NATURAL SCIENCE 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress 



No. 65— Vol. XI— JULY 1897 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



The Cambridge Graces 



On few recent educational questions have we felt such difficulty in 

 forming an opinion as on the proposal that the women students at 

 Cambridge should be granted the degrees for which they may have 

 passed the examinations. Anxious that the opportunities for women's 

 education should be extended in every way, our natural sympathies 

 were in favour of the proposals. There can be no doubt that those 

 Girtonians and Newnhamites who enter the educational profession 

 would find it a great advantage to have a Cambridge degree. To 

 refuse it to women who have resided at Cambridge for the necessary 

 number of terms, and have passed all the prescribed examinations, 

 seems to us unfair and almost churlish. Women who have done 

 the same work and stood the same tests as men, should surely be 

 allowed the same certificate of efficiency. It seems to us hopeless 

 to expect that popular opinion will ever estimate a Girton certificate 

 as of equal value to a Cambridge degree, while the university 

 refuses the latter. The present position of women students at 

 Cambridge seems to us anomalous, illogical, and very unfair. But 

 we doubt if the proposed changes would have improved matters. 

 No one denies that had the graces been passed, there would have 

 been a great increase in the number of women students at Cambridge. 

 It is affirmed by some Cambridge authorities, whose opinions are 

 usually entitled to respect, that the admission of women would have 

 been followed by a considerable decrease in the number of male 

 undergraduates. Suppose that in ten or twenty years' time, there 

 are half as many women students as men. It would then be 

 intolerable that the tutors and lecturers at the women's colleges and 

 halls should have no voice in arranging the courses of study. If 

 women be allowed the examinations and degrees, and form a third 

 of the registered students, it would be quite unfair that they should 

 not be eligible for all prizes and scholarships, and that their 

 interests should not be protected by direct representation on the 



