sion requirements and maintain the same standards as the colleges for men, and concentrate all their resources on college as distinguished from preparatory and secondary work. In the Reports of the Bureau of Education 13 colleges that answer to this description are classified by themselves to distinguish them from the seminaries or combined seminaries and colleges for women. Many institutions of this latter class are also authorized to confer degrees and do in fact make provision for students who desire to complete the studies that lead to these honors, but as a rule they have large preparatory departments and a small proportion of classical students. The distribution of women college students (undergraduates) among the several classes of institutions in 1902 was as follows:

The coeducational colleges show a gain since 1893, when they comprised 49 per cent of women undergraduates as against 56 per cent in 1902, but this increase of 7 per cent is easily accounted for by the opening of new institutions in the South and West. The high ratio of enrollment in the women's colleges of the North Atlantic States is to be expected, as the chief colleges of this class are in this section. For obvious reasons location plays the most important part in determining the colleges which women attend, hence statistics throw little light on their scholastic preferences.

SPECIAL POLICIES GROWING OUT OF THE COEDUCATION MOVEMENT. Between the two extremes of coeducational institutions as maintained in the West and the separate colleges for women characteristic of the Eastern States two modified systems have developed. The one is that of distinct colleges for men and for women forming integral parts of a university organization, illustrated by the colleges of Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio; of Tulane University, New Orleans, La., and by the Women's College of Brown University, Providence, R. I.; the other modification is that of a separate college for women annexed to but not an integral part of a university, as Barnard (an annex to Columbia) and Radcliffe (annex to Harvard). These modifications show how strong and universal is the demand that women shall enjoy the largest opportunities for culture and training; at the same time they illustrate the disposition everywhere manifested to adjust these cpportunities to prevailing conditions and sentiments.

a

The necessity of special adjustments to adapt the older colleges for men to the requirements of women was discussed as early as 1879 @ by Dr. F. A. P. Barnard, former president of Columbia College, New York, and an earnest advocate of collegiate advantages for women. Doctor Barnard considered among other requirements the provision of suitable living conditions, in respect to which the colleges

a Report of President Barnard for 1879, cited in the Commissioner's Report for 1901, vol. 2, pp. 1288-1292.

exclusively for women had already set very high standards. It will readily be seen that this is a matter of first importance where the university organization involves the idea of corporate college life and only a minor consideration where, as in the case of the majority of the State universities, the central idea is that of teaching-in other words, the presence of a corps of competent professors and ample equipments for students whose only association is that of the class room. The number of coeducational colleges in which the former idea prevails is very small, for naturally it is universities of this class (situated, for the most part, in the eastern section of the country) that have been reluctant to admit women. Tradition and sentiment, crystallized around the established order, have proved an obstinate barrier to so radical an innovation. The few coeducational universities in which corporate college life is a feature are of recent origin, and they have followed in their arrangements for the residence of women students the high precedent set by the separate colleges for women so far as circumstances have permitted. In particular, the system of residence halls for women, as carried out at Wisconsin, Chicago, and a few other universities, affords ideal conditions for the practice of that spirit of cooperation and that systematic arrangement of daily life which are essential conditions of happy homes. Indeed, college residence as now generally planned is an excellent preparation for home making. But living conditions represent only one line of special adjustments which characterize the recent developments of higher education in this country. "The old college course," says one of our leading college presidents, "met the needs of nobody, and therefore was adapted to all alike. The great educational awakening of the last twenty years in America has lain in breaking the bonds of this old system. The essence of the new education is individualism." "Herein," he argues, lies the opportunity for adjusting the same institution to both men and women." "An institution," he continues, "which meets the varied needs of varied men can also meet the varied needs of the varied women. The intellectual needs of the two classes are not very different in many important respects. The special or professional needs, so far as they are different, will bring their own satisfaction. Those who have had to do with the higher training of women know that the severest demands can be met by them as well as by men. There is no demand for easy or 'goody-goody' courses of study for women, except as this demand has been encouraged by men. In this matter the supply has always preceded the demand." a

The elective system, which has broken what is here characterized as the “bond of the old," and which is now adopted to some extent at least by every university in the country, affords ample opportunity for all needed scholastic adjustments required by university students. Unfortunately, in the transition from the old to the new, there has grown up a confusion as to the difference between secondary and higher education, and still greater confusion as to the distinction between colleges and universities, which complicates the whole situation and which is sometimes mistaken for an effect of coeducation.

The recent action of three coeducational institutions, Chicago, Leland Stanford, and Wesleyan (Connecticut), discriminating in noticeable ways between the men and women students, has excited great agitation and has been widely discussed as a general reaction against the coeducation policy. This view gives exaggerated importance to measures growing out of conditions peculiar to the respective institutions.

In his official report for 1903 Doctor Harper submits a full explanation of the segregation policy recently adopted by Chicago University, for which he assigns three principal causes: (1) The proximity of the university to a large city, with

a Care and Culture of Men, by Dr. David Starr Jordan, president of Leland Stanford Junior University (p. 126).

the attendant social distractions; (2) the high ratio of young women students to the whole body; (3) the comparative youth of the junior students. In all these respects Chicago University offers a contrast to the older coeducational colleges. a The action of the authorities of Leland Stanford University in limiting the number of women students to 500 at any time is in pursuance of the special purpose of Mr. Stanford, which was the endowment of a university to be distinctively for technical and graduate students.

The limit placed by the trustees of Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., upon the number of women students-namely, 20 per cent of the total number for the preceding year-appears to have been determined by the accommodations of the college home for women.

The universities whose action is thus explained are all of private origin, and their action in this matter does not affect at all the position of publicly endowed or State universities. The weight of influence from the latter, as we have seen, is wholly in favor of the association of men and women in class exercises. This is also the position of all land-grant colleges in the West. Of the 50 institutions for white students participating in this Congressional bounty, 26 are colleges or departments within the universities already considered. Of the 24 remaining institutions all but eight are coeducational. These exceptions are distributed as follows: Two in the North Atlantic division and 3 in each of the two southern divisions of the country.

THE CHOICE OF STUDIES AS INFLUENCED BY SEX.

In an inquiry as to the choice of studies on the part of students it should be remembered that in the United States college education is practically within the reach of all youth whose parents can meanwhile provide for them the necessities of life. Indeed, we may go further and say that even the poorest youth may hope for such advantages if he is willing and able to work his way through.". Hence it follows that in this country liberal education is not, as in many countries of Europe, the particular privilege of the nobly born or the rich, but is valued as something desirable in itself or leading to higher opportunities of usefulness or self-advancement, a conception which is indicated by the rapid spread of the elective system.

The opinion has been often expressed that within the prescribed limits the choice of studies by women students is widely different from that of men. This fact is indeed recognized by Professor Angell, of Chicago University, in the most discriminating article on coeducation that has appeared during the recent agitations of the subject. "It must be admitted," says this author, “that on the instructional side only one difficulty of serious import appears to exist. This is the tendency toward sex segregation in certain courses of which we have already spoken at length." c

It is difficult to estimate the effect of this tendency, so far as it exists, on account of the lack of statistics showing the scholastic classification of students. In the case of the few institutions that give this information there is found to be an excess of women students in certain courses and of men students in others; but it is equally evident that the choice is determined not by sex, but by the practical consideration of careers that may be followed after graduation. In the University of California, whose catalogues give the desired classification, the proportion of women in the several subjects in the senior class of 1902 was as follows: Letters, 54 per cent; social science, 68 per cent; natural sciences, 66 per cent; a Sec pp. 1073-74.

b See letter from President David Starr Jordan in the Commissioner's Report for 1901, vol. 2, p. 1233.

"Some reflections upon the reaction from coeducation," by Prof. James Rowland Angell, Popular Science Monthly, November, 1902.

chemistry, 20 per cent; agricultural, commercial, and engineering courses, no women. In the University of Wisconsin, which also gives these particulars, the proportion of women in the several branches in the senior class was as follows: English, 34 per cent; modern classics, 75 per cent; civics and history, 27 per cent; general science, 18 per cent; philosophy, 39 per cent; ancient classics, 49 per cent. In this university the engineering department is entirely distinct from the college of letters and science and has no women students. The only excessive "segregation" shown by the above is that of men in technical courses leading to professions of which they have the monopoly.

As to the choice of studies by students in the whole body of the colleges there is no index save the statistics of degrees conferred. These statistics it is difficult to interpret on account of the proverbial variety of degrees recognized in the United States. The course or courses (for even here uniformity is wanting) leading to the A. B. degree still claim nearly one-half of all graduates (49 per cent), and with the courses for the B. S. degree comprise above two-thirds (67 per cent) of all college students. According to statistics for 1902, of men graduates 46.4 per cent received that year the A. B. degree, and 22.4 the B. S.; for women the corresponding ratios were, A. B. degree, 54.59 per cent; B. S. degree. 9.46 per cent. The fact that science attracts a higher proportion of men than of women students, and the classics a slightly higher proportion of women, tends to confirm the opinion expressed above of a relation between the studies elected and the careers which await graduates. This relation is emphasized also by the fact that of the two most largely attended special courses organized in universities, pedagogy shows 67 per cent of women against 33 per cent of men, and commercial courses 49 per cent of women against 51 per cent of men.

On the whole, it does not appear from the available statistics that the separation of men and women students through their respective choice of studies is so decided as to greatly affect the organization of the typical college courses or to be a disturbing influence even in the arrangement of special courses.

In one respect the presence of women in the higher institutions has had a marked effect upon courses of study. It was in the interest of women that provision was first made for instruction in domestic science. From small beginnings elaborate courses of study have developed, including chemistry as related to food, household hygiene and sanitation, and home architecture, and extending to the larger subjects of municipal sanitation, public hygiene, etc. The colleges endowed by the land grant were the first to make special provision for these branches, and they form the majority of all institutions in which the subjects mentioned have distinct recognition. Among private foundations that have organized special courses in domestic science are Leland Stanford Junior University, Chicago University, Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, N. Y.), The Drexel Institute (Philadelphia), all coeducational.

Happily, there are indications that the tendency to early specialization which the universities have developed under the pressure of industrial demands has reached its climax. Influences are at work which promise to restore the lost ideals of liberal education and to distinguish between the instruction which makes for idcal development, "the humanities," and that purely technical training whose end is aptitude in a special direction. Furthermore, the careers open to educated women are increasing in number, and these two movements must inevitably tend to equalize the proportion of men and women in the culture studies as distinguished from those of immediate utility."

a The census of 1890 gave the number of women in professional service as 311,687; in 1900 as 430,576, an increase of 38 per cent. Teachers and college professors formed the great majority in these totals-viz, 246,066 in 1890 and 327,614 in 1902. The number of women physicians increased from 4,557 to 7,387, ministers from 1,143 to 3,373, and lawyers from 208 to 1,010.

Our survey of the movement for the higher education of women in this country has been limited to provisions for general education, either literary or scientific in character. It is obvious that this movement would never have become widespread nor affected deeply, as it has done, our national life if the majority of our colleges and universities had not opened their doors to women. To duplicate for women the teaching corps and the material equipments required for higher education would be impossible. In the case of public endowments, if such duplication were attempted it would result in loss to all students, irrespective of sex. Undoubtedly many students seek college education as a preparation for some particular calling. Nevertheless its chief outcome is its uplifting power. As a national force it is, therefore, to be measured by the numbers brought under its influence, since the intellectual and moral level of national life will rise no higher than the average individual level. In this average women represent as potent an element as men; hence, with deep insight into the conditions of public welfare, the people have generally decreed that public education of all grades shall be equally accessible to men and to women.

WOMEN IN GRADUATE AND PROFESSIONAL DEPARTMENTS.

Graduate courses of instruction, from the nature of the studies which they include and the services for which they prepare students-among which the profession of teaching is paramount are closely related to undergraduate work, and in the universities of the West these specialized courses have naturally known no distinction of sex. The most significant fact in the recent history of the movement here followed is the admission of women to graduate courses in certain universities of the East-notably Yale and Columbia-which exclude them from the undergraduate departments.

The tendency in this direction is particularly observed by Doctor Harper in his report upon the new arrangements in his own university. "Women," he says, "are being admitted in all leading institutions to the privileges of graduate and higher college work." Apparently he regards this action as similar to the anomalous plan of segregation recently adopted at Chicago, which separates the men and women for the first two college years and admits them to the same classes for the remaining years.

The proportion of women in mixed graduate courses as compared with men is about 3 to 8 (actually 1,456 to 3,895). Here, as in respect also to undergraduate classes, women have very little aid from scholarship or other funds.

As a general rule, coeducational universities maintain the policy in all departments. There are, however, numerous instances of the exclusion of women from the professional schools of such universities. This action involves no arbitrary distinction between the parts of an integral process. Professional training dif

a In 1902 the ratios of women teachers to the whole body of teachers in the higher grades of education were as follows:

Public secondary schools

Private secondary schools.

Colleges and seminaries for women

Coeducation colleges

Preparatory departments

College departments..

Per cent of women teachers.

51

58

72

29

10

Detailed statistics for 1890 show that out of scholarship and fellowship funds amounting in value to $500,000 the funds for women amounted to only $44,000. Additional funds of a total value of $136,000 were available for both men and women. Since the year named efforts have been made (in particular by the Collegiate Alumnæ Association) to increase the funds available for women, but the relative proportions have not been affected, as the funds for men students have also increased.

See Commissioner's Report for 1901, vol. 2, pp. 1236-1240,