[19]. Women’s colleges were first classified in division A and division B in 1887. In these reports there appeared sporadically in division A Ingham university, at Leroy, New York, and Rutgers female college in New York city. Neither of these had any adequate endowment and neither ever obtained more than 35 students. Ingham university closed in 1893, Rutgers female college in 1895.
[20]. The women’s colleges, so called, included in division B of these reports, are in reality church and private enterprise schools, as a rule of the most superficial character, without endowment, or fixed curriculum, or any standard whatsoever of scholarship in teachers or pupils. What money there is to spend is for the most part used to provide teachers of music, drawing and other accomplishments, and the school instruction proper is shamefully inadequate. Few if any of these schools are able to teach the subjects required for entrance to a college properly so called; the really good girls’ schools are, as a rule, excluded from this list by their honesty in not assuming the name of college. The U. S. education report for 1886–87 gives 152 of these colleges in division B, the report for 1897–98, 135. When it is said that separate colleges for women are decreasing, the statement is based on this list of colleges in division B, which are not really colleges at all; and when it is said that women students are not increasing so rapidly in separate colleges for women as in coeducational colleges, it is the students in these miscalled colleges who are referred to; for precisely the reverse is true of students in genuine colleges for women. It is happily true that since better college education has been obtainable, women have been refusing to attend the institutions included in class B. Between 1890 and 1898 women have increased only 4.9 per cent in the college departments of such institutions, whereas, in these same eight years, they have increased 138.4 per cent in women’s colleges in division A. The value of statistics of women college students is often vitiated by the fact that women studying in institutions included in division B are counted among college students. Many of the colleges for men only and of the coeducational colleges included in the lists of the commissioner of education are very low in grade, but few of them are so scandalously inefficient as the majority of the girls’ schools included in division B. I have, therefore, in my statistics taken no account whatever of women studying in institutions classified in division B.
[21]. See pp. 1821, 1822, 1888, 1889. Bryn Mawr had not 300 undergraduate students in 1897–98, but the next year, 1898–99, passed the limit. I have excluded Western reserve as it is not coeducational in its undergraduate department, and, in 1899, had only 182 men in its men’s college and 183 women in its women’s college.
[22]. To any one familiar with the circumstances it does not admit of discussion that in Vassar we have the legitimate parent of all future colleges for women which were to be founded in such rapid succession in the next period. It is true that in 1855 the Presbyterian synod opened Elmira college in Elmira, New York, but it had practically no endowment and scarcely any college students. Even before 1855 two famous female seminaries were founded which did much to create a standard for the education of girls. In 1821 Mrs. Emma Willard opened at Troy a seminary for girls, known as the Troy female seminary, still existing under the name of the Emma Willard school. In 1837 Mary Lyon opened in the beautiful valley of the Connecticut Mt. Holyoke seminary, where girls were educated so cheaply that it was almost a free school. This institution has had a great influence in the higher education of women; it became in 1893 Mt. Holyoke college. These seminaries are often claimed as the first women’s colleges, but their curriculum of study proves conclusively that they had no thought whatever of giving women a collegiate education, whereas, the deliberations of the board of trustees whom Mr. Vassar associated with himself show clearly that it was expressly realized that here for the first time was being created a woman’s college as distinct from the seminary or academy. In 1861 the movement for the higher education of women had scarcely begun. It was not until eight years later that the first of the women’s colleges at Cambridge, England, opened.
[23]. The founder of Wellesley expected to leave the college a large endowment, but his fortune was dissipated in unfortunate investments. The splendid grounds and many halls of residence of the college constitute a form of endowment, otherwise its lack of productive funds would have excluded it from class I.
[24]. The numbers of students are for the year 1899–1900.
[25]. To the women’s colleges of group III they are admitted still in large numbers, and they still form 35.1 per cent of all the undergraduate students in the affiliated college of Radcliffe, and 35.7 per cent of all the undergraduate students in the affiliated college of Barnard; in part, perhaps, because these colleges are largely dependent upon their tuition fees, and in part too, no doubt, because the presence of special students is less disadvantageous where there is no dormitory life.
[26]. Colleges for women draw their students from private schools to a much greater extent than do coeducational colleges; and it was the very great inefficiency of these schools that induced the earlier colleges for women to organize preparatory departments of their own. The entrance examinations of the women’s colleges are the only influence for good that has ever been brought to bear upon the feeble teaching of these schools. In 1874, before the numbers of women wishing to prepare for college were great enough to influence the private schools, a plan for raising their standard was devised by the Woman’s education association of Boston, at whose request Harvard university for 7 years conducted a series of examinations modeled on the Oxford and Cambridge higher local examinations which have been such an efficient agency in England. Committees of women were organized in different cities, and an attempt was made to induce girls’ schools to send up candidates for these examinations. In 7 years, however, only 106 candidates offered themselves for the preliminary examination, and only 36 received a complete certificate. In 1881 the entrance examinations of Harvard college were substituted for these special women’s examinations, in the hope that the interest in reaching the standard set by Harvard for its entering class of men might add to the number of candidates; but even after this change was made comparatively few candidates took the examinations, and in 1896 the effort was discontinued; the Harvard examinations have been used from that time onward simply as the ordinary entrance examinations of Radcliffe college. In Great Britain the Cambridge higher local examinations are taken annually by about 900 women. There was needed some such pressure as is brought to bear by pupils determined to go to college to induce private schools to add college graduates to their staff of teachers. The requirements for admission to Bryn Mawr college have to my personal knowledge been a most important factor in introducing college-bred women as teachers into all the more important private girls’ schools of Philadelphia and in many private schools elsewhere; and every college for women drawing students from private schools has the same experience. On the other hand, every relaxation in the requirements for admission, such as the practice of admitting on certificate adopted by Vassar, Wellesley and Smith, tends to deprive girls’ schools of a much needed stimulus. Radcliffe and Barnard, like Bryn Mawr, insist upon examination for admission and decline to accept certificates.
[27]. Until Bryn Mawr opened in 1885 with a large staff of young unmarried men, it had been regarded as almost out of the question to appoint unmarried men in a women’s college; now they are teaching in all colleges for women. The same instructors pass from colleges for men to colleges for women and from colleges for women to colleges for men, employing in each the same methods of instruction. Some years since one of the professors at Smith college received at the same time offers of a post at the Johns Hopkins, at Columbia, and at Bryn Mawr; and among the professors the most successful in their teaching at Princeton, Chicago and Columbia are men whose whole experience had been gained in teaching women at Bryn Mawr.
[28]. The following data have been furnished me by the courtesy of the presidents or deans of the colleges concerned, except the data of the H. Sophie Newcomb memorial college, for which I am indebted to Professor Evelyn Ordway. These data are for the year 1900; the numbers of instructors and students have been obtained from the catalogues for 1898–99.