The number of women’s colleges in the United States has been shrinking for decades. Fifty years ago, there were 230 all-female colleges. Now there are fewer than 50. But Marilyn Hammond, interim president of the Women’s College Coalition, wouldn’t say women’s colleges are “struggling to survive” any more than their co-ed peers.

Colleges close every year, Hammond said. “Sometimes it’s a co-ed college, sometimes it’s a women’s college.”

Sweet Briar College, an all girls school in Virginia, is the latest to announce its closure and make headlines, many of which are questioning the very foundation of single-sex education. There doesn’t seem to be any data about the death rate of certain types of higher education institutions, and most colleges to close in recent years have not been single-sex, but plenty of people will argue, anecdotally, that Sweet Briar’s closure is proof women’s colleges are becoming irrelevant.

Hammond, however, does not ascribe to the idea that Sweet Briar’s plan to close indicates it is only a matter of time before the rest of the single-sex colleges follow. “Higher education is a difficult business to be in,” Hammond said, “whether you’re public or private, women’s or coed.”

For many onlookers, the dwindling number of all-female colleges—at a time when female enrollment in higher education is surpassing that of male enrollment—points simply to the idea that all-women schools are anachronistic. Like the rise in historically black colleges, female-only institutions were created to provide a place for students not welcomed by the colleges of their time. Now, integration by race and gender has opened up the vast majority of college campuses, at least in spirit.

Sweet Briar President James F. Jones Jr. told the Washington Post the decision at his college came down to the “declining number of students choosing to attend small, rural, private liberal arts colleges and even fewer young women willing to consider single-sex education.”

Perhaps the nail in Sweet Briar’s coffin was not the female-only mission, but its other attributes—small, rural, and liberal arts-focused.

Stephanie Kennedy, co-founder of the My College Planning Team college admissions consulting firm, said Sweet Briar is a victim of the market, but not a market opposed to single sex education or even liberal arts education. She points to its location in rural Virginia as a key factor to its demise.

“At the risk of using a trite metaphor, if you believe that Walmart will overtake quality boutique shopping, then your logic may follow that large public universities and technical colleges will overtake small liberal arts colleges,” Kennedy said. “To me, that is a faulty leap.”

It is true, however, that no one is looking to women’s colleges as an area of untapped potential in higher education. By one count, no new women’s colleges have opened in the United States for 60 years. But the shrinking number of all-female campuses doesn’t mean the institutions are gone. Plenty of former women’s colleges are still around, fulfilling their missions to educate and empower young women — only they’re doing it as co-ed institutions.

In an increasingly saturated market, institutions must adapt to survive.