I should make
it clearer than I have done that, in what I have said, I am not
criticising the American co-educational system in any aspect save one.
He writes:

"The essential purpose of the system of co-education which had been
adopted, not only in the State universities supported by public funds,
but in certain colleges of earlier date, such as Oberlin, in Ohio, and
in comparatively recent institutions like Cornell University, of New
York, is to secure for the women facilities for training and for
intellectual development not less adequate than those provided for the
men.

"It was contended that if any provision for higher education for women
was to be made, it was only equitable, and in fact essential, that such
provision should be of the best. It was not practicable with the
resources available in new communities, to double up the machinery for
college education, and if the women were not to be put off with
instructors of a cheaper and poorer grade and with inadequate
collections and laboratories, they must be admitted to a share of the
service of the instructors, and in the use of the collections, of the
great institutions.

"It is further contended by well-informed people that what they call a
natural relation between the sexes, such as comes up in the competitive
work of university life, so far from furthering, has the result of
lessening the risk of immature sentiment and of undesirable flirtations.
By the use of the college system, the advantages of these larger
facilities can be secured to women, and have in fact been secured
without any sacrifice of the separate life of the women students.

"In Columbia University, for instance (in New York City), the women
students belong to Barnard College. This college is one of the seven
colleges that constitute Columbia University: but it possesses a
separate foundation and a faculty of its own. The women students have
the advantage of the university collections and of a large number of the
university lectures. The relation between the college and the university
is in certain respects similar to that of Newnham and Girton with the
University of Cambridge, with the essential difference that Barnard
College constitutes, as stated, an integral part of the university, and
that the Barnard students are entitled to secure their university
degrees from A.B. to Ph.D."

From the above it is by no means certain that on the one point on which
I have dwelt, his opinion coinc