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Page 14
The last Report of the United States Commissioner of Education shows
that there are now 108 institutions of higher learning to which men are
not admitted; but most of them have modeled themselves so closely upon
men's colleges that they have not been able to work out lines of
distinctive instruction specially fitted to women. One cannot help
feeling that since they do not open their doors to men they should do
something more toward working out an ideal education for women than they
have so far undertaken. When the Association of Intercollegiate Alumn�
met in New York, in the autumn of 1911, its discussions gathered around
the possibility of adding to college courses subjects of special value
to women. Hygiene, biology and sociology were the subjects most favored;
but the matter needs attention from women and men who stand outside the
group dominated by our older college traditions. This movement to
provide distinctive schools for women had brought together, in 1910,
35,714 girl students in private secondary schools and 9,082 women
students in higher institutions of learning.
The second line of development, which sought to open up all existing
schools to girls and women, began when Boston opened a high school for
girls in 1825. New York opened a high school for girls three years
later.
It was in the West, however, that this movement took strongest root and
made most steady advance. The West has always led the East in opening
equal opportunity to women, even equal suffrage. The forest and the
frontier compel such action even in such commonwealths as Australia, New
Zealand and Canada, where there has been no political revolution to
hasten it. Labor is scarce; the invading people are intelligent and
ambitious for their children and desire them educated. The women must
teach them to read and write; the girls learn with their brothers; and
so the women master the mysteries of formal education.
Thus it is no accident that Oberlin, in the western forest, was the
first college to open its doors to women. Antioch, under Horace Mann's
direction, was, however, the first institution of higher learning to
give men and women equal opportunity. The new States of the Mississippi
Valley early established State universities. These institutions were
little more than seminaries, but the free spirit of the frontier was so
strong in them that in 1863 Wisconsin University admitted women to its
privileges, and Kansas and Indiana followed shortly after.
It is the year 1870, however, that marks the beginning of a new period
in the higher education of women as in so many other lines of advance.
In that year, Michigan University, California University and the
University of Evanston, adopted co-education. Michigan was just entering
on a great career and her influence was very important. There, for the
first time, women could follow a university curriculum under the same
conditions as men. Two years later, Andrew D. White introduced the
Michigan idea at Cornell.
In the forty years since Michigan opened her doors, the advance of women
under conditions of co-education has been steady and rapid. In Harvard
and Columbia opportunity takes the form of annexes where women can
secure almost any educational opportunities they desire. In other
universities, like Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins, women are admitted to
graduate study. Most of the institutions of higher education that do not
yet admit women are theological and technical schools, or small colleges
like Haverford, where there are equivalents in Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr,
for women who wish to attend a Friend's College. A woman can work in
almost any important university in America to-day if she cares to do so.
In 1910 there were conferred in the United States 12,590 A.B. degrees,
and women took 44.1 per cent. of them.
Meantime, there have been no important reactions in institutions which
have once opened their doors to women.[22] In 1902, Chicago University
separated men and women students, but only during the first two years of
their undergraduate work. Practically this has affected only one-half of
the women in the first year and a very much smaller proportion in the
second year.[23] When Leland Stanford Junior University was opened in
1891, 25.4% of the students were women. This proportion rose in
successive years as follows: 1892, 29.7%; 1893, 30.4%; 1894, 33.8%;
1895, 35.3%; 1896, 36.6%; 1897, 37.4%; 1898, 40.1%. Fearing that the
institution would be swamped with women, and that able men students
would stay away, Mrs. Stanford ruled that there should never be more
than five hundred women students in the university at one time. This
limit was reached in 1902, and it was then provided that women should
not be received as special students, nor in partial standing. Later, men
in partial standing were cut out, though they continued to be received
as special students. Women are now admitted in order of application,
but preference is given to juniors and seniors. This really establishes
a higher standard for women than for men, and one would expect that men
would be kept away from an institution requiring a higher standard for
women quite as much as from one where there were many women working on
an equality with men. In 1910, Tufts College decided to separate men and
women, for local reasons. The statement was made at the time that a
philanthropist had promised a gift of $500,000 for a woman's college, if
the sexes were separated.[24] The doors of Wesleyan are to be closed to
women after 1912, but this is due to local and financial reasons.
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