In these endeavors for the higher education of women help was derived from a foundation laid at Elmira in the year 1855. But the foun dation was not adequate for offering the train ing which women were desirous of receiving. Its chief value, therefore, lay in the incentive it gave rather than in its actual educational achievement.
The general purpose and conditions under which all these foundations were laid are well indicated in an address given by Matthew Vas sar to the trustees of his college in June 1864 at the time when the question of the election of professors was being discussed.
/It is my hope — it was my only hope and desire—indeed, it has been the main incentive to all I have already done, or may hereafter do, or hope to do, to inaugurate a new era in the history and life of woman. The attempt you are to aid me in making fails wholly of its point if it be not an advance, and a decided ad vance. I wish to give one sex all the advan tages too long monopolized by the other. Ours • is, and is to be, an institution for women — not men. In all its labors, positions, rewards and hopes, the idea is the development and exposi tion, and the marshaling to the front and the preferment of women —of their powers on every side, demonstrative of their equality with sritn — demonstrative, indeed, of such capacities as in certain fixed directions surpass those of men. This, I conceive, may be fully accom plished within the rational limits of true woman liness, and without the slightest hazard to the attractiveness of her character. We are indeed already defeated before we commence if such development be in the least dangerous to the dearest attributes of her sex. We are not the less defeated if it be hazardous for her to avail herself of her highest educated powers when that point is gained. We are defeated if we start upon the assumption that she has no powers save those she may derive, or imitate, from the other sex. We are defeated if we recognize the idea that she may not, with every propriety, contribute to the world the benefits of matured faculties which education evokes. We
are especially defeated if we fail to express, by our acts, our practical belief in her pre-emi nent powers as an instructor of her own sex.° The third type of the collegiate education of women is known as co-ordination. It repre sents the inclusion in, or the alliance of, a col lege for women with a college for men. Cer tain communities, in their desire to promote the education of women, and in their unwillingness to duplicate educational equipment, have estab lished colleges for women as an annex to, or as institutions parallel with, the institutions founded at an earlier date for men. This method represents the English tradition. Gir ton, at Cambridge, existed nine years before the foundation of the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women, organized in Cambridge, Mass., in 1879. The more conspicuous of these colleges are Radcliffe, affiliated with Harvard; Barnard, affiliated with Columbia; the Woman's College of Brown University, the College for Women of Western Reserve University of Cleveland, and the H. Sophia Newcomb College, affiliated with Tulane University. The in tramural administration of these colleges differs from each other. In Radcliffe. Barnard and Brown at least, the larger part of the instruction isgiven by members of the faculty of the older college for men. In the College for Women of Western Reserve University a distinct faculty is established which is co-ordinate with the faculty of the college for men —Adelbert of the same university.
Colleges of each of these three types have special advantages, and are subject to special disadvantages. Each apparently has come to occupy a permanent place in American educa tion. Coeducation, however, is by far the more popular. About nine-tenths of all colleges are coeducational institutions. The number of de grees conferred on women in all American col leges in the last year was about 4,000. The more common degrees are A.B., Ph.B., B.L. and B.S., of which A.B. is conferred on about five-eighths of all candidates.