[7]. These courses of examinations were offered by Columbia College for the laudable purpose of “raising the standard of female education.” [Extract from the minutes of the Board of Trustees; Report of the Select Committee, March 5, 1883.] Notwithstanding the criticism and eloquent expostulation of some women aimed at the “conservative” Board of Trustees of Columbia College, we must not forget that Columbia has never refused equal recognition for equal work. It saw no logical pause between the acknowledgement that women could follow the collegiate course and the conferring of official sanction upon such a course.
The same Report goes on to say: “and offering suitable academic honors and distinctions to any who, on examination, shall be found to have pursued such courses of study with success.—Ed.
[8]. See article by Mrs. Annie Nathan Meyer in The Nation, January 21, 1888. The petition to the Columbia Board for official sanction to open Barnard College was largely based on this article.
[9]. See article by Annie Nathan Meyer, in University, February 22, 1888.
[10]. As the Cincinnati Wesleyan College is an example of the best that Methodism has done for the separate education of women, so Albert Lea College in Minnesota, founded and controlled by the synod of that State, would appear to be the most ambitious attempt of the Presbyterian Church to aid the separate higher education of women in the West. This college was founded in 1882, and opened to students in 1885. Its president makes for it, with relation to the country west of the Alleghanies, the same claim that the president of the Wesleyan made in its behalf with relation to the entire country, forty-eight years ago. Its president, Dr. R. B. Abbott, writes: “This is the only real college for women west of the Alleghany Mountains. There are female seminaries in abundance, some of which are named college, but are without a full college curriculum and without authority to confer the degrees of Bachelor and Master of Arts. Albert Lea is a college in fact as well as in name.”
Albert Lea is now in only its fifth year. I have not been able to obtain its latest catalogue. The above quotation from its president’s letter indicates its promise. Should it redeem this promise in its spirit and word, it would be a great blessing to the West; not so much young because women in this part of the country need another college within their easy reach, but because the entire community needs to have the difference between the nominal and the real college continually emphasized.
If Albert Lea draws sharp and visible lines between its standards and tests of scholarship, between its quality and methods of instruction and those of the majority of institutions in the above list, its influence will be potent in securing greater harmony between names and things in matters pertaining to education.
[11]. Appendix B, Table II., gives a table by which is shown when each of these colleges was founded, when opened, and when opened to women.
[12]. Prepared by May Wright Sewall at the request of the commissioners for Indiana, for the Indiana Department of the New Orleans Exposition.—Ed.
[13]. It is only fair to add that one of its graduates became a college president—Miss Alice Freeman, president of Wellesley College during six years, now Mrs. Alice F. Palmer, member of the Massachusetts State Board of Education.—Ed.