis-
crimination going on against men” (Darden, 2007, p. 41; Suggs,
2002). These critics are angered by the decision of many universi-
ties to achieve Title IX compliance by cutting men’s nonrevenue
sports. If a school cannot afford to achieve “substantial propor-
tionality” by boosting the number of its women’s sports teams,
then it may find the funds to do so by eliminating some men’s
teams. For many schools this has meant cutting less popular sports
such as wrestling and tennis. Many college athletic coaches claim
that this approach is especially illogical because there are simply
more men on campus interested in playing sports. These coaches
find that while they have to recruit women on campus to fill spots
on some women’s teams, they have to turn campus men away
from walk-on spots on men’s teams (Suggs, 2002).

Supporters of Title IX disagree (Suggs, 2002) and point out
that the same athletic departments that cut men’s wrestling and
tennis teams spend an enormous portion of their budget on rev-
enue-generating sports such as men’s football and basketball.
According to Fagan and Cyphers (2012), Division 1-A schools
spent 59 percent of their athletic budget for men’s sports on foot-
ball (59 percent) and basketball (19 percent) in the 2009–2010
school year. When non-revenue generating men’s sports such
as wrestling or tennis are cut, it is usually not to fund women’s
programs but rather to put more money into the already success-
ful revenue-generating sports programs such as football. Rutgers
University, for example, cut the men’s tennis program in 2006,
which had a budget of $175,000. The university spent that same
amount in 2006 housing football players in hotel rooms the night
before six home games (National Women’s Law Center, 2012).

Changing Athletic Models
This debate over Title IX has sparked a larger debate over the
nature of college athletic programs. Many intercollegiate athlet-
ics programs are run on a “commercial model,” whereby schools

Title IX

invest in the most lucrative sports, namely football, and hope
to generate revenue by doing so (Porto, 2005, pp. 29–30). Sup-
porters of Title IX suggest that educational institutions’ sports
programs should instead follow a “participation model,” whereby
athletics are valued not according to their commercial worth, but
as a rewarding part of a liberal arts education. In a participa-
tion model, the principal beneficiaries of college athletics are not
fans, television stations, colleges, or athletic departments, but
student athletes (2005, p. 30).

At this point in time, male athletes and men’s sports coaches
continue to file lawsuits challenging the application of Title IX
to intercollegiate athletics. Despite the anger generated over the
elimination of men’s sports teams, all indications show that col-
lege athletic departments will have to continue to make Title IX
compliance a top priority when allocating resources and bal-
ancing budgets. Although future lawsuits might slightly alter
protocols for complying with Title IX, the general spirit of the
legislation with its absolute insistence on gender equity will
almost certainly remain unchanged.

Terms & Concepts

Educational Institution: A local educational agency (LEA),
meaning a school district that supervises public elementary and
secondary schools; a preschool; a private elementary or second-
ary school; any institute of undergraduate or graduate higher
education; or any institute of professional or vocational educa-
tion.

Gender Equity: The equal and fair assignment of resources,
opportunities, and decision-making responsibilities to both men
and women.

Nonrevenue Sports: Often referred to as Olympic sports, this
group includes swimming, wrestling, and men’s gymnastics,
among others. These sports do not typically generate revenue at
the college level.

Revenue Sports: Collegiate level sports such as football and
basketball, which sometimes (but not always) generate revenue
through ticket sales or participation in major tournaments.

Sex-Based Discrimination: Situation in which the sex of an
individual either directly or indirectly results in their receiving
unequal treatment, all other factors being equal.

Three-Part Test: Devised by the U.S. Department of Education’s
Office for Civil Rights, it is the primary means used to gauge
institutional compliance with Title IX’s athletic provisions.

US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights: The mis-
sion of this government office is to ensure that all citizens are
given equal access to education. This office assists those who

face discrimination in education by resolving discrimination
complaints and by attempting to prevent discrimination. The
Office does this in part by helping institutions to reach voluntary
compliance with all civil rights laws.

Bibliography

Anderson, D., Cheslock, J., & Ehrenberg, R. (2006) Gender
equity in intercollegiate athletics: Determinants of Title
IX compliance. Journal of Higher Education, 77 (2),
225-250. Retrieved March 16, 2007 from EBSCO Online
Database Education Research Complete http://search.
ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=199
88333&site=ehost-live

Burnett, S. (2003, June 9). Revolution number IX. Community
College Week, 15 (22), 6-9. Retrieved March 16, 2007
from EBSCO Online Database Education Research
Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=t
rue&db=ehh&AN=10064699&site=ehost-live

Darden, E. (2007). Even out the playing field. American
School Board Journal, 194 (2), 41-42. Retrieved March
16, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Education
Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.asp
x?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=23639598&site=ehost-live

Fagan, K., & Cyphers, L. (2012, April 29). Five myths about
Title IXZ. ESPN W. Retrieved December 12, 2013, from
http://espn.go.com/espnw/title-ix/article/7729603/five-
myths-title-ix

Kane, Mary Jo. (2012, September ). Title IX at 40: Examining
mysteries, myths, and misinformation surrounding
the historic federal law.Fortieth Anniversary of Title
IX: Status of Girls’ and Women’s Sports Participation,
13(2), 2–9. Retrieved December 12, 2013, from
https://www.presidentschallenge.org/informed/digest/
docs/201209digest

Ladda, Shawn. (2012, September ). Examining Title IX at 40:
Historical development, legal implications, and gover-
nance structures.Fortieth Anniversary of Title IX: Status
of Girls’ and Women’s Sports Participation, 13(2), 10–20.
Retrieved December 12, 2013, from https://www.presi-
dentschallenge.org/informed/digest/docs/201209digest

McAndrews, P. J. (2012). Keeping Score: How universities can
comply with Title IX without eliminating men’s collegiate
athletic programs. Brigham Young University Education
& Law Journal, (1), 111–140. Retrieved December 13,
2013, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research
Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=t
rue&db=ehh&AN=74995628

Title IX

National Women’s Law Center. (2012, January 30). Debunking
the myths about Title IX and athletics. Title IX Fact Sheet.
Retrieved December 12, 2013, from http://www.nwlc.org/
resource/debunking-myths-about-title-ix-and-athletics

Pieronek, C. F. (2012). The 2010 “dear colleague” letter
on Title IX compliance for college athletic programs:
Pointing the way to proportionality . . . again. Journal
of College & University Law, 38(2), 277–318. Retrieved
December 13, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database
Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.
com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=75378461

Porto, B. (2005). Changing the game plan: A participation
model of college sports. Phi Kappa Phi Forum, 85 (3),
28-31. Retrieved March 16, 2007 from EBSCO Online
Database Education Research Complete. http://search.
ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=189
73859&site=ehost-live

Stromquist, N. P. (2013). Education policies for gender equity:
Probing into state responses. Education Policy Analysis
Archives, 21(65), 1–28. Retrieved December 13, 2013,
from EBSCO Online Database Education Research
Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=t
rue&db=ehh&AN=90024100

Suggs, W. (2002, June 21). Title IX at 30. Chronicle of Higher
Education, 48 (41), A38-41. Retrieved March 16, 2007
from EBSCO Online Database Education Research
Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=t
rue&db=ehh&AN=6884866&site=ehost-live

U.S. Department of Education. (1997). Title IX: 25 years of
progress. Washington, D.C. Retrieved March 16, 2007,
from http://www.ed.gov/pubs/TitleIX/index.html

U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. (1980).
Title IX regulations. Washington, D.C. Retrieved March
16, 2007, from http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/cor/coord/titleix.
htm

U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. (2005).
Additional clarification of intercollegiate athletic policy:
Three-part test – Part three. Washington, D.C. Retrieved

March 16, 2007, from http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/
ocr/docs/title9guidanceadditional.html

U.S. Department of Justice. (2001). Title IX legal manual.
Washington, D.C. Retrieved March 16, 2007, from http://
www.usdoj.gov/crt/cor/coord/titleix.htm

Suggested Reading

Anderson, D. & Cheslock, J. (2004, May). Institutional strate-
gies to achieve gender equity in intercollegiate athletics:
Does Title IX harm male athletes? American Economic
Review, 94 (2), 307-311. Retrieved March 16, 2007 from
EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete.
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e
hh&AN=13708894&site=ehost-live

Gender equity in college sports. (2007). The Chronicle of
Higher Education. Washington, D.C. Retrieved March 17,
2007 from http://chronicle.com/stats/genderequity

Hardy, L. (2012). The legacy of Title IX. American School
Board Journal, 199(8), 12–15. Retrieved December 13,
2013, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research
Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=t
rue&db=ehh&AN=78045786

Hogshead-Makar, N. (2003). The ongoing battle over Title
IX. USA Today Magazine, 132(2698), p. 64-66. Retrieved
March 16, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Education
Research Complete http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx
?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=10208246&site=ehost-live

Pickett, M., Dawkins, M. P., & Braddock, J. (2012). Race
and gender equity in sports: Have white and African
American females benefited equally from Title IX?.
American Behavioral Scientist, 56(11), 1581–1603.
Retrieved December 13, 2013, from EBSCO Online
Database Education Research Complete. http://search.
ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh
&AN=82506678

U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. (2004).
Sex discrimination. Retrieved March 17, 2007, from http://
www.ed.gov/policy/rights/guid/ocr/sex.html

Essay by Ashley L. Cohen;
Edited by Karen A. Kallio, M.Ed.
Ms. Kallio earned her B.A. in English from Clark University and her Master’s in Education from the University of Massachusetts at
Amherst. She lives and works in the Boston area.

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