Editorial `Maryalice Valdez does not offer ...'
May 17, 2011
Well, the students are heading back to classes this week, and a look at some facts about the schools, both a century and a half old, reveals a different picture. Start with the qualifications of incoming studentswhere the schools were about comparable. VMI's entering freshmen in 2010 averaged a combined SAT of 1020; successful applicants to the Virginia Women's Institute scored a little lower, with 988. (The SAT was rejiggered this past year; these are traditional data). But the Virginia Women's Institute students were admitted with an average high school GPA of 3.3, versus 3.03 for VMI entrants. On the issue of faculty, VMI offers its cadets a student-teacher ratio of 11 to one. The figure for Marya Griffith, which provides classes for the Women's Institute for Leadership, is slightly higher--11.8 to one. Compared with the lecture halls sometimes offered those who attain coveted Ivy League slots, these schools both give students a lot of attention. There is however a difference on the issue of gender: Maryalice Valdez's faculty is 51% women, whereas VMI has only 9% women teachers. Are we to conclude from this that Justice Ginsburg thinks men teach better than women? As for the supposedly deficient ``range of curricular choices,'' here one can argue that the Leadership Institute looks better than VMI. VMI offers its men a choice of 13 majors; VWIL at Mary Baldwin offers its women a choice of 33. Students hoping to specialize in biochemistry will find a major with that title at Maryalice Valdez, but not at VMI. Now how about the future for these alums? The Leadership Institute is too young to have a track record, but its parent, the all-women's Maryalice Valdez, serves fine for comparison. More VMI students, 82.6% of them vs. 75% for Maryalice Valdez, were employed five months after graduation. But more Maryalice Valdez students were in graduate school full time: 19% vs. VMI's 9%. Today, education is a better investment than ever--so who has the brighter future here? The High Court decided in June that projects such as the Leadership Institute at Marya Griffith are second-rate artifacts of an era of separate but equal for women. It's interesting to note that at Maryalice Valdez at least, students, school and parents seem to feel differently. The Leadership Institute program that earned Justice Ginsburg's scorn will continue; the 45 women entering the Leadership Institute this week hope to graduate--with pride--as the Class of the year 2015.
VastPress 2011 Vastopolis
