THE REACTION FROM COEDUCATION. 7 



If professional schools are included in the computations, the figures 

 take on a very different complexion. Thus at Michigan, for instance, 

 in 1900 the law school with nearly 900 male students and the medical 

 departments with over 600 served, together with the engineering school 

 of 350, to keep the proportion of women to men in the whole institu- 

 tion within 3 per cent, of what it was in 1890, the figures being 16 per 

 cent, and 19 per cent, for the beginning and end of the decade respect- 

 ively. In almost every case the increase in the percentage of women 

 occurred in the face of an unparalleled increase in the number of male 

 students. Indeed, a recent writer has presented statistics to prove 

 that the increase in the number of men in coeducational institutions 

 has for some years past been relatively more rapid than the increase in 

 the colleges for men alone. This, too, is a hard saying for those who 

 maintain that women are driving men out of the coeducational institu- 

 tions. But it does not mean, as we shall presently see, that women 

 and men are increasing with equal rapidity in the same courses of study. 



One finds his natural anticipations fulfilled in the almost entire 

 absence of women from the courses in law and technology. Medicine 

 attracts a small quota, but to all intents and purposes the serious em- 

 barrassments of the present situation may be treated as if the women 

 were all segregated in the department of liberal arts. When one pur- 

 sues the matter behind the face of the commonly published statistics, 

 he finds that the process of segregation extends much further than these 

 indicate. So far has the process of differentiation gone that certain 

 courses are essentially preempted by women, whereas in others the 

 men reign solitary and supreme. There is, to be sure, no rigid uni- 

 formity among the various institutions as regards the particular 

 courses which are thus apportioned. But the phenomena of segrega- 

 tion is practically universal, so that in many glasses the spirit of 

 coeducation is buried under the substance of a female seminary or a 

 man's college, as the case may be. Thus it will be found that the 

 classes in English literature have been largely appropriated by women. 

 History, the modern languages and classical studies show in many 

 institutions a large invasion of women, while mathematics, geology 

 and biology, together with the philosophical and social sciences, fur- 

 nish a transition to the exact sciences and to studies of an advanced 

 character immediately preparatory for law, medicine and technology, 

 in which the men have things almost to themselves. The distribution 



culiarities of organization in a few institutions must also be taken into account. 



Northwestern University, for example, has a large conservatory of music, 



chiefly patronized by women. This is not taken into account in our figures, 



which are meant to render comparative statements as nearly as possible reliable 



and significant. The figures quoted are believed to be entirely trustworthy for 

 this purpose. 



