Under the group heading "Higher education" the five classes into which it was divided represented: Colleges and universities, scientific, technical, and engineering schools and institutions; professional schools; libraries; museums. (Legislation, organization, statistics, buildings, plans and models, curriculums, regulations, methods, administration, investigation, etc.)
Miss Temple reports as follows:
The Educational Department at the World's Fair in St. Louis presented greater progress in woman's work since the Columbian Exposition of 1893 than was shown by any other great division at the exposition.
In regard to an approximate estimate of the proportional number of exhibits by women in the five classes of group 3 (higher education) of the Educational Department, I would say that only in the cases of the several large female colleges which installed exhibits at the fair were there special women's exhibits distinct from those of men. In the United States section valuable and important displays were made by Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Woman's College of Baltimore, Smith, Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, Pratt Institute (New York), Milwaukee-Downer College (Milwaukee), and several lesser women's colleges, while in the English section a wonderfully interesting showing of women's activity in "higher education" was made by the Oxford Association for the education of women, including Lady Margaret Hall, Summerville College, St. Hugh Hall, St. Hilda's Hall; by Girton College and Newham College, Cambridge University; by Westfield College and the London School of Medicine for Women of the London University; by Owen's College of the Victoria University of Manchester; by University Hall of the University of St. Andrew, and by Dublin Alexandra College.
In the German section no special exhibit of a woman's department was made by any university or college. According to the German system women's education is carried on side by side with men's. Women acquiring a leaving certificate from a classical gymnasium can matriculate on an equal footing with male students in the universities of Heidelberg, Frieburg, Erlangen, Würzburg, and Munich. In the other universities, except Münster, by permission of the rector, or under the statutes, women are permitted to hear lectures. In all the German universities there are in attendance many women, either as matriculants or as hearers, ranging from 10 to 200 women at each university.
In the universities of France, Belgium, and Japan a similar plan of educating men and women together exists. But outside the University of Paris, of Louvain and of Tokio, the number of women attending the courses does not compare with the number in attendance at the German, English, and American universities. Among the lesser nations at the fair, as Italy, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, China, Canada, Sweden, Ceylon, and Cuba, the exhibits so often appearing under the name of college work scarcely represented work in higher education, except in the line of art.
The very fact that at St. Louis women's work was nowhere separated from men's, but was shown side by side with it, was in itself a radical advance in the last eleven years. While this applied to every department of the exposition, it applied with greatest impressiveness to the Department of Higher Education, for this in the past had been set apart as man's special province, though, of course, down through the ages there have been brilliant exceptional cases of women becoming profound students and learned teachers, as Hypatia, Maria Agnesi, and others.
In the five classes of group 3 (higher education) in the Department of Education there was really less scope and a more restricted field for women than in any other group of the Educational Department. Of the five classes, to glance hastily over them—i.e., class 7, colleges and universities; class 8, scientific, technical, and engineering schools; class 9, professional schools; class 10, libraries; class 11, museums—only in class 7 and class 10 has woman gained for herself any distinctly marked footing. In the other three classes, the hold she has acquired, from the very nature of the case, has been limited, but in every class of group 1 (elementary education), of group 2 (secondary education), of group 4 (special education in fine arts), of group 6 (special education in commerce and industry), of group 7 (education of defectives), of group 8 (special forms of education, text-books, etc.), she is the controlling force, and is very strong.
Inasmuch, however, as higher education has been considered less naturally her field, the steady advance she is making in it is the more noticeable and more striking, as shown at the World's Fair of 1904. In replying to the question of an approximate estimate of the proportionate number of exhibits by women in the five classes of group 3, I may venture to say it was near 37 per cent of the domestic and foreign exhibits, estimating the percentage of work exhibited by men and women as probably proportional to the respective number of each sex registered. (See monographs on Education in United States. See monographs on History and Origin of Public Education in Germany. List of British Exhibits, Departments H and O.)
In giving the nature of the exhibits by women in the department of higher education we gladly state that they differed little from the exhibits by men, as the requirements called for in the circular of the department were identically the same for both. It happened, however, possibly from being younger institutions and having less to show in the way of literature, libraries, histories, etc.; partly, also, from having a less liberal supply of money; also partly from a smaller sense of ambition and rivalry with other institutions, that the exhibits of Vassar, Bryn Mawr, and the other women's colleges were smaller, less costly, and less elaborate both in materials and in installation than those of the men's colleges. The exhibits consisted largely of photographs, diagrams of statistics, prospectuses, and reports. In the case of the English women's colleges the showing was quite on a par with those of the men's universities, as they were in every case a part of the same. The American women's colleges in addition showed charts, department work, special work, histories, publications, and models of buildings and grounds.