The first state college for women was created this month in 1884 in Mississippi. Known as the Mississippi Industrial Institute and College, classes opened in the fall of the next year on the campus of a former college in Columbus. Now called the Mississippi University for Women, it has been ranked as one of the top schools in the annual list of “America’s Best Colleges.” Now coed, the school has many of the buildings on its imposing campus on the National Register of Historic Places. Across the U.S. today, there are more than 20 million graduate and undergraduate students enrolled in colleges. Over 55 percent are women. That’s a full 7½ percent of the female population over the age of 3. Profile America is in its 16th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.