in the
world. In 1841 three women received from it the bachelor's degree, the
first to get it. Oberlin's success had a pronounced influence on the
state universities, which, it was argued, should be open and free to
all citizens, since they were supported by public taxation. Almost all
the state universities and the great majority of the colleges and
universities on private foundations are today coeducational. The
results predicted by pessimists, viz., that the physical health of
women would suffer, that their intellectual capacity would depreciate
scholarship, and that the interests of the family would be menaced,
have not eventuated.

=The affiliated college for women=

The spread of coeducation in the state universities of the West and
the South and its presence in the newer private universities like
Cornell and Chicago had an influence upon the older universities of
the East. This influence has resulted in a third method of solving the
problem of women's education; viz., the establishment of the
affiliated college. Several universities have established women's
colleges, sometimes under the same and sometimes under a different
board of trustees, to provide the collegiate education for women which
is given to men by the undergraduate departments. Barnard College,
affiliated with Columbia University, Radcliffe College, affiliated
with Harvard University, Woman's College, affiliated with Brown
University, the College for Women, affiliated with the Western Reserve
University, and the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College for Women,
affiliated with Tulane University, have all been founded within the
past forty years.

=Graduate and professional studies for women=

All the universities for men except Princeton and Johns Hopkins and
all the fully coeducational institutions admit women upon the same
terms as men to graduate work. Graduate work is also undertaken with
excellent results in some of the independent women's colleges, as at
Bryn Mawr. Professional education for women has been coeducational
from the beginning, with the exception of medicine. The prejudice
against coeducation in that profession was so strong that five women's
medical schools were organized, but they provide instruction for
little more than a quarter of the women medical students. The increase
in the number of women in professional schools has not by any means
kept pace with the increase in the colleges. It appears that, with the
exception of tea