The association at once decided to publish an annual which should contain only original articles from the pens of its members; and Article VII. of the constitution says: “The immediate object of this publication shall be to afford an opportunity for continued mental effort and improvement to members; and its ultimate aim shall be the elevation of woman,” Rachel L. Bodley, so long dean of the Woman’s Medical College in Philadelphia, was one of the original members of this association.
The professions, claims, and efforts above indicated, probably show the high-water mark of educational aspiration of women in the West in and before the middle of this century.
The college drew students from all parts of the country, and from Canada; and, at one time, according to one of its historians, there were in attendance upon it “representatives from every State in the Union, excepting New Hampshire, Delaware, North Carolina, and Florida.”
At one time this college enrolled nearly five hundred students; but, as seminaries and colleges for women have multiplied throughout the region from which it drew its patronage, and especially as more richly endowed colleges which were established for men have opened their doors to women, its numbers have diminished and its influence has waned. But such a past should compel its alumnæ and its friends to give it an endowment, a course of study, and a corps of instructors that shall make it the peer of its strongest young sisters.[[10]]
There is a function for the true woman’s college which the co-educational college does not and as yet cannot perform. To get one’s college education in an institution which admits only women, and to enjoy some years of post-graduate work in a co-educational university, is the ideal of opportunity now cherished by some most careful and intelligent parents and by some ambitious young women. It is possible that provision for satisfying the first half of this ideal is held in germ by some or all of the thirty colleges for women only, now existing in the West.
CO-EDUCATION IN THE WEST.
That in the Western States and Territories, the higher education of women is generally identical with co-education is indicated, as has been previously suggested, by the following facts:
1. Of 212 institutions in the West, exclusive of colleges of agriculture and the mechanic arts, which afford the higher culture to women, 165 are co-educational.
2. Of the 5563 women reported to the Bureau of Education in 1887–88 as students in the collegiate courses of these institutions, 4392 were in the co-educational colleges.
3. In the twenty-one States and Territories which boast 165 co-educational colleges and 47 colleges for the separate education of women, 30 of which are authorized to confer regular degrees, there are but 25 colleges devoted to the exclusive education of men.