[11]. In this list of fifty-eight colleges I have included: first, the twenty-four colleges (indicated in the list by “a”) whose graduates are admitted to the Association of collegiate alumnæ; second, the twenty-three colleges (24 are included in the Federation, but Barnard has ceased to be a graduate school, see page [28]) included in the Federation of graduate clubs (indicated by “b”); third, the fifty-two colleges (indicated by “c”) included in the 1899–1900 edition of Minerva, the well-known handbook of colleges and universities of the world published each year by Truebner & Co.; and fourth, the colleges which, according to the U. S. education report for 1897–98, have at least $500,000 worth of productive funds (indicated by “d”), and also three hundred or more students (indicated by “e”). In the case of state universities the money they receive annually from national and state appropriations may reasonably be regarded as a sort of supplementary endowment; I have, therefore, included the state universities of Maine, Iowa and West Virginia, whose productive funds do not amount to $500,000. This list of fifty-eight colleges, arranged according to the different sections of the country, and as far as possible in the order of the numbers in their undergraduate departments, is as follows: New England and 3 northern middle states: Harvard (bcde), Yale (bcde), Cornell (abcde-coed.), Massachusetts institute of technology (acde-coed.), Smith (acde-woman’s college), Princeton (bcde), Pennsylvania (bcde), Columbia (bcde), Brown (bcde), Wellesley (abce-woman’s college), Vassar (acde-woman’s college), Syracuse (acde-coed.), Dartmouth (cde), Boston (acde-coed.), Amherst (cde), Radcliffe (abce-affiliated), Williams (cde), Lehigh (cde), Maine (e-coed.), Wesleyan (acde-coed.), Vermont (c-coed.), Lafayette (c), Bryn Mawr (abed-woman’s college), New York University (cd), Barnard (a-affiliated), Hamilton (c), Colgate (cd), Clark (bcd-no undergrad. department). Southern and 2 southern middle states: Missouri (bcde-coed.), Texas (cde-coed.), Columbian (bce-coed.), West Virginia (e-coed.), Tulane (cd), Vanderbilt (bcd-coed.), Virginia (c), Johns Hopkins (bcd), Washington (St. Louis) (cd-coed.), Georgetown (c-Catholic), Catholic university (cd-no undergrad. department). Western states: Minnesota (abcde-coed.), Michigan (abcde-coed.), California (abcde-coed.), Wisconsin (abcde-coed.), Chicago (abcde-coed.), Leland Stanford (abcde-coed.), Nebraska (ace-coed.), Ohio state university (de-coed.), Indiana (cde-coed.), Illinois (ce-coed.), Kansas (ace-coed.), Ohio Wesleyan (cde-coed.), Iowa (e-coed.), Northwestern (acde-coed.), Oberlin (acde-coed.), Cincinnati (cd-coed.), Colorado (c-coed.), Western reserve (bcd), College for Women of western reserve (a-affiliated).
The only attempt hitherto made in America to discriminate between colleges of true college grade and others has been made by the Association of collegiate alumnæ. This association was organized in 1882 for the purpose of uniting women graduates of the foremost coeducational colleges and colleges for women only into an association for work connected with the higher education of women. In the early years of the association there was appointed a committee on admissions, and the admission of each successive college in the association has been carefully considered, both with regard to its entrance requirements, the training of its faculty and its curriculum. The Association of collegiate alumnæ concerns itself, of course, only with colleges admitting women, but there is no doubt that the fifteen coeducational colleges and seven colleges for women only admitted to the association would, in the estimation of every one familiar with the subject, rank among the first fifty-eight colleges of the United States.
The Federation of graduate clubs is an association of graduate students of those colleges whose graduate schools are important enough to entitle them to admission to the federation. The colleges in the Federation of graduate clubs are the only colleges in the United States that do true university work.
[12]. In only two instances, so far as I know, has coeducation once introduced been abandoned or restricted in any way. The private college of Adelbert of Western reserve, coeducational from 1873, opened a separate woman’s college and excluded women in 1888. As the college department was very small and the state of Ohio in which the college was situated the most eastern in feeling of all western states, the change was seemingly to be attributed to a bid for students through undergraduate novelty. The Baptist college of Colby, in Maine, coeducational from 1871, has taught women in separate classes in required work since 1890. Women are not allowed to compete with men for college prizes or for membership in the students’ society, which elects its members on account of scholarship. Complete separation, which was at first planned, has proved impracticable and from the beginning of the sophomore year women and men recite together in all elective work.
[13]. In an investigation made several years ago in the University of Wisconsin, which has been open to women since 1874, it was found that the women ranked in scholarship very considerably beyond the men. In the University of Michigan, where women have been educated with men since 1870, President Angell has repeatedly laid stress on their excellent scholarship. When in 1893–94 a committee of the faculty of the University of Virginia asked the officers of a large number of coeducational colleges especially in regard to this point the testimony received was very remarkable. In England it should be noted that the question of the success of women in collegiate studies has been put beyond a doubt by the published class lists of the competitive honor examinations of Oxford and Cambridge. In the discussions in regard to granting women degrees at Cambridge, it was freely admitted that women’s minds were “splendid for examination purposes.”
[14]. For a discussion of coeducation in schools and colleges in 1892, see U. S. education report for 1891–92, pp. 783–862.
[15]. U. S. education report 1889–90, pp. 761, 1582–1599, and 1897–98, p. 1823; account is taken of students of true college grade only in the college proper. Throughout this monograph I have corrected the figures of the U. S. ed. reps. which are affected by the erroneous assumption that the undergraduate departments of Brown, Yale, Rochester, New York Univ., Pennsylvania, Tulane and Western Reserve are coeducational. In the University of Chicago women formed, in 1898, 54.5 per cent of all regular, and 70 per cent of all unclassified, students; in Boston university in the regular college course there were, in 1899, 299 women as against 192 men.
[16]. In 1889–90 there were 19,245 men studying in 146 colleges for men only; in 1898–99 there were 25,915 men studying in 143 colleges for men only, an increase of only 34.7 per cent. (In enumerating students I have regarded the limited coeducational college of Colby as coeducational.) Women, however, have increased in women’s colleges 138.4 per cent.
[17]. The objection of men students in the east to coeducation seems to be mainly in the apprehension that the presence of women may interfere with the free social life which has become so prominent a feature of private colleges for men in the east. These colleges are, for the most part, situated either in small country towns, or in the suburbs of a city, in communities which have grown up about the college, and their students live largely in college dormitories; the conditions, therefore, are exceedingly unlike those prevailing in non-residential colleges and also unlike those prevailing in the world at large. These exceptional conditions are a source of pleasure and, in many respects, of advantage to the student. Undoubtedly there is in coeducational colleges less unrestraint; young men undoubtedly care much for the impression that they make on young women of the same age, and there is more decorum and perhaps more diligence in classrooms where women are present. The objection to coeducation on the part of women students is, to some extent, the same; separate colleges for women in like manner are, as a rule, academic communities living according to regulations and customs all their own; women also feel themselves more unrestrained when they are studying in women’s colleges. Then, too, coeducation in the east is still regarded as in some measure an experiment, to the success of which the conduct of each individual woman may, or may not, contribute, and the knowledge of this tends to increase the self-consciousness of student life.
[18]. In the case of the colleges in groups I and II these statistics have been obtained through the kindness of the presidents of the colleges concerned; they are for the year 1900, except the numbers of instructors and students which are obtained from the catalogues for the year 1898–99; in enumerating the instructors, presidents, teachers of gymnastics, elocution, music and art have been omitted. Instructors away on leave of absence are not counted among instructors for the current year.