COEDUCATION AND EUGENICS 



Women Graduates of Syracuse University Have Very Low Marriage and Birth 

 Rates Those of Men Graduates Are Much Higher Colleges Perhaps Re- 

 ceive an Abnormal Type of Woman and Nature of Education Can Effect 

 Little Change in her Unmarriageable Character. 

 Howard J. Ba\ki:r 

 Eugenics Record Office, Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, X. ]'. 



WHILE considerable work has 

 been done recently in the sta- 

 tistical study of the fecundity 

 of college graduates there are 

 still some phases of the subject for which 

 the facts and figures have not been fulh' 

 presented. Most of the work hereto- 

 fore has been based on the records of 

 the separate colleges for men and women 

 and, aside from some data as to marriage 

 rates, no extensive study has been made 

 of any coeducational institution. To 

 supi^ly this deficiency the writer under- 

 took nearly a year ago a comj^ilation of 

 the statistics of Syracuse University, 

 but has been delayed in publishing the 

 results by the press of other work. 



The finding of previous investigators 

 has been, in general, that college gradu- 

 ates show a declining rate of fecundity 

 to a point where they are not even 

 reproducing themselves, and that the 

 record for the graduates of women's col- 

 leges is by far the lowest. This has 

 led to severe animadversions upon the 

 "atmosphere" of the se])arate college 

 for women with strong intimations that 

 coeducational schools would render a 

 much better showing. The work here 

 presented was undertaken with the 

 exi^ectation that it would furnish con- 

 firmatory facts for so ])lausible a theory. 

 If the figures have failed to sustain the 

 claims for coeducation it cannot be 

 charged that it is due to any bias on the 

 part of the compiler. The results ob- 

 tained seem to demand a theory of 

 selection which has been recently in- 

 timated but not i)resented definitely 

 as an exj^anation of the low birth rate 

 seemingly fijstered by the higher educa- 

 tion of women. 



The tables here presented are con- 

 densed summaries of more elaborate 

 2 OS 



statistics. The work has been based 

 on the Alumni Record and General 

 Catalogue of Syracuse University edited 

 by Dean, now Vice-ChanccUor Emer- 

 itus, Frank Smalley, an elaborate work 

 in two volumes published in 1911. The 

 period covered by the statistics is ex- 

 actly fifty years from 1852 to 1901, in- 

 clusive. It is obvious that later figures 

 would be of doubtful value. In fact 

 even the data recorded for the decade 

 1892 1901 should be used with some 

 caution as in the later classes of this 

 decade there may be some children and 

 even a few marriages not yet recorded. 

 We feel confident, however, that these 

 will never materially aflfect our con- 

 clusions and will scarcely j^roduce an 

 appreciable effect in the averages. We 

 have the records for ten years a ter the 

 graduation of the last class while the 

 average interval from graduation to 

 marriage is for the men 4.5 years and 

 for the women 4.7 years. 



EARLY HISTORY OF SYRACUSE 



Why the statistics are carried back to 

 1852 while the University is commonly 

 understood to have been founded in 

 1871 may need some exi)lanation. Prior 

 to 1871 the institution had existed as 

 Genesee College at Lima, X. Y., having 

 been a coeducational school from the 

 beginning and with the same collegiate 

 ideals. In the latter year faculty and 

 students were transferred to the city of 

 Syracuse and reorganized as vSyracuse 

 University, the alumni of the old college 

 being formally grantetl degrees from 

 Syracuse in order to obviate any ques- 

 tion as to their legal standing in the new 

 institution. 



The tables here published ha\"e l)een 

 com])iled separately for the men and the 



