Sweet Briar College's Financial Fate Echoes Woes of Other Women's Schools

A visitor to Sweet Briar College would be hard-pressed to find signs of the financial stress that is shuttering the tiny women’s school.
Twenty-one buildings on the 3,250-acre campus are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Days before Saturday’s planned commencement, seniors astride horses rode through a quad worthy of a putting green.
In announcing the planned closure of the 114-year-old school in early March, Sweet Briar leaders described the reason as “insurmountable financial challenges”.
They are the same kind of challenges that have driven dozens of all-women’s colleges out of existence. In 1960, there were about 230 women’s colleges and that number had slipped to below 50 last year, according to Women’s College Coalition.