It is a turning point in the economic history 73 of educated women. It is a turning point in the history of women’s education.
At the 1909 annual convention of the Association of Collegiate Alumnæ, in Cincinnati, Miss Susan Kingsbury (acting for a committee of which Mrs. Richards, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Miss Breckenridge, of the University of Chicago, were members) read a real essay on “The Economic Efficiency of College Women.”
This essay was not written till detailed reports on income and expenditure from 377 self-supporting college women had been got together.
Out of these 377 there were 317 who were teachers. All of them had gone all the way through college. More than half of them had followed up their regular college course with from one to eight years of graduate study. The capital invested in their education was, in the average case, from $2,500 to $3,500. Often, however, it amounted to $7,000 because of advanced work and travel. After all this preparation, the average income achieved may be sufficiently disclosed in the one fact that, among those graduates who had been at work for from 74 six to eight years, more than seventy per cent. were still earning less than $1,100.
After drawing a complete statistical picture of the case, Miss Kingsbury concluded with certain questions and recommendations, here condensed, which show the new economic needs of educated women knocking at the door of the higher education.
“Should not the oversupply of teachers be reduced by directing many of our graduates into other pursuits than teaching? This will place upon the college, just where the responsibility is due, the obligation of discovering what those opportunities are and what preparation should be given.
“This organization should endeavor to arouse in our colleges a sense of responsibility for knowing the facts with regard to their graduates, both social and economic, and should also endeavor to influence our colleges through appointment secretaries, to direct women, according to fitness, into other lines than teaching.
“Should not courses be added to the college curriculum to give women the fundamental 75 principles in other professions, or lines of industry or commerce, than teaching?
“May not required courses be added to the college curriculum to inculcate business power and sense in all women?”
This philosophy seems to aim at making the modern school as informative about the occupations of modern women as the primitive colonial home used to be about the occupations of the women of early New England.