The Iola register., 1889-11-15
COLLEGES FOR WOMEN.

Equality in Educational Institutions
Progress I'm Higher Education and Its
Beneficial Results.
Since Frederick Maurice established
Queens College in London. England
has advanced rapidly in furnishing
higher education for women. Girton
and Newman at Cambridge, and Som
erville and Lady Margarite's Halls at
Oxford, are the marks for advanced ed
ucation for the sex in England, while
Wellesley. Smith and Holyoke colleges
in New England. Vassar and Bryn
Mawr elsewhere. and the attachment of
women to college work at Harvard.
Cornell and Columbia among the insti-
tutions of the East, together with the
State universities at the West are q
fair measure of the interest now taken
in the higher education of women in
this country. Oxford and Cambridge
in England are no more full measure
of the interest in England than the in
stitutions here named are an adequate
expression of the interest in the United
States. There are hundreds of less
noted educational institutions scattered
all over England and America where
the advanced work has been immensely
improved by the opening of the stand
ard institutions TO women. 1t is, per-
haps, thirty years since this movement
began Queens College in London was
the pioneer institution of this kind. and
their promoters in both countries de.
serve the greatest credit for having
openod avenues TO strong and bright
women which had heretofore been
closed to them.
Such an impetus has been given to
the higher education of women by
these institutions that the present gen.
GRAFTON is already feeling their in
fuence. Miss Annie J. Clough, of New
ham College, in speaking of the infiu-
ence of this education upon English
woman, is careful 10 note the increased
fields of usefulness which have opened
since women have been cultivated to
enter them. In England these institu-
tions connected with Oxford and Cam
bridge, and already begun in different
parts of the United Kingdom, have
greatly increased the teaching force of
the country. They have also added
several new professions to those now
filed by women. Positions as convey
ancers, analytical chemists and dispen-
sers, the charge of gardening, farming
and business the study of medicine,
careers in art. literature and research,
have opened to women who could en-
ter upon them, and almost every kind
OF intellectual and administrative work
has been undertaken by women who
were qualified for these spheres. A
large and competent body of teachers
is already the result of the higher edu-
cation of woman in Great Britain.
While the sex have thus made room
for women in occupations which have
heretofore been exclusively or mainly
reserved for men, they have not failed
to bring into homes of their own the
results of wider contact with thought
and life which have come to them from
the higher education.
The home is an important field for
the exercise of women's intelligence as
the lectureship or the professional
chair. and it is here that the women of
position in England, or those who felt
passion within them to do great
things, have nobly justified the oppor.
tunities extended to them.
In this country. where the freedom
Of occupation is less controlled by ira
dition. the higher education of woman
has begun to change the character OF
our social and intellectual life. The
same lines of occupation open TO them
in England are free to them in Amer
lea; but. with the larger opportunities
OF great country, they have yet to
make themselves felt in the general
welfare as effectively as they have OBJ
tained recognition of their influence in
Great Britain. The larger develop
men of the higher education of women
in our own women's colleges is too re-
cent for the graduates to have fully
made their mark in professional or
educational life, and yet whoever Wis
its the schools or goes among the latest
applicants for professional positions
will find that bright and thoroughly
educated women are constantly finding
their way into new positions, and thus
enlarging the sphere of their sex. The
home, with us. re-absorbs large num-
Der of the graduates of these institu-
tions, where their culture becomes the
center Of social and personal influences
that touch the lives of those around
them. All over the country these
bright women are thus beginning to re-
construct and elevate social life. The
college education Of American women
is thus restoring to thousands OF local
ities the higher moral and intellectual
society which was formerly delightful
feature of the smaller New England
towns No one can understand, who
has not known the eagerness with
which the American girls have re-
sponded to the opportunity for higher
education. tie extent and the variety OF
the best sort which has thus been of
fered to women and is now distributed
all over the country. 1t has enabled
them to be at once radical and conserv-
ative; it has placed them where, di-
rectly or indirectly. they bring the
most helpful influences to bear upon
the national character. There is
nothing in the organic forces OF Amer
lean society to-day which is more close
ly connected with the happiness of the