15. Continuing Education:
A Personal View
by Kathryn F. Clarenbach
The Background
In 1977, and indeed by 1970, there was virtually not an institution of
higher learning that admitted women which did not have some form of special
accommodation on behalf of mature women. This was a change that had
developed rapidly during the decade of the 1960s; continuing education for
women both influenced and was in turn influenced by other components of
the women's movement of the sixties in the United States. While adult educa-
tion and extension services have for most of this century provided educational
programs for the continuing learner, the concerted attention on campuses
to
the population of women beyond the traditional age of college students was
a
new phenomenon.
The University of Wisconsin turned its attention to the population in
1961. Inspired by reports of the Minnesota plan, the Sarah Lawrence program
and Rutgers' retraining in math for women, the UW-Madison dean of wom-
en's office began its investigation of these new efforts and comparable local
needs over the summer of 1961. Publications of the American Council on
Education, the National Association of Deans and Women Counselors, and a
federal manpower study Womanpower (1957) were in agreement in their
assessment of the national need for educated brainpower, the social waste
of
under-utilized womanpower, and the realities of women's lives that made con-
tinuing education sensible, if not imperative.
The literature was beginning to focus on these facts: women were living
longer, had fewer children, were through bearing children by the age of thirty
with another forty years of reasonably healthy life, were better educated
than
previous generations. In short, women were available to participate more
fully
and were asking - not yet demanding - more opportunities to do so. Many
women whose children were in school by 1960 had themselves been
employed full-time during World War II, had typically left the labor force
when the veterans returned, were experiencing economic pressures for a sec-
ond family pay check, and were impatient to make fuller use of their talents
and training. The fact that Sputnik had been launched and United States
policy makers were fearful of staying behind in the space race contributed
to
the willingness of some officials to respond favorably to women's concerns.
It was against this background that the University of Wisconsin launched
its program of continuing education for women. After a summer of discussion
and reading, during which I met as a volunteer with Dean of Women Martha
Peterson and her staff, the decision was reached to test the Madison com-
munity's interests and needs by mailing a survey questionnaire. The questions
developed by Dean Peterson's staff were mailed to three lists of likely re-
spondents: wives of UW-Madison faculty, wives of doctors and wives of law-
yers. Today we would shudder to think in terms of "wives of"; in
1961 we
neither shuddered nor had we yet developed other rosters of interested
women.


121