Part 2

All the arguments against the coeducation of the sexes in colleges have been met and answered by experience. It was feared at first that coeducation would lower the standard of scholarship on account of the supposed inferior quality of women’s minds. The unanimous experience in coeducational colleges goes to show that the average standing of women is slightly higher than the average standing of men.[13] Many reasons for the greater success of women are given, such as absence of the distraction of athletic sports, greater diligence, higher moral standards, but the fact, however it may be explained, remains and is as gratifying as astonishing to those interested in women’s education. The question of health has also been finally disposed of; thousands of women have been working side by side with men in coeducational institutions for the past twenty-five years and undergoing exactly the same tests without a larger percentage of withdrawals on account of illness than men. The question of conduct has also been disposed of. None of the difficulties have arisen that were feared from the association of men and women of marriageable age. Looking at coeducation as a whole it is most surprising that it has worked so well.[14] Perhaps the only objection that may be made from men’s point of view to coeducation in America is that it has succeeded only too well and that the proportion of women students is increasing too steadily. Not only is the number of coeducational colleges increasing but the number of women relatively to the number of men is increasing also. In 1890 there were studying in coeducational colleges 16,959 men and 7,929 women; or women, in other words, formed 31.9 per cent of the whole body of students. In 1898 there were 28,823 men and 16,284 women studying in coeducational colleges, women forming 36.1 per cent of the whole body of students. Between 1890 and 1898 men in coeducational colleges have increased 70.0 per cent, but women in coeducational colleges have increased 105.4 per cent.[15]

There is every reason to suppose that this increase of women will continue. Already girls form 56.5 per cent of the pupils in all secondary schools and 13 per cent of the girls enrolled and only 10 per cent of the boys enrolled graduate from the public high schools. It is sometimes said that men students, as a rule, dislike the presence of women, and in especial that they are unwilling to compete for prizes against women for the very reason that the average standing of women is higher than their own. If there is any force in this statement, however, it would seem that men should increase less rapidly in coeducational colleges than in separate colleges for men. The reverse, however, is the case. During the eight years from 1890 to 1898 men have increased in coeducational colleges 70.0 per cent, but in separate colleges for men only 34.7 per cent.[16] This is all the more remarkable, because in the separate colleges for men are included the large undergraduate departments of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania. It is women who have shown a preference for separate education; women have increased more rapidly in separate colleges for women than in coeducational colleges. It will be observed, however, that the separate colleges for women, like the separate colleges for men included in my list of fifty-eight, are in the east; it is in the east only that any preference for separate education is shown by either sex.[17]

Independent colleges for women—Since independent colleges for women of the same grade as those for men are peculiar to the United States, I shall treat them somewhat more fully.[18] The independent colleges here taken into account are the eleven colleges included in division A[19] of the U. S. education reports.[20] The independent colleges for women fall readily into three groups: I. The so-called “four great colleges for women,” Vassar, Smith, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr. It will be seen by referring to the classification on page 12 that these four colleges are included among the fifty-eight leading colleges of the United States; they are all included in the twenty-two colleges admitted to the Association of collegiate alumnæ; two of them, Bryn Mawr and Wellesley, are included in the twenty-three colleges belonging to the Federation of graduate clubs; they are all included in the list of fifty-two leading colleges of the United States given in the handbook of Minerva; they are all, except Bryn Mawr, included in the list given by the U. S. education report for 1897–98[21] of forty-six colleges in the United States having three hundred students and upward; three of them, Bryn Mawr, Smith and Vassar, are included among the fifty-two colleges of the United States possessing invested funds of $500,000 and upward, and two of them, Vassar and Bryn Mawr, are included among the twenty-nine colleges of the United States possessing funds of $1,000,000 and upward; three of them, Smith, Wellesley and Vassar, rank among the twenty-three largest undergraduate colleges in the United States; one of them, Smith, ranks as the tenth undergraduate college in the United States.

=Vassar college, Poughkeepsie, New York=[22]—Founder, Matthew Vassar; intention, “to found and equip an institution which should accomplish for young women what our colleges are accomplishing for young men;” opened, 1865; preparatory department dropped, 1888; presidents, three (men); 45 instructors (16 Ph. D.s.)—35 women, 2 without first degree; 10 men; 584 undergrad. s., 11 grad. s., 24 special s.; productive funds, $1,050,000; a main building with lecture rooms, library and accommodation for 345 students, and two other residence halls accommodating 189 students; a science building; a lecture building; a museum with art, music and laboratory rooms; an observatory; a gymnasium; a plant house; a president’s house; five professors’ houses; total cost of buildings, $1,044,365; vols. in library, 30,000; laboratory equipment, $33,382; acres, 200; music and art depts., but technical work in neither counted toward bachelor’s degree; tuition fee, $100; lowest charge, tuition, board and residence, including washing, $400.

=Wellesley college, Wellesley, Massachusetts=—Founder, Henry F. Durant; intention, “to found a college for the glory of God by the education and culture of women,” opened 1875; preparatory department dropped, 1880; requirement from students of one hour daily domestic or clerical work dropped, 1896; presidents, five (all women); 69 instructors (13 Ph. D.s.)—64 women, 16, apart from laboratory assistants without first degree; 5 men; 611 undergrad. s., 25 grad. s., 21 special s.; productive funds, $7,000;[23] a main building with library lecture rooms and accommodation for 250 students; a chemical laboratory; an observatory; a chapel; an art building; a music building; 8 halls of residence, accommodating 348 students (new hall being built); total cost of buildings, $1,106,500; vols, in library, 49,970; laboratory equipment, $50,000; acres, 410; music and art depts., but technical work in neither counted toward bachelor’s degree; tuition fee, $175; lowest charge, tuition, board and residence (beds made, rooms dusted by students), $400.

=Smith college, Northampton, Massachusetts=—Founder, Sophia Smith; intention, to provide “means and facilities for education equal to those which are afforded in our colleges for young men;” opened, 1875; no preparatory department ever connected with the college; president, one (man); 49 instructors (13 Ph. D.s.)—27 women, 9 without first degree; 12 men; 1,070 undergrad. s., 4 grad. s.; since 1891 no special s. admitted; productive funds, $900,000; two lecture buildings; a lecture and gymnastic building; a science building; a chemical laboratory; an observatory; a gymnasium; a plant house; a music building; an art building; 13 halls of residence accommodating 520 students; a president’s house; total cost of buildings $786,000; vols, in library, 8,000 (70,000 vols. in library in Northampton also used by the students); laboratory equipment, $22,500; acres, 40; music and art depts., technical work in both, amounting to between one-sixth and one-seventh of the hours required for a degree, may be counted toward bachelor’s degree; tuition fee, $100; lowest charge, tuition, board and residence (beds made, rooms dusted by students), $400.

=Bryn Mawr college, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania=—Founder, Joseph W. Taylor; intention, to provide “an institution of learning for the advanced education of women which should afford them all the advantages of a college education which are so freely offered to young men;” opened, 1885; no preparatory department ever connected with the college; presidents, two (one man, one woman); 38 instructors (29 Ph. D.s. 1 D. Sc.)—15 women, 23 men; 269 undergrad, s., 61 grad. s., 9 hearers; productive funds, $1,000,000; a lecture and library building; a science building; a gymnasium; an infirmary; five halls of residence and two cottages, accommodating 323 students; a president’s house; 6 professors’ houses; total cost, $718,810; vols. in library, 32,000; laboratory equipment, $47,998; acres, 50; no music department; no technical instruction in art; tuition fee, $125; lowest charge, tuition, board and residence, $400.

II. The women’s colleges not included in the list of the fifty-eight most important colleges in the United States given on page 12, but of exceedingly good academic standing as compared with the greater number of the separate colleges for men and the coeducational colleges included in the four hundred and eighty enumerated by the commissioner of education.

=Mt. Holyoke college, South Hadley, Massachusetts=—Founder, Mary Lyon; seminary opened, 1837; chartered as seminary and college, 1888; seminary department dropped and true college organized, 1893; presidents, two (both women); 37 instructors (7 Ph. D.s.)—all women; 5, apart from laboratory assistants, without first degree; 426 undergrad, s., 3 grad. s., 9 special s., 3 music s.; productive funds, $300,000; a lecture building; a science building; a museum and art gallery; a library; a gymnasium; a rink; an observatory; an infirmary; a plant house; 9 residence halls accommodating 478 students; total cost of buildings, $625,000; vols. in library, 17,700; laboratory equipment, $33,000; acres, 160; music and art depts., technical work in both, amount limited by faculty, may be counted towards bachelor’s degree; tuition fee, $100; lowest charge, tuition, board and residence (beds made, rooms dusted, by students, and in addition one-half hour of domestic work required), $250.

=Woman’s college of Baltimore, city of Baltimore, Maryland=—Founded and controlled by Methodist Episcopal church; opened, 1888; preparatory department dropped, 1893; presidents, two (men); 21 instructors (10 Ph. D.s.)—11 women, 1 without first degree; 10 men, 1 without first degree; 259 undergrad. s.; 0 grad. s.; 15 special s.; productive funds, $334,994; a lecture building and three houses adapted for lecture purposes; a gymnasium; a biological laboratory; 3 residence halls holding 230; total cost of buildings, $505,703; vols. in library, 7,800; laboratory equipment, $47,000; acres (in city), 7; music and art depts., but technical work in neither counted towards bachelor’s degree; tuition fee, $125; lowest charge, tuition, board and residence (beds made, rooms dusted by students), $375.

=Wells college, Aurora, New York=—Founders, Henry Wells and Edwin B. Morgan; seminary opened, 1868; chartered as college, 1870; preparatory dept. dropped, 1896; presidents, two (men); 13 instructors (4 Ph. D.s.)—10 women, 3 without first degree; 3 men; 59 undergrad. s.; 0 grad. s.; 27 special s.; 4 music s.; productive funds, $200,000; a main building with lecture rooms and accommodations for 100 students; a science and music building; a president’s house; total cost of buildings, $195,000; vols. in library, 7,300; laboratory equipment, $20,200; acres, 200; music and art depts., technical work in neither counted towards bachelor’s degree; tuition fee, $100; lowest charge, tuition, board and residence (beds made by students), $400.

III. Elmira college, the Randolph-Macon Woman’s college, Rockford college and Mills college are here relegated to a third group because of certain common characteristics. Their endowment is wholly inadequate, averaging considerably less than $50,000 apiece, reaching $100,000 only in the case of the Randolph-Macon Woman’s college. In each of them a disproportionate number of students is studying in the music or art department; special students form too large a proportion of the whole number of students; the number of professors is too small to permit college classes to be conducted by specialists; the college classes are too small; true college training cannot be obtained in very small classes, and moreover, in view of the increasing number of women now going to college, when a college for women does not grow steadily it is reasonable to assume that there must be some good reason for its lack of growth.

=Elmira college=, situated at Elmira, New York, has, apart from the president, 10 academic instructors (7 women, 2 without first degree; 3 men); 5 teachers of music, 2 of art. There are studying in the college 70 regular college students, 17 specials and 61 special students in music.

=The Randolph-Macon Woman’s college=, situated at Lynchburg, Virginia, has, apart from the president, 12 academic instructors (2 Ph. D.s.)—7 women, 2 without first degree; 5 men; 9 instructors in music. Of the 226 students,[24] 55 are regular college students; 44 registered for degree but spending one-fifth of time in music or preparatory work; 16 special students; 6 students of art; 49 preparatory students; 46 students of music.

=Rockford college, Rockford, Illinois=—Opened as seminary, 1849; chartered as college, 1892; 13 academic instructors (2 Ph. D.s.)—all women, 3 without first degree; 4 teachers of music, 1 of art; 35 college s.; 7 special s.; 70 s. in music only.

=Mills college, California=—Opened as seminary, 1871; chartered as college, 1885; 11 instructors (9 women, 3 without first degree; 2 men); 8 teachers of music; 22 college s.; 135 pupils in preparatory department.

In addition to the existing colleges belonging to these groups, a separate college for women, Trinity, meant to be of true college grade, will soon be opened in Washington under the control of the Roman Catholic church.

It is often assumed by the adversaries of coeducation that independent colleges for women may be trusted to introduce a course of study modified especially for women, but the experience, both of coeducational colleges that have devised women’s courses and of women’s colleges, demonstrates conclusively that women themselves refuse to regard as satisfactory any modification whatsoever of the usual academic course. At the opening of Vassar college itself it is clear that the trustees and faculty made an honest attempt to discover and introduce certain modifications in the system of intellectual training then in operation in the best colleges for men. They planned from the start to give much more time to accomplishments—music, drawing and painting—than was given in men’s colleges, and the example of Vassar in this respect was followed ten years later by Wellesley and Smith. These accomplishments have gradually fallen out of the course of women’s colleges; neither Vassar nor Wellesley allows time spent in them to be counted toward the bachelor’s degree. Smith alone of the colleges of group I still permits nearly one-sixth of the whole college course to be devoted to them. Bryn Mawr, which opened ten years later than Smith or Wellesley, from the beginning found it possible to exclude them from its course.

In like manner Vassar, Smith and Wellesley in the beginning found it necessary to admit special students—students, that is to say, interested in special subjects, but without sufficient general training to be able to matriculate as college students; but their admission has been recognized as disadvantageous, and has gradually been restricted. In 1870 special students, as distinguished from preparatory students, formed 19.6 per cent of the whole number of the students of Vassar; in 1899 they formed only 3.9 per cent, and only 3.3 per cent of the whole number of Wellesley students. Smith since 1891 has declined to admit them at all, and Bryn Mawr never admitted them.[25]

Again, Wellesley and Vassar in the beginning organized preparatory departments with pupils living in the same halls as the college students and taught in great part by the same teachers. The presence of these pupils tended to turn the colleges into boarding schools, and the steady and rapid development of Vassar as a true college began only after the closing of its preparatory department in 1888; until this time the number of students in the college proper had been almost stationary; Wellesley closed its preparatory department in 1880; Smith never organized one; Bryn Mawr never organized one; Mt. Holyoke, the Woman’s college of Baltimore, and Wells college have all closed their preparatory departments within the last seven years.[26]

It seems to have been at first supposed that the same standards of scholarship need not be applied in the choice of instructors to teach women as in that of instructors to teach men, that women were fittest to teach women, and that the personal character and influence of the woman instructor in some mysterious way supplied the deficiency on her part of academic training. For a long time not even an ordinary undergraduate education was required of her, and there are still teaching in women’s colleges too many women without even a first degree. But it has been found on the whole that systematic mental training is best imparted by those who have themselves received it; the numbers of well-trained women are increasing; and the prejudice against the appointment of men where men are better qualified has almost disappeared.[27]

It has been recognized that the work done in women’s colleges is most satisfactory to women when it is the same in quality and quantity as the work done in colleges for men, and it has been recognized also that they need the same time for its performance. Domestic work, therefore, which by the founder of Wellesley was regarded as a necessary part of women’s education, is at present, I believe, required nowhere except on the perfectly plain ground of economy. The hour of domestic service originally required of every student in Wellesley was abandoned in 1896; a half-hour is still required at Mt. Holyoke, but tuition, board and residence are less expensive there. The time given to domestic work is obviously so much time taken from academic work.

In the matter of discipline the tendency has been toward ever-diminishing supervision by the college authorities. Vassar and Wellesley began with the strict regulations of a boarding school; it was regarded as impossible that young women living away from home should be in any measure trusted with the control of their own actions. Smith from the first allowed more liberty, in part because many of her students lived in boarding houses outside the college. In all three colleges the restrictions laid upon the students have been gradually lessened, and at Vassar there is at present a well-developed system of what is known as “limited self-government,” according to which many matters of discipline are intrusted to the whole body of students. Bryn Mawr was organized with a system of self-government by the students perhaps more far-reaching than was then in operation in any of the colleges for men; the necessary rules are made by the Students’ association, which includes all undergraduate and graduate students, and enforced by an executive committee of students who in the case of a serious offense may recommend the suspension or expulsion of the offender, and whose recommendation, when sustained by the whole association, is always accepted by the college. The perfect success of the system has shown that there is no risk in relying to the fullest extent on the discretion of a body of women students.

=Affiliated colleges=[28]—There are five[29] affiliated colleges in the United States—Radcliffe college, Barnard college, the Women’s college of Brown university, the College for Women of Western reserve university, and the H. Sophie Newcomb memorial college for women of Tulane university.[30] The affiliated college in America is modeled on the English women’s colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, with such modifications as are made necessary by the wholly different constitution of English and American universities. These modifications, however, it must in fairness be explained, are so essential as to make of it a wholly different institution.[31]

=Radcliffe college, Cambridge, Massachusetts=[32]—Affiliated to Harvard university, union dissoluble after due notice; opened by the Society for the collegiate instruction of women in 1879; incorporated as Radcliffe college with power to confer degrees in 1894; board of trustees and financial management separate from Harvard; B. A. and M. A. degrees conferred by Radcliffe; Ph. D. degree as yet conferred neither by Radcliffe nor Harvard; degrees, instructors, and academic board of control, subject to approval of Harvard; no instructors not instructors at Harvard also; undergraduate instruction at Harvard repeated at Radcliffe at discretion of instructors; since 1893 women admitted to graduate and semi-graduate courses given in Harvard, at discretion of instructor, subject to approval of the Harvard faculty; in 1899, 64 such courses open to Radcliffe students; 238 undergrad. s.; 54 grad. s.; 129 special s.; productive funds about $430,000; a lecture and library building; a gymnasium; 4 temporary buildings used for lectures and laboratories; a students’ club house; no residence hall, but one about to be built; total cost of buildings about $110,000; vols. in library, 14,138; access to Harvard library and collections; scientific laboratories of Harvard not available; cost of laboratory equipment not ascertainable, inadequate; acres (in city) about 3; tuition fee, $200.