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PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION

In 1898-99 there were studying in these 23 graduate schools 1,021 women, forming 26.8 per cent of the whole number of graduate students. In 1889-90 the U. S. education report estimates that there were 271 women graduate students out of a total of 2,041 graduate students, or women formed 13.27 per cent of all graduate students; in 1897-98 the report for that year estimates that there were 1,398 women out of a total of 5,816 graduate students, or women formed 24.04 per cent of all students--a remarkable increase as compared to the increase of men graduate students in 8 years.

The numbers of coeducational and other professional schools are estimated from the U. S. ed. rep. for 1889-90.

Footnote 39:

Footnote 40:

The number of professional students for the year 1898 is taken from the U. S. ed. rep. for 1897-98.

Footnote 41:

For the sake of clearness I have omitted from the above table the 7 separate medical schools for women, although I have counted their students in the total number of women medical students, both in 1890 and 1898. In 1890 there were studying in the 6 regular medical women's colleges 425 women, as against 648 women in coeducational regular medical colleges; in 1898 there were studying in them 411 women, as against 1045 in coeducational colleges, a decrease of 3.3 per cent, whereas women students in coeducational medical colleges have increased 16.3 per cent. I limit the comparison to regular medical schools because women have increased relatively more rapidly in irregular medical schools and there is only one separate irregular medical school for women. It is sometimes said that women prefer medical sects because the proportion of women studying in irregular schools is relatively greater than the proportion studying in regular schools; but in 1898, 85.7 per cent of the irregular schools were coeducational and only 46.6 per cent of regular schools, a fact which undoubtedly increases the proportion of students studying in irregular schools.

Footnote 42:

The statistics for the schools of technology and agriculture are taken from the U. S. education report for 1889-90, pp. 1053-1054, and from the report for 1897-98, pp. 1985-1988. I have excluded schools of technology not endowed with the national land grant. In 1890 there were 27 of such schools ; in 1898 their number had fallen to 17 . Very few women are studying in these schools; in 1898 women formed only 0.2 per cent of all students studying in them.

It is evident to the impartial observer that coeducation is to be the method in professional schools. Except in medicine, where women were at first excluded from coeducational study by the strongest prejudice that has ever been conquered in any movement, no important separate professional schools, indeed none whatever, except one unimportant school of pharmacy have been founded for women only. It is evident also that the number of women entering upon professional study is increasing rapidly. If we compare the relative increase of men and of women from 1890 to 1898 we obtain the following percentages: increase of students in medicine, men, 51.1 per cent, women, 64.2 per cent; in dentistry, men, 150.2 per cent, women, 205.7 per cent; in pharmacy, men, 25.9 per cent, women, 190 per cent; in technology and agriculture, men, 119.3 per cent, women, 194.7 per cent.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

There are many questions connected with the college education of American women which possess great interest for the student of social science.

It will be seen that independent, affiliated and coeducational colleges fall into their proper place in the series, thus showing conclusively that the method of obtaining a college education exercises scarcely any appreciable influence on the marriage rate.

The marriage rate of Bryn Mawr college, calculated in January, 1900, will also serve as an illustration of the importance of time in every consideration of the marriage rate: graduates of the class of 1889, married, 40.7 per cent; graduates of the first two classes, 1889-1890, married, 40.0 per cent; graduates of the first three classes, 1889-1891, married, 33.3 per cent; graduates of the first four classes, 1889-1892, married, 32.9 per cent; graduates of the first five classes, 1889-1893, married, 31.0 per cent; graduates of the first six classes, 1889-1894, married, 30.0 per cent; graduates of the first seven classes, 1889-1895, married, 25.2 per cent; graduates of the first eight classes, 1889-1896, married, 22.8 per cent; graduates of the first nine classes, 1889-1897, married, 20.9 per cent; graduates of the first ten classes, 1889-1898, married, 17.2 per cent; graduates of the first eleven classes, 1889-1899, married, 15.2 per cent.

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION FOR THE UNITED STATES COMMISSION TO THE PARIS EXPOSITION OF 1900

Director HOWARD J. ROGERS, Albany, N. Y.

MONOGRAPHS ON EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES

Footnote 1:

That their admission was due in large part to the stress of circumstances is shown by the fact that in the very states in which these coeducational schools had been established there was manifested on other occasions a most illiberal attitude toward girls' education. In the few cities of the Atlantic seaboard, where European conservatism was too strong to allow girls to be taught with boys in the new high schools, and where there were boys enough to fill the schools, girls had to wait much longer before their needs were provided for at all, and then most inadequately. In Boston, where the boys' and girls' high schools were separated, it was impossible until 1878 for a Boston girl to be prepared for college in a city high school, whereas, in the country towns of Massachusetts, where boys and girls were taught together in the high schools, the girl had had the same opportunities as the boy for twenty-five or thirty years. Indeed, it was not until 1852 that Boston girls obtained, and then only in connection with the normal school, a public high-school education of any kind whatsoever. In Philadelphia, where boys and girls are taught separately in the high schools, no girl could be prepared for college before 1893, neither Latin, French, nor German being taught in the girls' high school, whereas, for many years the boys' high school had prepared boys for college. In Baltimore the two girls' high schools are still, in 1900, unable to prepare girls for college, whereas the boys' high school has for years prepared boys to enter the Johns Hopkins university. The impossibility of preparing girls for college is only another way of stating that the instruction given is very imperfect.

Footnote 2:

The magnitude of this fact will be apparent if we reflect that here for the first time the girls of a great nation, especially of the poorer classes, have from their earliest infancy to the age of eighteen or nineteen received the same education as the boys, and that the ladder leading, in Huxley's words, from the gutter to the university may be climbed as easily by a girl as by a boy. Although college education has affected as yet only a very few out of the great number of adult women in the United States, the free opportunities for secondary education have influenced the whole American people for nearly two-thirds of a century. The men of the poorer classes have had, as a rule, mothers as well educated as their fathers, indeed, better educated; to this, more than to any other single cause, I think, may be attributed what by other nations is regarded as the phenomenal industrial progress of the United States. Our commercial rivals could probably take no one step that would so tend to place them on a level with American competition as to open to girls without distinction all their elementary and secondary schools for boys. In 1892, girls formed 55.9 per cent, and in 1898, 56.5 per cent of all pupils in the public and private secondary schools of the United States.

Footnote 3:

In 1870 women formed 59.0 per cent; in 1880, 57.2 per cent; in 1890, 65.5 per cent; and in 1898, 67.8 per cent of all teachers in the public elementary and secondary schools of the United States . It has been frequently remarked that the feminine pronouns "she" and "her" are instinctively used in America in common speech with reference to a teacher. Moreover more women than men are teaching in the public and private secondary schools of the United States ; whereas in all other countries the secondary teaching of boys is wholly in the hands of men.

Footnote 4:

In many cases in the west women made their way into the universities through the normal department of the university, being admitted to that first of all. The summer schools of western colleges, chiefly attended by teachers, among whom women were in the majority, served also as an entering wedge.

Footnote 5:

Antioch college opened, however, with only 8 students in its college department, all the rest, 142, belonging to its secondary school.

Footnote 6:

In every case I give the date when full coeducation was introduced; West Virginia, for example, admitted women to limited privileges in 1889.

Footnote 7:

In discussing coeducation I shall, therefore, disregard the divisions into north Atlantic, south Atlantic, north central, south central and western, employed by the U. S. census and the U. S. bureau of education. The New England, middle and southern states are all, of course, eastern, and, with the exception of Vermont, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri, are all seaboard states, Pennsylvania being counted as a seaboard state on account of its close river connection with the sea. It will be noted that the inland southern states are rather western than eastern in their characteristics. The northern middle states belong on the whole by their sympathies to New England, the southern middle to the southern states. Missouri, having been a slave state and settled largely by southerners, is still southern in feeling. The District of Columbia also may conveniently be counted with the southern states.

Footnote 8:

Two of the three next largest colleges in Virginia--Richmond and Roanoke--admit women, but the advance in women's education in that state has been very recent. Until the establishment of the State normal school in 1883 there was not a scientific laboratory in the state accessible to women; in 1893 the Randolph-Macon Woman's college opened with several laboratories, see Prof. Celestia Parrish, Proceedings 2d Capon Springs conference for education in the south, 1899, p. 68. I am much indebted to the author of this paper for valuable data in regard to coeducation in the south.

Footnote 9:

The Massachusetts institute of technology is classified by the U. S. ed. reps. among technical schools.

Footnote 10:

The commissioner of education does not feel himself at liberty to discriminate among the colleges chartered by the different states, but it is well known that in most states the name of college, or preferably that of university, and the power to confer degrees are granted to any institution whatsoever without regard to endowment, scientific equipment, scholarly qualifications of the faculty or adequate preparation of the students. The majority of the so-called colleges and universities of the south and west are really secondary schools. In most of them not only are the greater part of the students really pupils in the preparatory or high school department, but most of the students in the collegiate departments are at graduation barely able to enter upon the sophomore or second year work of the best eastern colleges. Throughout this monograph I have used the word college in speaking of institutions for undergraduate education, except when quoting their official titles, and this whether the college in question is, or is not, included in a larger institution providing also three years of graduate instruction. The terms college and university are used in America without any definite understanding, even among colleges and universities themselves, as to how they shall be differentiated. Probably the most commonly accepted usage is to call an institution a university if it has attached to it various departments, or schools, without regard to the standing of these departments, the preparation of the students entering them, or the work done in them. In this sense all the state universities of the west are called universities because, although many of them are really high schools, they have attached to them schools of pharmacy, veterinary science, agriculture, and sometimes medicine or law. It is in this sense that many institutions for negroes are called universities, because they include various departments of industrial art as well as a high school department. Until very recently the requirements for admission to the departments of law, medicine, dentistry, etc., have been so low that it has been a positive disadvantage to have such schools attached to the college department, and when lately the graduates of Harvard college decided not to allow the graduates of its affiliated schools to vote with them for representatives on the board of trustees, they claimed with justice that the illiberal education of the majority of these graduates would tend to lower the standard of Harvard college. The use of the word university should be strictly limited to institutions offering at least three years of graduate instruction in one or more schools.

Footnote 11:

The only attempt hitherto made in America to discriminate between colleges of true college grade and others has been made by the Association of collegiate alumnae. This association was organized in 1882 for the purpose of uniting women graduates of the foremost coeducational colleges and colleges for women only into an association for work connected with the higher education of women. In the early years of the association there was appointed a committee on admissions, and the admission of each successive college in the association has been carefully considered, both with regard to its entrance requirements, the training of its faculty and its curriculum. The Association of collegiate alumnae concerns itself, of course, only with colleges admitting women, but there is no doubt that the fifteen coeducational colleges and seven colleges for women only admitted to the association would, in the estimation of every one familiar with the subject, rank among the first fifty-eight colleges of the United States.

The Federation of graduate clubs is an association of graduate students of those colleges whose graduate schools are important enough to entitle them to admission to the federation. The colleges in the Federation of graduate clubs are the only colleges in the United States that do true university work.

Footnote 12:

In only two instances, so far as I know, has coeducation once introduced been abandoned or restricted in any way. The private college of Adelbert of Western reserve, coeducational from 1873, opened a separate woman's college and excluded women in 1888. As the college department was very small and the state of Ohio in which the college was situated the most eastern in feeling of all western states, the change was seemingly to be attributed to a bid for students through undergraduate novelty. The Baptist college of Colby, in Maine, coeducational from 1871, has taught women in separate classes in required work since 1890. Women are not allowed to compete with men for college prizes or for membership in the students' society, which elects its members on account of scholarship. Complete separation, which was at first planned, has proved impracticable and from the beginning of the sophomore year women and men recite together in all elective work.

Footnote 13:

In an investigation made several years ago in the University of Wisconsin, which has been open to women since 1874, it was found that the women ranked in scholarship very considerably beyond the men. In the University of Michigan, where women have been educated with men since 1870, President Angell has repeatedly laid stress on their excellent scholarship. When in 1893-94 a committee of the faculty of the University of Virginia asked the officers of a large number of coeducational colleges especially in regard to this point the testimony received was very remarkable. In England it should be noted that the question of the success of women in collegiate studies has been put beyond a doubt by the published class lists of the competitive honor examinations of Oxford and Cambridge. In the discussions in regard to granting women degrees at Cambridge, it was freely admitted that women's minds were "splendid for examination purposes."

Footnote 14:

For a discussion of coeducation in schools and colleges in 1892, see U. S. education report for 1891-92, pp. 783-862.

Footnote 15:

U. S. education report 1889-90, pp. 761, 1582-1599, and 1897-98, p. 1823; account is taken of students of true college grade only in the college proper. Throughout this monograph I have corrected the figures of the U. S. ed. reps. which are affected by the erroneous assumption that the undergraduate departments of Brown, Yale, Rochester, New York Univ., Pennsylvania, Tulane and Western Reserve are coeducational. In the University of Chicago women formed, in 1898, 54.5 per cent of all regular, and 70 per cent of all unclassified, students; in Boston university in the regular college course there were, in 1899, 299 women as against 192 men.

Footnote 16:

In 1889-90 there were 19,245 men studying in 146 colleges for men only; in 1898-99 there were 25,915 men studying in 143 colleges for men only, an increase of only 34.7 per cent. Women, however, have increased in women's colleges 138.4 per cent.

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