Women's college

“ Undoubtedly the actual erudition that is gained in a collegiate training for women could be obtained under other conditions than in the four years of college life. But the inestimable value of our women's colleges lies not so much in their opportunities for actual learning, as in the atmosphere they offer. To live for four years under a régime where mental and physical energy are carefully utilized and disciplined, and where the tendency is toward the development of an objective type of mind and the cultivation of a broad intellectual outlook—these are incalculable benefits to woman. ”

“ There is much current newspaper discussion of the failure of the men’s colleges to-day to educate the young male, his utter obduracy before stimulus is despairingly compared with the effect of college upon the youth of past generations. I fear that the reason is simple to seek: men’s colleges have deteriorated exactly in the ratio that women’s colleges have improved. The course for women and women’s colleges is therefore clear.
Our history shows that we have, with only occasional lapses into genius, nobly sustained the requirements of our unselfishness. ”

“ There is such eagerness to get to college, such blind belief in what is to be learned there, such a demand for a college education for women, that we are overwhelmed by it. Every year these doors are closed upon hundreds of disappointed women, who turn elsewhere, or relinquish the much-prized college education. The day is not far distant when it will be a distinct reproach to a woman that she is not college-bred. ”

“ And while they wait, numerous petty "female colleges" have sprung into being, indicative of the justice of our claim that a college education should be granted to women. Not one of these female colleges (which are all second or third rate, and their whole course of study only about equal to what completes the sophomore year in our best colleges) meets the demand of the age, and so will eventually perish. Oberlin and Antioch Colleges in Ohio, and Lima College in New York, admit women on terms nearly equal with men. ”

“ This figure says very little; since, in the case of many women’s institutions, the name college is more monstrously abused than in any other, and in the West and South is assumed by every upstart girls’ school. There are only 13 women’s colleges which come up to a high standard, and it may at once be added that the number of polytechnic and agricultural schools whose conditions for entrance correspond on the average to those of the colleges amounts to 43. ”

“ To begin with, we have the authority of a university which is growing in public estimation and importance, which is recognised as the great examining board for all students whose circumstances preclude college life, and which year by year is acquiring more of that dignity which belongs only to age. Then, looking at the examination itself, and especially at the programme of subjects prescribed, it cannot be denied that it is admirably suited to the education of women in its present state of transition. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Graduate work is also undertaken with excellent results in some of the independent women's colleges, as at Bryn Mawr. Professional education for women has been coeducational from the beginning, with the exception of medicine. The prejudice against coeducation in that profession was so strong that five women's medical schools were organized, but they provide instruction for little more than a quarter of the women medical students. ”

“ I think there is no doubt that if an attempt was made to found a Women's University, disappointment would be in store for any who would expect it to lay down a separate course or courses of study adapted to the supposed requirements of women. ”

“ In the private institutions of learning, including both denominational and unsectarian, over one-half of the students are females who study in the same classes as the males, except in Washburn college which has a separate course for ladies.
Most of these institutions have one woman, or more, in their faculties. One-half of the faculty of the State University is composed of women. ”

“ Throughout these regions women's education is for this reason almost synonymous with co-education. In the Eastern part of the United States, however, the private college predominates, and there is a greater degree of separation. But even here the restrictions are gradually being removed, and most of the men's colleges and universities admit women to some departments with some restrictions, or have an affiliated woman's college.
America has also a number of independent colleges exclusively for women. ”

“ There is a function for the true woman’s college which the co-educational college does not and as yet cannot perform. 65To get one’s college education in an institution which admits only women, and to enjoy some years of post-graduate work in a co-educational university, is the ideal of opportunity now cherished by some most careful and intelligent parents and by some ambitious young women. It is possible that provision for satisfying the first half of this ideal is held in germ by some or all of the thirty colleges for women only, now existing in the West. ”

“ The colleges are in full line of usefulness and opportunity, and it would be the work of many years to create their equal for women, even if it were possible in this new country to duplicate the teachers of learning and experience. The present colleges must long remain the best, and if women are to have the best advantages, they must go to them. This being so, and the right being conceded, there is nothing to do but to vote that woman is a man and brother, and open the the college gates ”

“ It is to be feared that the girl graduate, the youthful bachelor of arts who steps smiling through the serried ranks of students, her heart beating gladly in response to their generous applause, has little thought of repaying her debt to man. Somebody has made an address which she was too nervous to hear, and has affirmed, with that impressiveness which we all lend to our easiest generalizations, that the purpose of college is to give women a broad and liberal education, and, at the same time, to preserve and develop the characteristics of a complete womanhood. ”

“ Meanwhile we may console ourselves by thinking that the Women's Colleges have earned the respect even of opponents, and that there is no probability of their being deprived of the privileges which they still enjoy. ”

“ For the distinctive feature of a college heretofore has been its endowments, by which a permanent faculty of superior and co-equal teachers are maintained to a great extent independent of tuition fees; and also supporting professors as independent heads of departments, instead of subordinates to a principal, as in High Schools and academies. This being the fact, there is not a single college for women in this country, nor in the whole world. ”

“ Granting that the college system for young men, coming down from an age of narrow prescription and rigid uniformity, needed expansion, relaxation, a wider variety of studies and freer scope for individual choice, there was evidently no such call in a college for women. In the field of 'female education,' without endowments, without universities or other institutions of recognized authority, without a history, or even a generally accepted theory, there was really no established system at all ”

“ Neither do I think it wise to insist that women shall be taught only by women, until universities have done the necessary work of preparation. In all the colleges mentioned on the Oberlin list, women are employed as teachers: there are already a good number of professors of Greek and mathematics. Nor is the welfare of women alone a sufficient motive for me. I am satisfied, that humanity and civilization gain, in the mixed college, more than either sex can lose. ”

“ Its aim is to prepare women for the duties of life, whatever they may prove to be; and will it not generally be admitted that some further preparation is needed, that too much is expected from girls whose school training is over at the age of eighteen? The college training is not intended as a substitute for the education of life, but as a temporary stage. It will not be specifically directed towards changing the occupations of women, but rather towards securing that whatever they undertake shall be done wisely and well. In works of philanthropy thoughtless activity is not the most fruitful. ”

“ The education of the college is a conquered standpoint: what remains is to make the post-collegiate education equally easy of access to women. To duplicate the great laboratories and the great professorships of the two or three colleges which give adequate post-graduate instruction, would be foolish in the extreme. It is little less than silly to suppose that seriously minded men and women could not brave the associations of the lecture room without danger of impropriety. ”

“ This organization should endeavor to arouse in our colleges a sense of responsibility for knowing the facts with regard to their graduates, both social and economic, and should also endeavor to influence our colleges through appointment secretaries, to direct women, according to fitness, into other lines than teaching.
“Should not courses be added to the college curriculum to give women the fundamental 75 principles in other professions, or lines of industry or commerce, than teaching? ”

“ In past years institutions which were organized primarily to meet the needs of men for their professional or business training have, largely from a spirit of chivalry and esteem, been opened to women. Also, largely from a spirit of social concern, some of the best friends of womankind have, in a degree, popularized the typical woman’s college. In both cases much good has been accomplished, but in neither case have the needs of the education of women been fully met. ”

“ There is good reason to expect that public bodies will give their aid when the college is no longer an experiment. There are at present no considerable endowments for the higher education of women, but there are indications that the tide is turning. It is for the friends of education to take the preliminary steps. ”

“ The want of co-ordination between training and the needs of life in the education of women has repeatedly brought into question the desirability of the higher education at all for a woman who is to return to the home. As a result, there is a distinct tendency to demand a differentiation in the education of women. The recent proposal of a new type of woman's college is, in fact, a demand for a separate technical school in which there shall be a liberal scientific training with special reference to their domestic occupations and functions. ”

“ It has always been feared that women would lower the standard of scholarship; and there is much in the quality of the present generation of women students that may strengthen this belief. In the seventies and eighties, the fear of being thought peculiar still kept many ordinary women away from colleges. Now it has become fashionable, and a woman who has been to college stands better in a community than one who has not. ”

“ Let their loves and jealousies be carried on elsewhere than in the college halls. But already female colleges, exclusively adapted to young women, are talked of—nay, here and there one or two such colleges now exist. ”

“ I was willing it should exist as one of the half-way measures of which I have spoken,--like the reading-room in New York; but I was bent on opening the colleges which already existed to women, and I left it to others to nurse the young life of this. The first medical men, I felt assured, would never, in the present state of public opinion, take an interest in a female college; and I desired, above all things, to protect women from second-rate instruction. ”

“ The Sorbonne is already asked why it confers degrees upon women with one hand, while it quietly locks Margaret Fuller out of Arago's lecture-room with the other. Need we inquire what influence it would have upon society, if all literature and scientific opportunities, if all societies devoted to natural history and mathematics, if all colleges and public libraries the world over, were thrown open to woman? ”

“ The character of the college courses desirable for women is another point that must soon be considered in the educational world. It is quite possible that their too academic nature at present is partly responsible for the low marriage rate of women graduates, and that training more adapted to the needs of wives and mothers than to those of scholars and teachers should be adopted. The preponderance of women teachers in girls' colleges may be another contributing cause, in its setting up of ideals other than domestic. ”

“ Practically, however, the most significant form of female college education is not the co-educational, but one which creates a special college paradise for young women, where there are no male beguilements and distractions. ”

“ I have forced myself to go through many elaborate reports of meetings where female education was discussed by those supposed to be competent; but as a rule, not without rare, striking exceptions, these proceedings are smitten with the same sterile and complacent artificiality that was so long the curse of woman's life. I deem it almost reprehensible that, save a few general statistics, the women's colleges have not only made no study themselves of the larger problems that impend, but have often maintained a repellent attitude toward others who wished to do so. ”