Marriage rate of college women—Here again no positive conclusions can be reached until we know what is the usual marriage rate of women belonging to the social class of women graduates. Everything indicates that the time of marriage is becoming later in the professional classes and that the marriage rate as a whole is decreasing. An investigation undertaken simultaneously with the new health investigation by the Association of collegiate alumnæ will enable us to speak with certainty in regard to the marriage rate of a large number of college women and their sisters.[[49]] It must be borne in mind that the element of time is very important, and in the case of women the later and therefore younger classes are all larger than the earlier ones, see table on opposite page.
Marriage rate of college women
| Opened in | Percentage of graduates married | |
|---|---|---|
| Vassar | 1865 | 35.1 |
| Kansas | 1866 | 31.3 |
| Minnesota | 1868 | 24.5 |
| Cornell | 1870 | 31.0 |
| Syracuse | ||
| Wesleyan | ||
| Nebraska | 1871 | 24.3 |
| Boston | 1873 | 22.2 |
| Wellesley | 1875 | 18.4 |
| Smith | ||
| Radcliffe | 1879 | 16.5 |
| Bryn Mawr | 1885 | 15.2 |
| Barnard | 1889 | 10.4 |
| Leland Stanford Junior | 1891 | 9.7 |
| Chicago | 1892 | 9.4 |
It will be seen that independent, affiliated and coeducational colleges fall into their proper place in the series, thus showing conclusively that the method of obtaining a college education exercises scarcely any appreciable influence on the marriage rate.
The marriage rate of Bryn Mawr college, calculated in January, 1900, will also serve as an illustration of the importance of time in every consideration of the marriage rate: graduates of the class of 1889, married, 40.7 per cent; graduates of the first two classes, 1889–1890, married, 40.0 per cent; graduates of the first three classes, 1889–1891, married, 33.3 per cent; graduates of the first four classes, 1889–1892, married, 32.9 per cent; graduates of the first five classes, 1889–1893, married, 31.0 per cent; graduates of the first six classes, 1889–1894, married, 30.0 per cent; graduates of the first seven classes, 1889–1895, married, 25.2 per cent; graduates of the first eight classes, 1889–1896, married, 22.8 per cent; graduates of the first nine classes, 1889–1897, married, 20.9 per cent; graduates of the first ten classes, 1889–1898, married, 17.2 per cent; graduates of the first eleven classes, 1889–1899, married, 15.2 per cent.
Occupations of college women—It is probable that about 50 per cent of women graduates teach for at least a certain number of years. Of the 705 women graduates whose occupations were reported in the Association of collegiate alumnæ investigation of 1883 50.2 percent were then teaching. In 1895 of 1,082 graduates of Vassar 37.7 per cent were teaching; 2.0 per cent were engaged in graduate study and 3.0 per cent were physicians or studying medicine. In 1898 of 171 graduates (all living) of Radcliffe college, including the class of 1898, 49.7 per cent were teaching; 8.7 per cent were engaged in graduate study; .6 per cent were studying medicine; 17.5 per cent were unmarried and without professional occupation. In 1899 of 316 living graduates of Bryn Mawr college, including the class of 1899, 39.0 percent were teaching; 11.4 were engaged in graduate study; 6 per cent were engaged in executive work (including 4 deans of colleges, 3 mistresses of college halls of residence); 1.6 per cent were studying or practising medicine, and 26.6 per cent were unmarried and without professional occupation.[[50]]
Coeducation vs. separate education—It is clear that coeducation is the prevailing method in the United States; it is the most economical method; indeed it is the only possible method in most parts of the country. Now that it has been determined in America to send girls as well as boys to college, it becomes impossible to duplicate colleges for women in every part of this vast country. If, as is shown by the statistics given in the successive reports of the commissioner of education, men students in college are increasing faster far than the ratio of the population, and women college students are increasing faster still than men,[[51]] it will tax all our resources to make adequate provision for men and women in common. Only in thickly-settled parts of the country, where public sentiment is conservative enough to justify the initial outlay, have separate colleges for women been established, and these colleges, without exception, have been private foundations. Public opinion in the United States almost universally demands that universities supported by public taxation should provide for the college education of the women of the state in which they are situated. The separate colleges for women speaking generally are to be found almost exclusively in the narrow strip of colonial states lying along the Atlantic seaboard. The question is often asked, whether women prefer coeducation or separate education. It seems that in the east they as yet prefer separate education, and this preference is natural.[[52]] College life as it is organized in a woman’s college seems to conservative parents less exposed, more in accordance with inherited traditions. Consequently, girls who in their own homes lead guarded lives, are to be found rather in women’s colleges than in coeducational colleges. From the point of view of conservative parents, there is undoubtedly serious objection to intimate association at the most impressionable period of a girl’s life with many young men from all parts of the country and of every possible social class. From every point of view it is undesirable to have the problems of love and marriage presented for decision to a young girl during the four years when she ought to devote her energies to profiting by the only systematic intellectual training she is likely to receive during her life. Then, too, for the present, much of the culture and many of the priceless associations of college life are to be obtained, whether for men or women, only by residence in college halls, and no coeducational, or even affiliated, colleges have as yet organized for their students such a complete college life as the independent woman’s college. So long as this preference, and the grounds for it, exist, we must see to it that separate colleges for women are no less good than colleges for men. In professional schools, including the graduate school of the faculty of philosophy, coeducation is even at present almost the only method. There are in the United States only 4 true graduate schools for men closed to women, and only 1 independent graduate school maintained for women offering three years’ consecutive work leading to the degree of Ph. D. There is every reason to believe that as soon as large numbers of women wish to enter upon the study of theology, law and medicine, all the professional schools now existing will become coeducational.
A modified vs. an unmodified curriculum—The progress of women’s education, as we have traced it briefly from its beginning in the coeducational college of Oberlin in 1833, and the independent woman’s college of Vassar in 1865, has been a progress in accordance with the best academic traditions of men’s education. In 1870 we could not have predicted the course to be taken by the higher education of women; the separate colleges for women might have developed into something wholly different from what we had been familiar with so long in the separate colleges for men. A female course in coeducational colleges in which music and art were substituted for mathematics and Greek might have met the needs of the women students. After thirty years of experience, however, we are prepared to say that whatever changes may be made in future in the college curriculum will be made for men and women alike. After all, women themselves must be permitted to be the judges of what kind of intellectual discipline they find most truly serviceable. They seem to have made up their minds, and hereafter may be trusted to see to it that an inferior education shall not be offered to them in women’s colleges, or elsewhere, under the name of a modified curriculum.