At the time, a middle-class girl was expected to go to college, but as a 1959 study showed, 37 percent dropped out before graduating.8 In fact, the number of women enrolled in higher education had been dropping since the 1920s, when women earned approximately half of all bachelor’s degrees and approximately 17 percent of doctorates. By the 1950s, those numbers had plummeted to 24 percent and 10 percent, respectively. By 1960, women made up a mere 6 percent of doctors, 3 percent of lawyers, and less than 1 percent of engineers. As a Newsweek article from 1946 pointedly stated, “For the American
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