3 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In 1886 two thirds of the senior class at Wellesley graduated 

 from the classical course ; in 1890 more than one half took the 

 degree of Bachelor of Science. 



Competition with coeducational colleges made it evident that 

 the women's colleges were offering almost no facilities for special- 

 ization and graduate study. To meet this deficiency, and yet to 

 preserve the distinctive ideals of separate education, a new com- 

 bination was devised. Bryn Mawr proposed to offer opportuni- 

 ties for advanced study similar to those afforded at Johns Hopkins 

 and Cornell, but under social conditions and restraints such as 

 characterized the women's colleges, thus securing womanliness at 

 no cost of intellectual development. Harvard Annex offered ap- 

 proximately the same courses under the same professors as Har- 

 vard itself, but with meager equipment and social isolation. 

 Barnard College, and recently the Yale graduate department, have 

 recognized the principle of coeducation in a restricted form. 



The tendency to provide the same kind of education for 

 women as for men, and the desire to preserve that intangible 

 quality, womanliness, were constantly at variance in all these 

 different methods, producing some unexpected results. Here 

 and there women who were coeducated specialized. Perhaps Ph. 

 D.'s of Zurich, after a short and brilliant career, fell in love in a 

 hopelessly feminine manner, married, and apparently wasted all 

 their intellectual achievements in cuddling babies and training 

 the immigrant domestic ; all this without any sign of discontent 

 or domestic tragedy. On the other hand, as many sweet, femi- 

 nine, docile creatures from the women's colleges, whose femininity 

 had been preserved to ideal sweetness, went into law or medicine, 

 declined to marry at all, and lived happy, unregretful lives. 



The same contradictions were to be found among educated 

 men. The farmer's boy who had taken a course in scientific agri- 

 culture refused to farm and went into journalism; the college 

 professor's son failed in the classics, but made a fortune on a 

 Western cattle ranch ; the orthodox became the heterodox, and, 

 behold, everything was topsy-turvy ! Given a boy, a girl, and a 

 curriculum results : The boy a poet, the girl a lawyer, and the 

 curriculum something which had somehow missed fire ! No anx- 

 ious parent or zealous professor could be sure of the effect of a 

 given training. 



Into the midst of this uncertainty the elective system was 

 projected by one of the most conservative of Eastern colleges ; it 

 said, " Let him follow his bent." The thought spread like con- 

 tagion to the coeducational colleges, where traditions were less 

 fixed, and gradually to the older men's colleges as well ; but not 

 to the women's colleges. If a girl followed her bent, who knew 

 what might happen ? She might become too " learned for the 



