The social, cultural, and economic circumstances that have shaped the development of women's higher education are discussed. After considering colonial America when women were outsiders to liberal arts institutions, the creation of women's and co-educational colleges is traced and the process by which women of different ethnic, racial, religious, and social groups became collegians is described. Four themes are stressed: women's struggles for access to institutions, the dimensions of the collegiate experience, the effects of education upon women's life choices, and the uneasy connection between feminism and women's educational advancement. Consideration is given to specific periods and developments, including: the utility of women's educations, 1800-1860; women and the modernizing of liberal education, 1860-1920; the collegiate education of women and its plural strands, 1920-1940; the expectations of the first modern college women in the 1920s and 1930s; a public debate for college women, 1920-1944; and the developments since 1944, including the effect of the GI Bill, the launching of Sputnik by the Russians, and federal legislation that was intended to recruit a wider spectrum of students, including women. A bibliography is included. (SW)