The Education Department has opened a civil rights investigation into whether Smith College violated anti-discrimination laws by allowing transgender women, referred to in the complaint as “biological males,” to enroll in the school.

Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded education, includes an exception allowing colleges to maintain all-male or all-female student bodies. In its press release announcing the investigation, the Education Department argued that this exception applies on the basis of biological sex, not gender identity. Smith College requires applicants to identify as women and live as women, so transgender women are eligible to apply.

“An all-women’s college loses all meaning if it is admitting biological males,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in the same press release.

Richey argues that admitting transgender women strips women’s colleges of their meaning. But, what is the meaning of women’s colleges in 2026? The purpose of single-sex colleges has evolved over time, and today their role is far less clear than it once was.

Women’s Colleges Were Created To Solve A Real Problem

Many of the most prestigious all-women’s colleges were founded in the mid-1800s, and Smith was founded in 1871. At that time, all-female colleges were essential because few other schools admitted women. And even the few coed schools that permitted women to apply didn’t admit very many of them. The idea behind all-women’s colleges was to create educational opportunities for women who lacked access to higher education because of their gender.

For a long time, these schools remained a necessary alternative for women looking for educational opportunities. Many of the Ivy League schools, for example, were still not admitting women even halfway through the 20 th century. Princeton and Yale didn’t admit undergraduate women until 1969. And Dartmouth waited until 1972. A small number of all-male colleges still exist, including schools like Morehouse and Wabash.

But, in 2026, it’s a different story for women. Women now earn the majority of degrees at every level of higher education. According to the most recent data, women earned 58% of undergraduate degrees , 63% of master’s degrees, and 57% of all doctoral degrees, including PhDs, MDs and JDs. This suggests that the original mission of women’s colleges to expand access to higher education has largely been fulfilled.

Research Finds Little Benefit To Single-Sex Education

The arguments in favor of women’s colleges today tend to center less on access and more on outcomes. Supporters argue that males and females learn differently and that students in single-sex schools participate more freely without the pressures of the opposite sex. As a result, they develop leadership skills, confidence and perform better academically. Advocates of women’s schools, for example, often contend that female students are more likely to pursue leadership roles and speak up in class without the pressure of being around young men.

However, there is little evidence that single-sex education produces better academic outcomes. Large reviews and meta-analyses consistently find little to no measurable academic advantage for single-sex schools over coeducational ones. One 2024 analysis reviewing 677 studies and more than 1 million students found no meaningful academic benefit to single-sex education, and in some cases, students at coeducational schools demonstrated better communication skills and higher self-confidence.

Academics is not like athletics. In sports, separating men and women can be justified because of physical differences that affect competition. But there is little evidence that men and women learn so differently that they require separate colleges in order to succeed academically.

The Problem With Separating Students By Sex

The notion that separate learning institutions for women and men are better can unintentionally reinforce outdated stereotypes about gender. The idea that women learn better, lead better or gain confidence only when separated from men may have been true at one time, but today it sends the wrong message. If we suggest that women are less effective when men are around, we should not be surprised when employers view men as the better choice for leadership roles.

Safety Of Women’s College

For some students, women’s colleges now serve a different purpose altogether. When the historically all-female Mills College became coeducational in 2021, many students mourned the loss of what they described as a safe space. Without men on campus, some said they felt supported and physically safer.

Women’s Colleges In A Post-Binary World

The role of women’s colleges becomes even more complicated as institutions begin to adapt to changing views of gender identity. When several elite women’s colleges, including Smith College, adopted trans-inclusive admissions policies in the mid-2010s, they argued that their missions should evolve to include transgender women because women’s colleges existed to support people disadvantaged on the basis of gender. The changes came at a time when many institutions were moving away from binary definitions of male and female and toward a more expansive understanding of gender identity.

Now, Smith College is being forced to defend its status as a single-sex institution because of this transgender admissions policy. The outcome of the investigation remains uncertain. However, if the result suggests that maintaining women’s colleges requires administrators and courts to determine who is sufficiently female to qualify for admission, that may be the clearest indication yet that the single-sex model no longer works in today’s world.