universities and take the same examinations as the men. They do
not receive degrees, but they have most of the other advantages of men,
and for forty years they have carried off many honors. In the newer
universities of London, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool and in the Welsh
University they have every advantage open to men.
In Germany, the opportunities for higher education of women have changed
from year to year; but in 1910, there were 1,856 women in the
universities as compared with 1,108 in 1909, and this notwithstanding
the Emperor's well known belief that woman's sphere should be limited to
domestic activities.
The claims advanced in opposition to the higher education of women have
largely broken down to-day. It was long maintained that her mind was
inferior to man's mind in kind and quality, and that she could not do
the work required. In the presence of thousands of young women carrying
all kinds of university work with credit and honor such charges become
absurd. The belief that woman's health could not stand the strain fails
for the same reason. The fear that she would be less likely to marry; or
marrying, would be less likely to have children, has been seen to have
some body of fact behind it; but we have seen also that university
students are recruited from groups that are not the most fecund, and
that the same danger applies to men students as to women.[25] Women in
higher education are now accepted as a regular part of our modern life.
[25] Eight hundred and eighty-one Harvard graduates, twenty-five years
after graduation, had but 1,226 children. If half were boys, we have but
613 sons for 881 Harvard graduates. HUGO MUeNSTERBERG, _The Americans_,
p. 582. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1901.
And yet there is one objection that still remains unanswered in very
many minds. It has always been feared that women would lower the
standard of scholarship; and there is much in the quality of the present
generation of women students that may strengthen this belief. In the
seventies and eighties, the fear of being thought peculiar still kept
many ordinary women away from colleges. Now it has become fashionable,
and a woman who has been to college stands better in a community than
one who has not. Add to this the freedom and romance of "going to
college" and it follows that many young women, with increasing economic
freedom, are tempted to go up to the universities just as well-placed
young Englishmen go to Cam
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