Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/12

6 is indigenous. The decade from 1890 to 1900 witnessed a growth wholly unprecedented in most of the strong coeducational colleges and universities of the central and western states. Academic standards were raised, equipments were lavishly provided in accordance with modern demands, faculties were enlarged and admirably trained specialists were secured in every department. In many institutions graduate courses of high merit were developed. The increase in the number of students was equally remarkable. The University of Minnesota leaped from 1,183 to over 3,000. The University of California from 763 to 3,024. The University of Wisconsin rose from 966 to 2,619. Cornell had 1,390 students in 1890, and 2,458 in 1900. At the University of Michigan the figures for the same period were 2,420 and 3,482. Moreover, in this same decade two coeducational universities were founded, Leland Stanford, Jr., University and the University of Chicago, which at once took rank with the foremost institutions of the country. In the year 1900 the former reported 1,389 students, the latter 3,520. Many other universities might be cited, such as the State Universities of Iowa, Ohio, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and Illinois, but they all tell the same story of the tropical development of higher education throughout this central and western region.

In 1890 there was but one of the large coeducational colleges in which women constituted over a third of the student body. This was true even in the courses grouped under the departments of literature, science and the arts. In institutions possessing schools of law and medicine the percentage of women in the total student body was very small. Even at this early date, however, Oberlin College was enjoying the fruits of its pioneer policy in first opening the doors of a man's college to women by finding 53 per cent, of its students women. It is not without interest to those nervous prophets who foresee a tidal wave of women sweeping the helpless men before it out of the coeducational institutions, that the percentage of women in the department of liberal arts at Oberlin has remained almost stationary for ten years, having, as a matter of fact, fallen somewhat toward the end of the period. Oberlin is in this particular also an exception, however. In all the other important universities the percentage of women has materially increased, and in some instances passed the fifty-per-cent. mark. Thus in 1900 the course in literature, arts and general science showed at the University of California 55 per cent, women; at Minnesota 53 per cent.; at Chicago 47 per cent.; at Michigan 47 per cent; and at Northwestern 44 per cent.