“The connection to E”Y is one answer that satisfies me.”
I think that really is the main one. But I think that people feel like they need to come up with other reasons (and there are many) to justify spending so much money to send a girl away from home to learn. From my perspective, we should all be here anyways. But when I am speaking to people in America and trying to convince them to send their daughters here, I have to keep in mind that they themselves live in the US, so why should they think that davka their 18 year old daughter needs to come here for the year?
But since the seminary year is about growth, I can talk about the fact that you can’t grow in chu”l the way you can in EY, and the people here are different and there is so much to learn from them, etc.
And in addition, I do think that it is very good for many girls to get away for a year, especially those who are over-burdened at home as well as those who are from more modern backgrounds and want to or need to change.
In terms of how it started, it probably started (at least in the BY world) when Rebbetzin David, shlit”a decided to start a seminary in EY. I don’t know if there were any seminaries in the States at the time, but if there were, I imagine they were not on the same caliber.
And then, more and more girls wanted to come, and they couldn’t all get in, so new seminaries opened up, and the process kept repeating.