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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVI. No. 674 



ment, although the gain is by no means as 

 consistent as it was last year. At three of 

 the prominent state institutions of the 

 middle west we discover a decrease in the 

 number of male students enrolled in the 

 academic department going hand in hand 

 with an increase in the number of women, 

 while at several other western institutions 

 the gain in the number of women is larger 

 than that in the number of men. The 

 exact opposite of the first condition is 

 noticeable in the case of at least two of the 

 eastern institutions, namely, Harvard and 

 New York University, where we find an in- 

 crease in the number of male academic stu- 

 dents accompanied by a decrease in the 

 number of women students. It is no doubt 

 safe to draw the broad conclusion that 

 there is a more pronounced tendency on the 

 part of eastern girls to attend separate col- 

 leges for women, and this view is borne 

 out by the fact that there has been a steady 

 gain in the enrollment of colleges like 

 Smith, Vassar, Bryn Mawr, etc., during the 

 past few years. At California and Ne- 

 braska there are more than twice as many 

 women as men in the academic department, 

 Chicago, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri and 

 Wisconsin being the only western institu- 

 tions that enroll more men than women in 

 the department under discussion, whereas 

 at all of the eastern institutions included 

 in the table there are more men than wom- 

 en in the academic department, with the 

 possible exception of Cornell and Syracuse, 

 which do not furnish the separate figures 

 for the two classes. Wisconsin has 87 less 

 men in 1907 than in 1904, but 138 more 

 women; Indiana has 176 more women but 

 only 7 more men, while Nebraska has 30 

 less men but 39 more women. 



With the exception of Syracuse, Vir- 

 ginia and Harvard, all of the scientific 

 schools show an increase, which in some 

 cases is quite considerable, whereas last 

 year three of the leading institutions in the 



east, namely, Columbia, Princeton and 

 Yale, reported a decrease in the number of 

 scientific students. It must not be for- 

 gotten that this year's falling off in the 

 Lawrence scientific school at Harvard is to 

 be explained by the gradual working out 

 of the system inaugurated by the estab- 

 lishment of the new graduate school of ap- 

 plied science in 1906. Last year the pro- 

 fessional schools of law and medicine 

 showed a general decline in attendance, 

 and this decrease has continued in medi- 

 cine, while in law the number of students 

 has remained practically uniform. Yale, 

 New York University and Chicago have 

 made the largest gains in law, while In- 

 diana, Northwestern, and Harvard and 

 Johns Hopkins report the largest increase 

 in the number of medical students. It is 

 interesting to note in this connection the 

 figures given in the latest report (190-^-05) 

 of the commissioner of education, where we 

 learn that the total number of law students 

 in the country during the year under re- 

 view was larger than ever before, namely, 

 14,714, whereas the number of medical stu- 

 dents decreased by 1,114 to 25,835, which 

 is smaller than the number of medical stu- 

 dents in any other of the four preceding 

 years. The reasons for this decline in the 

 number of medical students were described 

 in a previous article. 



In contradistinction to last year, the 

 graduate schools report healthy gains, a de- 

 crease being noted only in the case of 

 Cornell, Kansas, Virginia and Yale. All 

 of the agricultural schools, with the excep- 

 tion of those at Harvard, Ohio and Wis- 

 consin, have also gained in the number of 

 students. The schools of architecture ex- 

 hibit a gain at every institution, with the 

 exception of Pennsylvania, while dentistry 

 has increased numbers everywhere, except 

 at Illinois. Divinity, on the other hand, 

 shows a loss at all of the institutions, ex- 

 cept at Northwestern. The two institutions 



