The latest catalogue for 1910 shows 1,045 students in the various departments—540 men and boys and 505 women and girls—and the financial report shows that last year the institution came within $2,800 of being self-supporting. Its success is the more remarkable from the fact that it is co-educational in the face of traditions and the prejudice of ages.
Dr. Wheeler was a man of tremendous energy and strength of character, and he left his impress upon the institution, but it has had other important men connected with it since his time. Dr. Caleb F. Gates of Chicago, now at the head of Robert College, was president of Euphrates from 1898 to 1903. Dr. Henry Biggs has since directed its destinies with great ability.
Harpoot is the capital of one of the largest and most important interior provinces of the Turkish empire, called Mamuretta-ul-Aziz. It is a city of some 20,000 inhabitants, situated on the top of a small mountain which rises abruptly from the plain a thousand feet below. The plain stretches away to the Euphrates River and is one of the most fertile and densely populated sections of Turkey. The residence of the governor is at the end of the mountain in a city called Mezereh, which in the last ten years has increased rapidly in population, while Harpoot has been practically at a standstill. There are other large cities like Malatea, two days to the west on the Euphrates River, Diarbekir, two days to the northwest, and Egin, still farther north, within the province.
It was inevitable that this centre of wealth and population should have been chosen by the American Board fifty years and more ago as a centre from which to carry on mission work for that district. The people were found to be unusually intelligent and enterprising. They responded quickly to Western ideas which the missionaries brought into the country. It was from that province that the first emigrants to America came in large numbers, and to-day there are probably more Armenians and Turks in the United States from Mamuretta-ul-Aziz than from any other single province in the empire, notwithstanding the fact that from Harpoot to the Black Sea is a journey of from four to five hundred miles, and it is nearly the same distance to the Mediterranean on the southwest.
The people responded promptly to the suggestion of modern education. This natural impulse was greatly fostered by the young men who came to the United States and reported the great value of an education in English. It was but natural for the schools, started at the very beginning of the missionary enterprise, to pass through a stage of rapid development until a college resulted, which was at first called “Armenia College,” because Harpoot is really in the heart of ancient Armenia, and also because the students were mostly Armenians. When the Turkish government became suspicious of everything Armenian, it was necessary to change the name of the college and accordingly it has since been called “Euphrates College.”
Unlike other American colleges in the Turkish Empire, it has been co-educational from the first, in that it has departments for both women and men. They are under the same administration, although, of course, it is impossible for the two sexes to mingle in the same school rooms and only in a few cases in later years have they been able to recite together. From the first, however, teachers in the boys’ department have also had classes in the girls’ department, and the institution has been under a single president. The girls’ department has had a separate head, holding the title of dean.
From the beginning the college has been overcrowded with students. The Armenians, instinctively eager for advancement, with unusually alert minds, saw at once the commercial value of modern education for their sons. At the same time, not a few of them realized the value of education for their daughters. We cannot be sure what advantages were uppermost in their thoughts in discussing this matter among themselves, but perhaps a statement made by a widowed mother who, at great sacrifice, put her daughter into the school, may show one side of the question. “I am perfectly willing to make the sacrifice,” she said, “because I know in the end I shall get the money all back, and more. If my daughter marries, with her present ignorance, she will have to marry a farmer or a common labourer. If, however, I can give her a full college education, she will marry a preacher or a teacher or some other professional man who will have a much larger income and hold a position of greater honour.”
As a result of the general sentiment in favour of the education of women which prevails in the entire province, the girls’ college has been prosperous from the beginning. A large proportion of the expenses were met by the parents, they were so eager to have their girls educated. The latest catalogue shows 74 girls in the college, 60 in the high school and 247 in the lower departments, making 381 in all. Some of the graduates who have had post-graduate courses in other institutions are employed as teachers. As a result of its influence and the desire of the people for a more liberal education for their daughters, flourishing girls’ schools have sprung up in various parts of the province, some of them reaching the high school grade. These are, for the most part, supported by the people themselves, but the teachers are provided from the American College.
The boys’ college has followed practically the same course as other American colleges in the Turkish Empire, except that the number of students has been unusually large and almost wholly from the Armenian race. There have been a few Syrian students, and some other races are represented, but a great majority are Armenians.
The total number of students in the institution has sometimes passed one thousand, and the average attendance in the college department alone has usually stood at about two hundred. A majority of the one thousand have been in grades below the high school, but all under the general administration of the college. Seven years ago 34 per cent. of the students in the college came from within a radius of fifteen miles, immediately adjacent to Harpoot. But since then 56 per cent. have come from outside that radius. In the meantime the increased interest in education has caused other important schools to grow up in the vicinity, which have relieved the local pressure upon the college, allowing it to take more students from abroad.