In 2000, 76.6 million understudies had enlisted in schools from Kindergarten through master's level college. Of these, 72 percent matured 12 to 17 were considered scholastically "on track" for their age, i.e. selected in at or above evaluation level. Of those selected rudimentary and auxiliary schools, 5.2 million (10.4 percent) went to private schools.[citation needed]
More than 85 percent of the grown-up populace have finished secondary school and 27 percent have gotten a four year college education or higher. The normal pay for school or college graduates is more prominent than $51,000, surpassing the national normal of those without a secondary school confirmation by more than $23,000, as indicated by a recent report by the U.S. Enumeration Bureau.[29] The 2010 unemployment rate for secondary school graduates was 10.8%; the rate for school graduates was 4.9%. [30]
The nation has a perusing proficiency rate of 99% of the populace over age 15,[31] while positioning underneath normal in science and arithmetic comprehension contrasted with other created countries.[32] In 2008, there was a 77% graduation rate from secondary school, beneath that of most created countries.
The poor execution has pushed open and private endeavors, for example, the No Child Left Behind Act. Also, the proportion of school instructed grown-ups entering the workforce to all inclusive community (33%) is marginally beneath the mean of other[which?] created nations (35%)[34] and rate of investment of the work power in proceeding with training is high.[35] A 2000s (decade) study by Jon Miller of Michigan State University inferred that "A somewhat higher extent of American grown-ups qualify as deductively proficient than European or Japanese adults".[36]
As per the National Association of School Nurses, 17% of understudies are viewed as large and 32% are overweight.[37]
Instructive stage
Formal training in the U.S. is separated into various particular instructive stages. Most youngsters enter the government funded instruction framework around ages five or six. Kids are allocated into year bunches known as evaluations.
The American school year customarily starts toward the end of August or the after quite a while in September, after a customary summer break. Kids usually progress together starting with one review then onto the next as a solitary companion or "class" after achieving the end of every school year in late May or early June.
Contingent on their circumstances, they may start school in pre-kindergarten, kindergarten or first grade. They regularly go to 12 evaluations of study more than 12 timetable years of essential/basic and auxiliary instruction before graduating, acquiring a recognition that makes them qualified for admission to advanced education. Instruction is compulsory until age 16. There are by and large six years of essential (basic) school, three years of center school, and four years of secondary school. There is some variability in the plan of evaluations.
In the U.S., ordinal numbers (e.g., first grade) are utilized for distinguishing grades. Average ages and grade groupings in contemporary, open and non-public schools might be found through the U.S. Branch of Education. For the most part there are primary school (K-fifth/sixth grade), center school (sixth/seventh eighth grades) and secondary school (9th–12th grades).[38] Some schools vary in the evaluations they contain.
Tuesday 12 April 2016
History
Primary article: History of instruction in the United States
Government-upheld and free state funded schools for all started to be built up after the American Revolution. Somewhere around 1750 and 1870 parochial schools showed up as "specially appointed" endeavors by areas. Verifiably, numerous parochial primary schools were created which were interested in all youngsters in the ward, primarily Catholics, additionally Lutherans, Calvinists and Orthodox Jews. Nonsectarian Common schools outlined by Horace Mann were opened, which taught the three Rs (of perusing, composing, and number juggling) furthermore history and geology.
In 1823, Reverend Samuel Read Hall established the primary ordinary school, the Columbian School in Concord, Vermont,[11][12] to enhance the nature of the prospering normal educational system by creating more qualified instructors.
States passed laws to make educating necessary between 1852 (Massachusetts) and 1917 (Mississippi). They likewise utilized government financing assigned by the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Acts of 1862 and 1890 to set up area stipend universities work in agribusiness and designing. By 1870, each state had free rudimentary schools,[13] but just in urban focuses.
Beginning from around 1876, thirty-nine states passed a protected change to their state constitutions, called Blaine Amendments after James G. Blaine, one of their boss promoters, denying the utilization of open expense cash to store neighborhood parochial schools.
Taking after the American Civil War, the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute was established in 1881, in Tuskegee, Alabama, to prepare "Hued Teachers," drove by Booker T. Washington, (1856–1915), who was himself a liberated slave. His development spread to numerous other Southern states to set up little schools for "Shaded or Negro" understudies entitled "A. and M.," ("Agricultural and Mechanical") or "A. and T.," ("Agricultural and Technical"), some of which later formed into state colleges.
Reacting to numerous contending scholastic theories being advanced at the time, a persuasive working gathering of instructors, known as the Committee of Ten, and set up in 1892 by the National Education Association, suggested that youngsters ought to get twelve years of guideline, comprising of eight years of rudimentary training (otherwise called "syntax schools") trailed by four years in secondary school ("first year recruits," "sophomores," "youngsters," and "seniors").
Continuously by the late 1890s, local relationship of secondary schools, schools and colleges were being sorted out to facilitate appropriate certifying benchmarks, examinations and general studies of different establishments to guarantee square with treatment in graduation and affirmations necessities, course consummation and exchange techniques.
By 1910, 72 percent of youngsters went to class. Tuition based schools spread amid this time, and in addition universities and — in the provincial focuses — land award universities moreover. Somewhere around 1910 and 1940 the secondary school development brought about quickly expanding open secondary school enlistment and graduations. By 1930, 100 percent of kids went to school[citation needed] (barring youngsters with critical inabilities or restorative concerns).[14]
Amid World War II, enlistment in secondary schools and universities dove the same number of secondary school and undergrads dropped out to take war jobs.[15][16][17]
The 1946 National School Lunch Act, which is still in operation, if ease or free school lunch dinners to qualified low-wage understudies through appropriations to schools, taking into account the thought that a "full stomach" amid the day bolstered class consideration and concentrating on. The 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Leading body of Education of Topeka, Kansas made racial integration of open rudimentary and secondary schools required, albeit tuition based schools extended in light of suit white families endeavoring to dodge integration by sending their kids to private mainstream or religious schools.[18][19][20]
In 1965, the expansive Elementary and Secondary Education Act ('ESEA'), went as a piece of President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty, gave assets to essential and optional training ('Title I subsidizing') while expressly denying the foundation of a national curriculum.[21] Section IV of the Act made the Pell Grant program which gives money related backing to understudies from low-pay families to get to advanced education.
In 1975, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act set up subsidizing for a custom curriculum in schools.
Strategy changes have additionally now and again eased back equivalent access to advanced education for poorer individuals. Slices to the Pell grant help programs in 2012 decreased the quantity of low-wage understudies who might get grants.[22]
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 made government sanctioned testing a necessity. The Higher Education Amendments of 1972 rolled out improvements to the Pell Grants. The 1975 Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) required every single state funded school tolerating government assets to give measure up to access to training and one free supper a day for kids with physical and mental incapacities. The 1983 National Commission on Excellence in Education report, broadly titled A Nation at Risk, touched off a flood of nearby, state, and government change endeavors, however by 1990 the nation still just burned through 2 for each penny of its financial plan on training, contrasted and 30 for each penny on backing for the elderly.[23] In 1990, the EHA was supplanted with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which put more concentrate on understudies as people, furthermore accommodated more post-secondary school move administrations.
The 2002 No Child Left Behind, went by a bipartisan coalition in Congress gave government help to the states in return for measures to punish schools that were not meeting the objectives as measured by institutionalized state exams in arithmetic and dialect skills. around the same time, the U.S. Incomparable Court weakened a portion of the exceptionally old "Blaine" laws maintained an Ohio law permitting help to parochial schools under particular circumstances The 2006 Commission on the Future of Higher Education assessed advanced education.
In December 2015, President Barack Obama marked enactment supplanting No Child Left Behind with the Every Student Succeeds Actf
Government-upheld and free state funded schools for all started to be built up after the American Revolution. Somewhere around 1750 and 1870 parochial schools showed up as "specially appointed" endeavors by areas. Verifiably, numerous parochial primary schools were created which were interested in all youngsters in the ward, primarily Catholics, additionally Lutherans, Calvinists and Orthodox Jews. Nonsectarian Common schools outlined by Horace Mann were opened, which taught the three Rs (of perusing, composing, and number juggling) furthermore history and geology.
In 1823, Reverend Samuel Read Hall established the primary ordinary school, the Columbian School in Concord, Vermont,[11][12] to enhance the nature of the prospering normal educational system by creating more qualified instructors.
States passed laws to make educating necessary between 1852 (Massachusetts) and 1917 (Mississippi). They likewise utilized government financing assigned by the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Acts of 1862 and 1890 to set up area stipend universities work in agribusiness and designing. By 1870, each state had free rudimentary schools,[13] but just in urban focuses.
Beginning from around 1876, thirty-nine states passed a protected change to their state constitutions, called Blaine Amendments after James G. Blaine, one of their boss promoters, denying the utilization of open expense cash to store neighborhood parochial schools.
Taking after the American Civil War, the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute was established in 1881, in Tuskegee, Alabama, to prepare "Hued Teachers," drove by Booker T. Washington, (1856–1915), who was himself a liberated slave. His development spread to numerous other Southern states to set up little schools for "Shaded or Negro" understudies entitled "A. and M.," ("Agricultural and Mechanical") or "A. and T.," ("Agricultural and Technical"), some of which later formed into state colleges.
Reacting to numerous contending scholastic theories being advanced at the time, a persuasive working gathering of instructors, known as the Committee of Ten, and set up in 1892 by the National Education Association, suggested that youngsters ought to get twelve years of guideline, comprising of eight years of rudimentary training (otherwise called "syntax schools") trailed by four years in secondary school ("first year recruits," "sophomores," "youngsters," and "seniors").
Continuously by the late 1890s, local relationship of secondary schools, schools and colleges were being sorted out to facilitate appropriate certifying benchmarks, examinations and general studies of different establishments to guarantee square with treatment in graduation and affirmations necessities, course consummation and exchange techniques.
By 1910, 72 percent of youngsters went to class. Tuition based schools spread amid this time, and in addition universities and — in the provincial focuses — land award universities moreover. Somewhere around 1910 and 1940 the secondary school development brought about quickly expanding open secondary school enlistment and graduations. By 1930, 100 percent of kids went to school[citation needed] (barring youngsters with critical inabilities or restorative concerns).[14]
Amid World War II, enlistment in secondary schools and universities dove the same number of secondary school and undergrads dropped out to take war jobs.[15][16][17]
The 1946 National School Lunch Act, which is still in operation, if ease or free school lunch dinners to qualified low-wage understudies through appropriations to schools, taking into account the thought that a "full stomach" amid the day bolstered class consideration and concentrating on. The 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Leading body of Education of Topeka, Kansas made racial integration of open rudimentary and secondary schools required, albeit tuition based schools extended in light of suit white families endeavoring to dodge integration by sending their kids to private mainstream or religious schools.[18][19][20]
In 1965, the expansive Elementary and Secondary Education Act ('ESEA'), went as a piece of President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty, gave assets to essential and optional training ('Title I subsidizing') while expressly denying the foundation of a national curriculum.[21] Section IV of the Act made the Pell Grant program which gives money related backing to understudies from low-pay families to get to advanced education.
In 1975, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act set up subsidizing for a custom curriculum in schools.
Strategy changes have additionally now and again eased back equivalent access to advanced education for poorer individuals. Slices to the Pell grant help programs in 2012 decreased the quantity of low-wage understudies who might get grants.[22]
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 made government sanctioned testing a necessity. The Higher Education Amendments of 1972 rolled out improvements to the Pell Grants. The 1975 Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) required every single state funded school tolerating government assets to give measure up to access to training and one free supper a day for kids with physical and mental incapacities. The 1983 National Commission on Excellence in Education report, broadly titled A Nation at Risk, touched off a flood of nearby, state, and government change endeavors, however by 1990 the nation still just burned through 2 for each penny of its financial plan on training, contrasted and 30 for each penny on backing for the elderly.[23] In 1990, the EHA was supplanted with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which put more concentrate on understudies as people, furthermore accommodated more post-secondary school move administrations.
The 2002 No Child Left Behind, went by a bipartisan coalition in Congress gave government help to the states in return for measures to punish schools that were not meeting the objectives as measured by institutionalized state exams in arithmetic and dialect skills. around the same time, the U.S. Incomparable Court weakened a portion of the exceptionally old "Blaine" laws maintained an Ohio law permitting help to parochial schools under particular circumstances The 2006 Commission on the Future of Higher Education assessed advanced education.
In December 2015, President Barack Obama marked enactment supplanting No Child Left Behind with the Every Student Succeeds Actf
History
Primary article: History of instruction in the United States
Government-upheld and free state funded schools for all started to be built up after the American Revolution. Somewhere around 1750 and 1870 parochial schools showed up as "specially appointed" endeavors by areas. Verifiably, numerous parochial primary schools were created which were interested in all youngsters in the ward, primarily Catholics, additionally Lutherans, Calvinists and Orthodox Jews. Nonsectarian Common schools outlined by Horace Mann were opened, which taught the three Rs (of perusing, composing, and number juggling) furthermore history and geology.
In 1823, Reverend Samuel Read Hall established the primary ordinary school, the Columbian School in Concord, Vermont,[11][12] to enhance the nature of the prospering normal educational system by creating more qualified instructors.
States passed laws to make educating necessary between 1852 (Massachusetts) and 1917 (Mississippi). They likewise utilized government financing assigned by the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Acts of 1862 and 1890 to set up area stipend universities work in agribusiness and designing. By 1870, each state had free rudimentary schools,[13] but just in urban focuses.
Beginning from around 1876, thirty-nine states passed a protected change to their state constitutions, called Blaine Amendments after James G. Blaine, one of their boss promoters, denying the utilization of open expense cash to store neighborhood parochial schools.
Taking after the American Civil War, the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute was established in 1881, in Tuskegee, Alabama, to prepare "Hued Teachers," drove by Booker T. Washington, (1856–1915), who was himself a liberated slave. His development spread to numerous other Southern states to set up little schools for "Shaded or Negro" understudies entitled "A. and M.," ("Agricultural and Mechanical") or "A. and T.," ("Agricultural and Technical"), some of which later formed into state colleges.
Reacting to numerous contending scholastic theories being advanced at the time, a persuasive working gathering of instructors, known as the Committee of Ten, and set up in 1892 by the National Education Association, suggested that youngsters ought to get twelve years of guideline, comprising of eight years of rudimentary training (otherwise called "syntax schools") trailed by four years in secondary school ("first year recruits," "sophomores," "youngsters," and "seniors").
Continuously by the late 1890s, local relationship of secondary schools, schools and colleges were being sorted out to facilitate appropriate certifying benchmarks, examinations and general studies of different establishments to guarantee square with treatment in graduation and affirmations necessities, course consummation and exchange techniques.
By 1910, 72 percent of youngsters went to class. Tuition based schools spread amid this time, and in addition universities and — in the provincial focuses — land award universities moreover. Somewhere around 1910 and 1940 the secondary school development brought about quickly expanding open secondary school enlistment and graduations. By 1930, 100 percent of kids went to school[citation needed] (barring youngsters with critical inabilities or restorative concerns).[14]
Amid World War II, enlistment in secondary schools and universities dove the same number of secondary school and undergrads dropped out to take war jobs.[15][16][17]
The 1946 National School Lunch Act, which is still in operation, if ease or free school lunch dinners to qualified low-wage understudies through appropriations to schools, taking into account the thought that a "full stomach" amid the day bolstered class consideration and concentrating on. The 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Leading body of Education of Topeka, Kansas made racial integration of open rudimentary and secondary schools required, albeit tuition based schools extended in light of suit white families endeavoring to dodge integration by sending their kids to private mainstream or religious schools.[18][19][20]
In 1965, the expansive Elementary and Secondary Education Act ('ESEA'), went as a piece of President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty, gave assets to essential and optional training ('Title I subsidizing') while expressly denying the foundation of a national curriculum.[21] Section IV of the Act made the Pell Grant program which gives money related backing to understudies from low-pay families to get to advanced education.
In 1975, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act set up subsidizing for a custom curriculum in schools.
Strategy changes have additionally now and again eased back equivalent access to advanced education for poorer individuals. Slices to the Pell grant help programs in 2012 decreased the quantity of low-wage understudies who might get grants.[22]
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 made government sanctioned testing a necessity. The Higher Education Amendments of 1972 rolled out improvements to the Pell Grants. The 1975 Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) required every single state funded school tolerating government assets to give measure up to access to training and one free supper a day for kids with physical and mental incapacities. The 1983 National Commission on Excellence in Education report, broadly titled A Nation at Risk, touched off a flood of nearby, state, and government change endeavors, however by 1990 the nation still just burned through 2 for each penny of its financial plan on training, contrasted and 30 for each penny on backing for the elderly.[23] In 1990, the EHA was supplanted with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which put more concentrate on understudies as people, furthermore accommodated more post-secondary school move administrations.
The 2002 No Child Left Behind, went by a bipartisan coalition in Congress gave government help to the states in return for measures to punish schools that were not meeting the objectives as measured by institutionalized state exams in arithmetic and dialect skills.[24][25][26] around the same time, the U.S. Incomparable Court weakened a portion of the exceptionally old "Blaine" laws maintained an Ohio law permitting help to parochial schools under particular circumstances.[27] The 2006 Commission on the Future of Higher Education assessed advanced education.
In December 2015, President Barack Obama marked enactment supplanting No Child Left Behind with the Every Student Succeeds Act.[28]
Government-upheld and free state funded schools for all started to be built up after the American Revolution. Somewhere around 1750 and 1870 parochial schools showed up as "specially appointed" endeavors by areas. Verifiably, numerous parochial primary schools were created which were interested in all youngsters in the ward, primarily Catholics, additionally Lutherans, Calvinists and Orthodox Jews. Nonsectarian Common schools outlined by Horace Mann were opened, which taught the three Rs (of perusing, composing, and number juggling) furthermore history and geology.
In 1823, Reverend Samuel Read Hall established the primary ordinary school, the Columbian School in Concord, Vermont,[11][12] to enhance the nature of the prospering normal educational system by creating more qualified instructors.
States passed laws to make educating necessary between 1852 (Massachusetts) and 1917 (Mississippi). They likewise utilized government financing assigned by the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Acts of 1862 and 1890 to set up area stipend universities work in agribusiness and designing. By 1870, each state had free rudimentary schools,[13] but just in urban focuses.
Beginning from around 1876, thirty-nine states passed a protected change to their state constitutions, called Blaine Amendments after James G. Blaine, one of their boss promoters, denying the utilization of open expense cash to store neighborhood parochial schools.
Taking after the American Civil War, the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute was established in 1881, in Tuskegee, Alabama, to prepare "Hued Teachers," drove by Booker T. Washington, (1856–1915), who was himself a liberated slave. His development spread to numerous other Southern states to set up little schools for "Shaded or Negro" understudies entitled "A. and M.," ("Agricultural and Mechanical") or "A. and T.," ("Agricultural and Technical"), some of which later formed into state colleges.
Reacting to numerous contending scholastic theories being advanced at the time, a persuasive working gathering of instructors, known as the Committee of Ten, and set up in 1892 by the National Education Association, suggested that youngsters ought to get twelve years of guideline, comprising of eight years of rudimentary training (otherwise called "syntax schools") trailed by four years in secondary school ("first year recruits," "sophomores," "youngsters," and "seniors").
Continuously by the late 1890s, local relationship of secondary schools, schools and colleges were being sorted out to facilitate appropriate certifying benchmarks, examinations and general studies of different establishments to guarantee square with treatment in graduation and affirmations necessities, course consummation and exchange techniques.
By 1910, 72 percent of youngsters went to class. Tuition based schools spread amid this time, and in addition universities and — in the provincial focuses — land award universities moreover. Somewhere around 1910 and 1940 the secondary school development brought about quickly expanding open secondary school enlistment and graduations. By 1930, 100 percent of kids went to school[citation needed] (barring youngsters with critical inabilities or restorative concerns).[14]
Amid World War II, enlistment in secondary schools and universities dove the same number of secondary school and undergrads dropped out to take war jobs.[15][16][17]
The 1946 National School Lunch Act, which is still in operation, if ease or free school lunch dinners to qualified low-wage understudies through appropriations to schools, taking into account the thought that a "full stomach" amid the day bolstered class consideration and concentrating on. The 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Leading body of Education of Topeka, Kansas made racial integration of open rudimentary and secondary schools required, albeit tuition based schools extended in light of suit white families endeavoring to dodge integration by sending their kids to private mainstream or religious schools.[18][19][20]
In 1965, the expansive Elementary and Secondary Education Act ('ESEA'), went as a piece of President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty, gave assets to essential and optional training ('Title I subsidizing') while expressly denying the foundation of a national curriculum.[21] Section IV of the Act made the Pell Grant program which gives money related backing to understudies from low-pay families to get to advanced education.
In 1975, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act set up subsidizing for a custom curriculum in schools.
Strategy changes have additionally now and again eased back equivalent access to advanced education for poorer individuals. Slices to the Pell grant help programs in 2012 decreased the quantity of low-wage understudies who might get grants.[22]
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 made government sanctioned testing a necessity. The Higher Education Amendments of 1972 rolled out improvements to the Pell Grants. The 1975 Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) required every single state funded school tolerating government assets to give measure up to access to training and one free supper a day for kids with physical and mental incapacities. The 1983 National Commission on Excellence in Education report, broadly titled A Nation at Risk, touched off a flood of nearby, state, and government change endeavors, however by 1990 the nation still just burned through 2 for each penny of its financial plan on training, contrasted and 30 for each penny on backing for the elderly.[23] In 1990, the EHA was supplanted with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which put more concentrate on understudies as people, furthermore accommodated more post-secondary school move administrations.
The 2002 No Child Left Behind, went by a bipartisan coalition in Congress gave government help to the states in return for measures to punish schools that were not meeting the objectives as measured by institutionalized state exams in arithmetic and dialect skills.[24][25][26] around the same time, the U.S. Incomparable Court weakened a portion of the exceptionally old "Blaine" laws maintained an Ohio law permitting help to parochial schools under particular circumstances.[27] The 2006 Commission on the Future of Higher Education assessed advanced education.
In December 2015, President Barack Obama marked enactment supplanting No Child Left Behind with the Every Student Succeeds Act.[28]
Education in the United States
Public education is universally required at the K–12 level, and is available at state colleges and universities for all students. K–12 public school curricula, budgets, and policies are set through locally elected school boards, who have jurisdiction over individualschool districts. State governments set overall educational standards, often mandate standardized tests for K–12 public school systems, and supervise, usually through a board of regents, state colleges and universities. Funding comes from the state, local, andfederal government.[4]
Private schools are generally free to determine their own curriculum and staffing policies, with voluntary accreditation available through independent regional accreditation authorities. About 87% of school-age children attend public schools, about 10% attend private schools,[5] and roughly 3% are home-schooled.[6]
Education is compulsory over an age range starting between five and eight and ending somewhere between ages sixteen and eighteen, depending on the state.[7] This requirement can be satisfied in public schools, state-certified private schools, or an approved home school program. In most schools, education is divided into three levels: elementary school, middle or junior high school, and high school. Children are usually divided by age groups into grades, ranging from kindergarten and first grade for the youngest children, up to twelfth grade as the final year of high school.
There are also a large number and wide variety of publicly and privately administered institutions of higher education throughout the country. Post-secondary education, divided into college, as the first tertiary degree, and graduate school, is described in a separate section below.
The United States spends more per student on education than any other country.[8] In 2014, the Pearson/Economist Intelligence Unitrated US education as 14th best in the world, just behind Russia.[9] According to a report published by the U.S. News & World Report, of the top ten colleges and universities in the world, eight are American.[10] (The other two are Oxford and Cambridge, in theUnited Kingdom.)
Monday 11 April 2016
Coeducation
Coeducation is the integrated education of males and females at the same school facilities. The term "Co-ed" is a shortened version of "co-educational," and is also sometimes used as an informal and increasingly archaic reference to a female college student, particularly in the United States. Before the 1960s, many private institutions of higher education restricted their enrollment to a single sex. Indeed, most institutions of higher education, both public and private, restricted their enrollment to a single sex at some point in their history.Before the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, most schools were single-sex. In cases like one room schoolhouses in frontier America, coeducation was necessary from a practical standpoint; a single teacher was responsible for the education of all children in a given area, and separation by age or sex was impractical. In England, the first public boarding school to become coeducational was Bedales School founded in 1893 by John Haden Badley and coeducational since 1898. TheScottish Dollar Academy claims to be the first coeducational boarding school in the UK (in 1818). In the 1960s, many Western countries shifted to coeducation. Not only was coeducation a less expensive way of schooling children, but it also supported the thrust towards gender equality. In 1972, U.S. schools made coeducation mandatory in public schools.
Institutions of higher education have also been historically for men only. In most countries, when women were given the option of a higher education, their only choice was to attend an all-female college.
Colleges For Coeducation
get lesser-quality students, or it can switch to coeducational status, have reduced giving among prior alumni, but gain better (and possibly more) students.37 Intelligent administrators will discount the two streams and choose the optimal switching date when long-term gains from switching just begin to outweigh short-term losses. One of the model’s predictions in the face of secularly rising student demand for coeducation is that current student quality will decline (particularly relative to competing coeducational institutions) before a single-sex school switches, and possibly long before. In addition, after the switch, alumni donations will initially decline relative to what they would have been in the absence of the switch to coeducation. Donations will eventually improve as the composition of the alumni shifts toward newer cohorts who attended in the coeducation regime. Nevertheless, under the optimal policy, an institution’s president will choose to “bite the bullet” and make the switch before the net financial gains from coeducation become apparent. The trade-offs suggested by the model are borne out in the histories of single-sex schools. According to Karabel (2005, chap. 14), in 1956, Yale’s admissions officer observed that many of the school’s best admits had chosen coeducational institutions and that student quality at Yale was declining. But Yale alumni were strongly resistant. By the mid-1960s, current students at Yale were demanding a switch to coeducation. At Princeton, 55 percent of alumni polled in 1969 were opposed to co- education, but the trustees supported the switch to stem declining qual- ity.38 Similar changes occurred at the other all-male institutions in the 1960s and 1970s. It should be emphasized that antidiscrimination legislation did not play a quantitatively important role in the switch to coeducation. Title
37 The switch to coeducation is assumed in the model to be irrevocable, and, in fact, almost all were. 38 A dissent, filed by director of development Arthur J. Horton ’42, noted: “I fear that there will be alumni who, liking the University as an all-male institution, could lose much of their present ardor” and reduce their alumni giving. He asked: “Can we really argue that we are not getting the best applicants when over 46% of our senior class graduated last June with Honors?” The Patterson Committee advocated the switch over member Horton’s lone dissent (Horton Dissent, August 28, 1968, available in the Arthur J. Horton Collection on Coeducation, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, box no. 4, folder no. 5).
400 Journal of Human Capital
IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 was passed and its imple- mentation written long after most male-only institutions had decided to become coeducational.39 There were, to be sure, other reasons for switching, such as institution- specific fiscal shocks, depletion of potential students due to wartime draft and fatalities, and general economic downturns, the effects of which could be smoothed by a sufficiently large endowment. Public institutions often face different constraints than private colleges because pressures exist for public dollars to serve all people.40 State legislatures often forced coeducation on an institution to save expenses on building a separate women’s college. We first examine the institutional characteristics associated with faster or slower transitions of single-sex 4-year colleges to coeducational in- stitutions. We estimate formal hazard models of the duration spent as a single-sex school for all colleges starting as a single-sex school in our 1934 and 1980 Coeducation College Databases (including all originally single-sex schools present in 1897, 1924, 1934, and/or 1980). The es- timation sample consists of 511 schools, of which 281 started as men’s colleges and 230 started as women’s colleges. Cox proportional hazard models are estimated for the duration of a spell as a single-sex school using a nonparametric (fully flexible) base- line hazard.41 The time at risk for becoming a coeducational institution is assumed to begin in 1835, the year in which Marietta College opened and a year after Oberlin College began coeducational classes. In 1837, Oberlin was the first to accept female students into a BA-granting pro- gram and to switch from a single-sex to a coeducational institution.42 Thus, the time at risk begins in 1835 for schools founded before 1835 and at the actual opening date for schools founded in 1835 or after. A “failure event” is a transition to being a coeducational school. Schools remaining single-sex institutions today (three male-only and 35 female- only in our data set) are treated as censored spells, with 2010 as the
39 The switch of most institutions to coeducation also preceded the interpretation of Title IX in Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan, 102 Supreme Court Reporter 3331 (1982), that private single-sex undergraduate institutions can be exempt from the ad- missions requirements of Title IX but must comply with constitutional equal protection requirements in admissions. 40 As M. Carey Thomas, then president of Bryn Mawr College, noted around 1900, “public opinion in the United States almost universallydemandsthatuniversitiessupported by public taxation should provide for the college education of women” (1900, 358b). 41 The findings are similar to those from standard parametric models such as with a Weibull hazard. 42 Fletcher (1943) claims that, in 1834, when the first college classes began at Oberlin, “[male] college students shared their classrooms and class instructions with women” and also that “in 1837 four ladies were admitted to the Collegiate Course [at Oberlin] with the men and in 1841 three of them received the A.B. degree, the first bona fide college degrees ever granted to women” (379–80). Marietta College began in 1835 as a coedu- cational institution but may not have granted a BA degree until later.
College Coeducation from 1835 to the Present 401
Note.—The sample includes all 4-year institutions starting as single-sex institutions in our 1934 and 1980 Coeducation College Databases. In other words, the sample consists of all originally single-sex schools present in our 1897, 1924, 1934, or 1980 institutional samples. The estimation uses Cox proportional hazard models for the duration of a spell as a single- sex school with nonparametric baseline hazards estimated via maximum likelihood using the stcox command in STATA. The time period at risk in the duration models begins in the year of opening for institutions founded after 1835 and in 1835 for institutions that opened before 1835. The failure event is the transition to a coeducational institution. Schools that continue today as single-sex institutions are treated as censored spells, with 2010 as the date of censoring. Schools that closed as single-sex institutions are treated as censored at the date of closing. The reported coefficients are hazard ratios. The standard errors for the hazard ratios are in parentheses. The base region is the Northeast (New England plus the Middle Atlantic states). There are no land grant and no technical institutions among the women’s colleges.
censoring date; schools that closed as single-sex schools are treated as spells censored at the date of closing.43 The basic hazard models for all single-sex schools and men’s and women’s colleges separately are presented in table 5. The models in- clude as the covariates time-invariant institutional characteristics, in- cluding a continuous measure of the year of opening and indicator variables for private control (vs. public), religious affiliation, and region. The year of opening indicates the strength of alumni resistance to a switch. The religious affiliation shows the particular ideology and, in the case of Catholic institutions, the degree to which their decisions are dictated by a higher authority and are therefore coordinated. The re- ported coefficients are hazard ratios. (A coefficient greater than one indicates that a variable increases the hazard rate of being coeduca- tional; a coefficient less than one implies that it shrinks the hazard rate.)
43 We know of only one school, Wesleyan College, that began male only, switched to coeducational status, returned to male only, and later became coeducational (Potts 1992). Colby College began coeducational, created a coordinate women’s institution, and later returned to being coeducational
37 The switch to coeducation is assumed in the model to be irrevocable, and, in fact, almost all were. 38 A dissent, filed by director of development Arthur J. Horton ’42, noted: “I fear that there will be alumni who, liking the University as an all-male institution, could lose much of their present ardor” and reduce their alumni giving. He asked: “Can we really argue that we are not getting the best applicants when over 46% of our senior class graduated last June with Honors?” The Patterson Committee advocated the switch over member Horton’s lone dissent (Horton Dissent, August 28, 1968, available in the Arthur J. Horton Collection on Coeducation, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, box no. 4, folder no. 5).
400 Journal of Human Capital
IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 was passed and its imple- mentation written long after most male-only institutions had decided to become coeducational.39 There were, to be sure, other reasons for switching, such as institution- specific fiscal shocks, depletion of potential students due to wartime draft and fatalities, and general economic downturns, the effects of which could be smoothed by a sufficiently large endowment. Public institutions often face different constraints than private colleges because pressures exist for public dollars to serve all people.40 State legislatures often forced coeducation on an institution to save expenses on building a separate women’s college. We first examine the institutional characteristics associated with faster or slower transitions of single-sex 4-year colleges to coeducational in- stitutions. We estimate formal hazard models of the duration spent as a single-sex school for all colleges starting as a single-sex school in our 1934 and 1980 Coeducation College Databases (including all originally single-sex schools present in 1897, 1924, 1934, and/or 1980). The es- timation sample consists of 511 schools, of which 281 started as men’s colleges and 230 started as women’s colleges. Cox proportional hazard models are estimated for the duration of a spell as a single-sex school using a nonparametric (fully flexible) base- line hazard.41 The time at risk for becoming a coeducational institution is assumed to begin in 1835, the year in which Marietta College opened and a year after Oberlin College began coeducational classes. In 1837, Oberlin was the first to accept female students into a BA-granting pro- gram and to switch from a single-sex to a coeducational institution.42 Thus, the time at risk begins in 1835 for schools founded before 1835 and at the actual opening date for schools founded in 1835 or after. A “failure event” is a transition to being a coeducational school. Schools remaining single-sex institutions today (three male-only and 35 female- only in our data set) are treated as censored spells, with 2010 as the
39 The switch of most institutions to coeducation also preceded the interpretation of Title IX in Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan, 102 Supreme Court Reporter 3331 (1982), that private single-sex undergraduate institutions can be exempt from the ad- missions requirements of Title IX but must comply with constitutional equal protection requirements in admissions. 40 As M. Carey Thomas, then president of Bryn Mawr College, noted around 1900, “public opinion in the United States almost universallydemandsthatuniversitiessupported by public taxation should provide for the college education of women” (1900, 358b). 41 The findings are similar to those from standard parametric models such as with a Weibull hazard. 42 Fletcher (1943) claims that, in 1834, when the first college classes began at Oberlin, “[male] college students shared their classrooms and class instructions with women” and also that “in 1837 four ladies were admitted to the Collegiate Course [at Oberlin] with the men and in 1841 three of them received the A.B. degree, the first bona fide college degrees ever granted to women” (379–80). Marietta College began in 1835 as a coedu- cational institution but may not have granted a BA degree until later.
College Coeducation from 1835 to the Present 401
Note.—The sample includes all 4-year institutions starting as single-sex institutions in our 1934 and 1980 Coeducation College Databases. In other words, the sample consists of all originally single-sex schools present in our 1897, 1924, 1934, or 1980 institutional samples. The estimation uses Cox proportional hazard models for the duration of a spell as a single- sex school with nonparametric baseline hazards estimated via maximum likelihood using the stcox command in STATA. The time period at risk in the duration models begins in the year of opening for institutions founded after 1835 and in 1835 for institutions that opened before 1835. The failure event is the transition to a coeducational institution. Schools that continue today as single-sex institutions are treated as censored spells, with 2010 as the date of censoring. Schools that closed as single-sex institutions are treated as censored at the date of closing. The reported coefficients are hazard ratios. The standard errors for the hazard ratios are in parentheses. The base region is the Northeast (New England plus the Middle Atlantic states). There are no land grant and no technical institutions among the women’s colleges.
censoring date; schools that closed as single-sex schools are treated as spells censored at the date of closing.43 The basic hazard models for all single-sex schools and men’s and women’s colleges separately are presented in table 5. The models in- clude as the covariates time-invariant institutional characteristics, in- cluding a continuous measure of the year of opening and indicator variables for private control (vs. public), religious affiliation, and region. The year of opening indicates the strength of alumni resistance to a switch. The religious affiliation shows the particular ideology and, in the case of Catholic institutions, the degree to which their decisions are dictated by a higher authority and are therefore coordinated. The re- ported coefficients are hazard ratios. (A coefficient greater than one indicates that a variable increases the hazard rate of being coeduca- tional; a coefficient less than one implies that it shrinks the hazard rate.)
43 We know of only one school, Wesleyan College, that began male only, switched to coeducational status, returned to male only, and later became coeducational (Potts 1992). Colby College began coeducational, created a coordinate women’s institution, and later returned to being coeducational
Chronology of Coeducation: College Openings and Switchers
In 1934, 64 percent of all 4-year institutions with undergraduates were coeducational and 70 percent of undergraduate enrollments were in coeducational institutions. Of the coeducational schools at that time, 34 percent had begun as single-sex institutions. Coeducation occurs through two routes: the establishment of new coeducational institutions and the conversion of previously single-sex institutions. In the period to 1934, the more important of these two routes was the establishment of public and private institutions that were coeducational from their start. In 1900, for example, 58 percent of schools (that existed in 1934) were coeducational, and 73 percent of
21 Many of the institutions that are added were established before 1934 but as 2-year institutions, often teachers colleges. We have not been able to obtain the precise date at which each of the added institutions became 4-year, in part because there was a lack of good institutional memory and also because some of the institutions subsequently failed. But another reason is that, in many cases, there were a handful of students who did 4- year degrees even when the institution was primarily 2-year. 22 A substantial number of the 4-year institutions in the 1980 database that are not present in the 1934 database give opening dates that are before 1934. These institutions were not captured in the Office of Education statistics as 4-year schools in 1934. Many of these schools opened as 2-year institutions prior to 1934 but actually became 4-year in- stitutions between 1934 and 1980.
College Coeducation from 1835 to the Present 389
them had been coeducational from their inception. Similarly, 46 percent of schools were coeducational in 1880, and 72 percent of these were founded as coeducational institutions.23 The establishment of male-only schools (in the 1934 Coeducation College Database) from the early 1800s occurred in a fairly steady man- ner. Their founding, however, waned after the 1890s (fig. 1, part A). Similarly, the Catholic group of male-only institutions increased contin- uously to 1890 (fig. 1, part C). The establishment of female-only insti- tutions was somewhat less continuous and did not diminish in the period to 1934. Spurts in the founding of female-only institutions occurred at times, such as in the early 1870s and 1890s. A lull in the establishment of women’s colleges occurred in the 1860s. Oddly enough, given the Civil War disruption, there was no corresponding pause in the estab- lishment of male-only institutions. The 1910s and 1920s saw the estab- lishment of many new female-only colleges, most of which were Catholic schools (fig. 1, part C). Female-only Catholic schools were almost non- existent before 1900 but exceeded the male-only Catholic schools in number by the mid-1920s. Prior to 1835 there were no coeducational institutions of higher ed- ucation in the United States. But that soon began to change. The open- ing of schools that began as coeducational institutions was fairly con- tinuous starting in 1835, although there was some increase from the mid-1860s to the 1890s (fig. 1, part A). The vast majority of colleges and universities that began as coeducational institutions during the lat- ter part of the nineteenth century were privately controlled, not public state institutions (fig. 1, part B). The importance of the private sector in the growth of coeducational institutions in the late nineteenth cen- tury may be surprising given the importance of federal legislation that set up the great state universities that are part of the “land grant” in- stitutions. The Morrill Act of 1862, which allowed for the establishment of the land grant universities, gave states federal lands they could sell to fund the institutions.24 Many of today’s flagship state institutions were founded under the Morrill Act. The Morrill Act was a landmark piece of legislation and led to the founding of a large number of public institutions, some of which were coeducational at their establishment.25 One might expect, therefore, the founding of coeducational colleges
23 According to the 1934 enrollment figures, 65 percent of enrollment was in coedu- cational institutions in 1900 and 61 percent of enrollment was in institutions that were coeducational at their opening. 24 During the Civil War, only the states loyal to the Union received Morrill Act land grants, and those in the Confederacy received them when they rejoined the Union after the war. 25 The 1862 Morrill Act did not require that the institutions founded under its auspices be coeducational, and many were not at their outset. The “second Morrill Act” in 1890 concerned the exclusion of blacks from Morrill Act schools in the South and set up many of the historically black colleges and universities.
Putting the “Co” in Education: Timing, Reasons, and Consequences of College
Coeducation from 1835 to the Present
Claudia Goldin Harvard University and National Bureau of Economic Research
Lawrence F. Katz Harvard University and National Bureau of Economic Research
The history of coeducation in U.S. higher education is explored through an analysis of a database containing almost all 4-year undergraduate institutions that operated in 1897, 1924, 1934, or 1980. The opening of coeducational in- stitutions was continuous throughout its history, and the switching from single- sex was also fairly constant from 1835 to the 1950s before accelerating in the 1960s and 1970s. Older and private single-sex institutions were slower to become coeducational, and institutions persisting as single-sex into the 1970s had lower enrollment growth than those that switched earlier. Access to coeducational institutions was associated with increased women’s educational attainment.
Women now receive 57 percent of all bachelor of arts degrees in the United States, and 97 percent of them are awarded by coeducational institutions, defined here as institutions that admit both males and fe- males and in which both can take classes together.1 Although almost all undergraduates in the United States today attend a coeducational in- stitution, none could have prior to the appearance of the first such college around 1835. When did institutions of higher education become coeducational, why did they, and what was the impact of coeducation on women’s educational attainment?
Bernie Zipprich provided exceptional research assistance on all parts of the project, and Ryan Sakoda followed in turn. Julia Fifer helped with the coding of the coeducation data set, and Janet Currie and Louis Galambos supplied some of the coeducation dates. Emily Glassberg Sands assisted with the references. Helpful comments on a draft were offered by Stanley Engerman, Julie Reuben, Emily Glassberg Sands, members of the NBER’s Development of the American Economy 2010 Summer Institute, and the Harvard Economic History Workshop. We thank them all. We are grateful to the editor of this Journal and an anonymous referee for further comments. 1 Newcomer (1959) also employs this definition. Whether or not males and females choose to take the same courses and concentrate in the same subjects, and whether or not they are admitted using the same criteria, are different matters.
378 Journal of Human Capital
These subjects are explored through an analysis of a database con- taining information on all institutions of higher education offering 4- year undergraduate degrees that operated in 1897, 1924, or 1934, most of which still exist today.2 Data on all 4-year institutions in 1980 that were founded from 1934 to 1980, or established as 4-year institutions during that period, are added to the database. These data reveal some surprises about the timing of coeducation and the reasons for its increase.3 We find that the founding of coeducational institutions in the public and private sectors occurred at a fairly steady rate from 1835 to 1980. In addition, the rate of switching from single-sex to coeducational status was also relatively continuous from the 1860s through the 1950s. Al- though the rate of switching increased considerably in the 1960s and 1970s, the jump was greatest for Catholic single-sex institutions, espe- cially female-only schools, and in the Northeast. The relative continuity that we find in the evolution of coeducational schools contrasts sharply with the implications of the most commonly found reasons offered for its rise. These reasons include war, ideological change, and national economic downturns.4 Such factors would imply a more episodic evolution of coeducation. The most recent period of switching in the 1960s and 1970s, during which Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, and a host of elite liberal arts colleges became coeducational, is shown to have increased the fraction of un- dergraduates in coeducational schools by only a small amount. Although the change opened the doors of many of the best institutions in the nation to women, many others had been opened for a long time. We offer a framework to understand the switch from single-sex to coeducational status that emphasizes potential trade-offs between the demand for a coeducational or single-sex environment by current and
2 The 1934 Coeducation College Database contains 769 institutions that existed at some point from 1897 to 1934. Of these, 22 closed by 1934 and 59 of the remaining 748 institutions closed after 1934 (others merged but did not officially close). Therefore, only about 8 percent of the institutions existing in 1934 subsequently closed. 3 The historical literature on coeducation and higher education is sparse. An excellent, but brief, review piece is Rosenberg (1988). See also the essays inMiller-BernalandPoulson (2004). Several articles contain short summaries of the history of coeducation, including Graham (1978). Early writings on coeducation include Thomas (1900) and Woody (1929). On coeducation at Catholic institutions, see Poulson (1995). A thicker literature exists on women’s education. See Newcomer (1959) on women’s colleges and Solomon (1985) on women’s higher education. Some insightful research exists on individual colleges and universities, including Conable (1977) on Cornell University and McGuigan (1970) on the University of Michigan. 4 On the role of the Civil War in reducing the supply of male students, see Newcomer (1959, 12), Graham (1978, 764), and Rosenberg (1988); Solomon (1985, 188) discusses similar factors with regard to World War II. On war and the changing perceptions of women, see Conable (1977), and on the GI Bill in opening women’s colleges to men, see Newcomer (1959), Solomon (1985), and Eisenmann (1997). Newcomer (1959) discusses the Great Depression in spurring coeducation among some schools, and Miller-Bernal (2004) claims that both world wars and the Great Depression created financial hardships for small single-sex institutions and prompted them to switch.
College Coeducation from 1835 to the Present 379
future undergraduates, on the one hand, and expected alumni contri- butions by past and future graduates, on the other. Estimates of hazard models of the time to switching from single-sex to coeducational status suggest the role of alumni influence. We find that older and privately controlled institutions were slower to switch from single sex to coedu- cation. Linear probability models of institutional switchers with controls for both institutional characteristics and time-varying measures of the competitive environment reinforce our findings on continuity in the rate of switching from the 1870s to the 1950s followed by a sharp ac- celeration in the 1960s and 1970s. In a separate analysis we demonstrate that by the 1960s the undergraduate enrollments at institutions that shifted to coeducational status grew faster than those that delayed switching. Greater access to coeducation in higher education, as we demonstrate, had a positive impact on women’s college attainment in the period before the 1930s. Currie and Moretti (2003) present similar findings for the more recent period. Even when women’s colleges existed in an area, an increase in coeducational institutions furthered the college education of women relative to men because women’s colleges were costly and many coeducational institutions were public and less ex- pensive. The paper is structured as follows. We begin with a brief history of coeducation and then move to a discussion of our coeducation database and a description of the evolution of coeducation. We develop a frame- work to understand the shift to coeducation by single-sex institutions and then use our data to detect which factors mattered, thereby testing the validity of the framework. The impact of coeducation on female educational attainment is addressed next. We close with a section on the end of in loco parentis, the spread of sex-blind admissions, and the commencement of real gender equality in higher education.
Claudia Goldin Harvard University and National Bureau of Economic Research
Lawrence F. Katz Harvard University and National Bureau of Economic Research
The history of coeducation in U.S. higher education is explored through an analysis of a database containing almost all 4-year undergraduate institutions that operated in 1897, 1924, 1934, or 1980. The opening of coeducational in- stitutions was continuous throughout its history, and the switching from single- sex was also fairly constant from 1835 to the 1950s before accelerating in the 1960s and 1970s. Older and private single-sex institutions were slower to become coeducational, and institutions persisting as single-sex into the 1970s had lower enrollment growth than those that switched earlier. Access to coeducational institutions was associated with increased women’s educational attainment.
Women now receive 57 percent of all bachelor of arts degrees in the United States, and 97 percent of them are awarded by coeducational institutions, defined here as institutions that admit both males and fe- males and in which both can take classes together.1 Although almost all undergraduates in the United States today attend a coeducational in- stitution, none could have prior to the appearance of the first such college around 1835. When did institutions of higher education become coeducational, why did they, and what was the impact of coeducation on women’s educational attainment?
Bernie Zipprich provided exceptional research assistance on all parts of the project, and Ryan Sakoda followed in turn. Julia Fifer helped with the coding of the coeducation data set, and Janet Currie and Louis Galambos supplied some of the coeducation dates. Emily Glassberg Sands assisted with the references. Helpful comments on a draft were offered by Stanley Engerman, Julie Reuben, Emily Glassberg Sands, members of the NBER’s Development of the American Economy 2010 Summer Institute, and the Harvard Economic History Workshop. We thank them all. We are grateful to the editor of this Journal and an anonymous referee for further comments. 1 Newcomer (1959) also employs this definition. Whether or not males and females choose to take the same courses and concentrate in the same subjects, and whether or not they are admitted using the same criteria, are different matters.
378 Journal of Human Capital
These subjects are explored through an analysis of a database con- taining information on all institutions of higher education offering 4- year undergraduate degrees that operated in 1897, 1924, or 1934, most of which still exist today.2 Data on all 4-year institutions in 1980 that were founded from 1934 to 1980, or established as 4-year institutions during that period, are added to the database. These data reveal some surprises about the timing of coeducation and the reasons for its increase.3 We find that the founding of coeducational institutions in the public and private sectors occurred at a fairly steady rate from 1835 to 1980. In addition, the rate of switching from single-sex to coeducational status was also relatively continuous from the 1860s through the 1950s. Al- though the rate of switching increased considerably in the 1960s and 1970s, the jump was greatest for Catholic single-sex institutions, espe- cially female-only schools, and in the Northeast. The relative continuity that we find in the evolution of coeducational schools contrasts sharply with the implications of the most commonly found reasons offered for its rise. These reasons include war, ideological change, and national economic downturns.4 Such factors would imply a more episodic evolution of coeducation. The most recent period of switching in the 1960s and 1970s, during which Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, and a host of elite liberal arts colleges became coeducational, is shown to have increased the fraction of un- dergraduates in coeducational schools by only a small amount. Although the change opened the doors of many of the best institutions in the nation to women, many others had been opened for a long time. We offer a framework to understand the switch from single-sex to coeducational status that emphasizes potential trade-offs between the demand for a coeducational or single-sex environment by current and
2 The 1934 Coeducation College Database contains 769 institutions that existed at some point from 1897 to 1934. Of these, 22 closed by 1934 and 59 of the remaining 748 institutions closed after 1934 (others merged but did not officially close). Therefore, only about 8 percent of the institutions existing in 1934 subsequently closed. 3 The historical literature on coeducation and higher education is sparse. An excellent, but brief, review piece is Rosenberg (1988). See also the essays inMiller-BernalandPoulson (2004). Several articles contain short summaries of the history of coeducation, including Graham (1978). Early writings on coeducation include Thomas (1900) and Woody (1929). On coeducation at Catholic institutions, see Poulson (1995). A thicker literature exists on women’s education. See Newcomer (1959) on women’s colleges and Solomon (1985) on women’s higher education. Some insightful research exists on individual colleges and universities, including Conable (1977) on Cornell University and McGuigan (1970) on the University of Michigan. 4 On the role of the Civil War in reducing the supply of male students, see Newcomer (1959, 12), Graham (1978, 764), and Rosenberg (1988); Solomon (1985, 188) discusses similar factors with regard to World War II. On war and the changing perceptions of women, see Conable (1977), and on the GI Bill in opening women’s colleges to men, see Newcomer (1959), Solomon (1985), and Eisenmann (1997). Newcomer (1959) discusses the Great Depression in spurring coeducation among some schools, and Miller-Bernal (2004) claims that both world wars and the Great Depression created financial hardships for small single-sex institutions and prompted them to switch.
College Coeducation from 1835 to the Present 379
future undergraduates, on the one hand, and expected alumni contri- butions by past and future graduates, on the other. Estimates of hazard models of the time to switching from single-sex to coeducational status suggest the role of alumni influence. We find that older and privately controlled institutions were slower to switch from single sex to coedu- cation. Linear probability models of institutional switchers with controls for both institutional characteristics and time-varying measures of the competitive environment reinforce our findings on continuity in the rate of switching from the 1870s to the 1950s followed by a sharp ac- celeration in the 1960s and 1970s. In a separate analysis we demonstrate that by the 1960s the undergraduate enrollments at institutions that shifted to coeducational status grew faster than those that delayed switching. Greater access to coeducation in higher education, as we demonstrate, had a positive impact on women’s college attainment in the period before the 1930s. Currie and Moretti (2003) present similar findings for the more recent period. Even when women’s colleges existed in an area, an increase in coeducational institutions furthered the college education of women relative to men because women’s colleges were costly and many coeducational institutions were public and less ex- pensive. The paper is structured as follows. We begin with a brief history of coeducation and then move to a discussion of our coeducation database and a description of the evolution of coeducation. We develop a frame- work to understand the shift to coeducation by single-sex institutions and then use our data to detect which factors mattered, thereby testing the validity of the framework. The impact of coeducation on female educational attainment is addressed next. We close with a section on the end of in loco parentis, the spread of sex-blind admissions, and the commencement of real gender equality in higher education.
Brain OF Male And Female according Coeducation
Arguments Against Coeducation
At the end of the twentieth century, there begun a movement back to single-sex education. Advocates of single-sex education, where male and female students attend separate classes or attend separate schools, cite studies that show students from single-sex environments outperform those from coeducational schools. Others advocate single-sex education on the basis of tradition or religiousand cultural values. In 2002, based on bipartisan support and evidence supporting single-sex education, the U.S. revoked the mandatory coeducation policy and provided three million dollars of funding for single-sex schools.
Sex Differences in the Brain
Many supporters of single-sex education hold that it can help students learn more effectively. The practitioners of single-sex school state that boys and girls learn differently because of structural differences between male and female brains. Studies on male and female brains indicate that males and females process information using different sections of their brains. This is evidenced in the ways males and females approach problem solving. For instance, when men are asked to give directions, they access the left hippocampus, and often use abstract concepts such as north and south. Women, on the other hand, access the cerebral cortex, and typically refer to landmarks that can be seen or heard to navigate. Advocates of single-sex education argue that these differences mean that the best method of instruction differs for males and females; a technique that engages girls in the subject matter may bore boys, and vice versa.[8]
Gender Roles
From a pro-coeducation standpoint, single-sex institutions are inherently unequal. Advocates of coeducation argue that gender stereotypes are reinforced and that single-sex education accentuates gender based educational limitations and discrimination by not offering courses like cheer-leading or home economics to boys, or football or wood shop to girls.
Those who support single-sex education insist that this is not the case, and that single-sex institutions actually promote the subversion ofgender roles. Margrét Pála Ólafsdóttir, an Icelandic educator who introduced single-sex kindergarten to Iceland in 1989, stated: "Both sexes seek tasks they know. They select behavior they know and consider appropriate for their sex. In mixed [coed] schools, each sex monopolizes its sex-stereotyped tasks and behavior so the sex that really needs to practice new things never gets the opportunity. Thus, mixed-sex schools support and increase the old traditional roles."[9] In this view, for example, in a single-sex school it would be less intimidating for a girl to choose to play the trumpet than it would in a coeducational school where trumpets were already being played mostly by boys.
Socialization
Critics of single-sex education argue that without the presence of the opposite sex, students are denied a learning environment representative of real life. This deprives them of the opportunity to develop skills for interaction with peers of all genders in their work environment and fosters ignorance and prejudice towards the other gender.
However, defenders argue that socialization does not depend on the two genders being placed physically together, but is rather a matter of educating children in habits such as respect, generosity, fairness, loyalty, courtesy, and so forth. From a single-sex perspective, this can be done with more success knowing the distinct tendencies and learning style differences of boys and girls. It is also argued that mixing of the sexes (particularly with adolescents) creates distraction, increased sexual harassment, and teenage pregnancy, all of which interfere with the quality of education.
Academic Success of Coeducation Versus Single-Sex Education
A number of studies have been done researching the effects of coeducation and single-sex education. In 2002, the National Foundation for Educational Research was commissioned in England to study academic performance as it relates to coeducation and school size. In a study of nearly three thousand high schools (grades nine through 12), they found that both sexes did better academically in single-sex schools. Single-sex schools also helped to counter gender stereotypes at all-girl schools, where girls were more likely to take courses in advanced mathematics or sciences. This was not the case with boys; boys in single-sex schools were actually less likely to take courses in cooking than those in coeducational schools. Other studies have shown that students in single-sex schools academically outperformed students in coeducational schools. A study done by Marlene Hamilton showed that, in Jamaica, girls from single-sex schools did the best academically, followed by boys from single-sex schools, boys from coeducational schools, and, lastly, girls from coeducational schools. "Before and after" studies done at schools that switched from coed to single-sex also reported improved academic performance.
USA Heigher institute coEducation
Coeducation Within Institutions of Higher Learning
The United States
The first coeducational institution of higher education in the United States was Franklin College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, established in 1787. Its first enrollment class in 1787 consisted of 78 male and 36 female students. Among the latter was Rebecca Gratz, the firstJewish female college student in the United States. However, the college began having financial problems and it was reopened as an all-male institution. It became coed again in 1969 under its current name, Franklin and Marshall College.
The longest continuously operating coeducational school in the United States is Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, which was established in 1833. The first four women to receive bachelor's degrees in the United States earned them at Oberlin in 1841. Later, in 1862, the first African-American woman to receive a bachelor's degree (Mary Jane Patterson) also earned it from Oberlin College.
The University of Iowa was the first public or state university in the United States to become coeducational, and for much of the next century, public universities (and land grant universities in particular) would lead the way in higher education coeducation. Many other early coeducational universities, especially west of the Mississippi River, were private, such as Carleton College (1866), Texas Christian University (1873), and Stanford University (1891).
At the same time, according to Irene Harwarth, Mindi Maline, and Elizabeth DeBra, "women's colleges were founded during the mid- and late-nineteenth century in response to a need for advanced education for women at a time when they were not admitted to most institutions of higher education."[4] Notable examples are the prestigious Seven Sisters. Of the seven, Vassar College is now co-educational and Radcliffe College has merged with Harvard University. Wellesley College, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, Bryn Mawr College, and Barnard College remain single-sex institutions.
China
The first coeducational institution of higher learning in China was the Nanjing Higher Normal Institute, which was later renamed National Central University in 1928 and Nanjing University in 1949. For thousands of years in China, education, especially higher education, was the privilege of men. In the 1910s, women's universities were established such as Ginling Women's University and Peking Girl's Higher Normal School, but coeducation was still prohibited.
In 1920, Nanjing Higher Normal Institute began to recruit female students, and later that year the first eight coeducational Chinese women students were enrolled. In the same year Peking University also began to allow women audit students. After 1949, when the Communist Party of China controlled mainland China, almost all schools and universities became coeducational. However, in later years, many girl schools and women colleges have again emerged.
Europe
In Europe, coeducation was more easily accepted in institutions of higher learning than it was in secondary education. In England, theUniversity of Cambridge established Girton College for women in 1869 and Newnham College followed in 1872. The London School of Economics was also one of the first to open its doors to women in 1874. Women were first allowed to matriculate in Germany in 1901. By 1910, coeducation was becoming more widespread; women were admitted into universities in The Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark,Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Austria-Hungary, France, and Turkey.[5]
The Middle East
While most schools in the Middle East remain single-sex, coeducation has become more accepted. In Iran, for instance, the prestigious Tehran University is open to both sexes. From 2002 to 2006, women accounted for sixty percent of entrants to the University.[6]
In other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, strict adherence to the rules of Islam forbids the intermingling of males and females, and schools are single-sex only. In Afghanistan under Taliban rule, girls were forbidden to receive an education. After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, women became equal to men in the eyes of the government, but the education of females is still unacceptable to many rural citizens. Girls' schools have been burned down, and girls poisoned for attempting to go to school.[7] The education of women is becoming more accepted in much of the Middle East, but even with additional opportunities, middle eastern women continue to struggle against inequality and oppression.
Coeducation Within Primary and Secondary Schools
Modern-day education is primarily co-educational, but many single-sex educational institutions exist, and single-sex education is undergoing a rebirth of popularity.
Coeducation in History
World history shows a clear preference for the education of boys over girls; the education of girls, when it existed, was usually informal and at home. In most ancient societies, such as Greece, India, and Egypt, organized educational systems were for boys only. The education of women in general was rare; coeducation even more so.Sparta, a Greek city-state, was one of the few places in the ancient world with organized schooling for girls as well as boys. Although the two were separate, many historians believe that both schools were very similar in nature. Most education in Sparta was of a physical nature; the goal of a Spartan education was to create ideal soldiers and strong young women who would bear strong babies.[1]
Before the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, most schools were single-sex. In cases like one room schoolhouses in frontier America, coeducation was necessary from a practical standpoint; a single teacher was responsible for the education of all children in a given area, and separation by age or sex was impractical. In England, the first public boarding school to become coeducational was Bedales School founded in 1893 by John Haden Badley and coeducational since 1898. TheScottish Dollar Academy claims to be the first coeducational boarding school in the UK (in 1818). In the 1960s, many Western countries shifted to coeducation. Not only was coeducation a less expensive way of schooling children, but it also supported the thrust towards gender equality. In 1972, U.S. schools made coeducation mandatory in public schools.
Institutions of higher education have also been historically for men only. In most countries, when women were given the option of a higher education, their only choice was to attend an all-female college.
Coeducation Within Primary and Secondary Schools
In many countries, schools were historically for boys only. Where girls were allowed to attend school, they rarely continued past primary schools. In western Europe, coeducation was first introduced at the urging of Protestantgroups who wanted both girls and boys to be able to read the Bible. The Quakers helped to promote coeducation in the British colonies.Scandinavian countries were some of the first to embrace coeducation; Danish schools were coeducational in the eighteenth century, and Norwegian schools became coeducational by law in 1896. Other countries were slower to embrace coeducation; Germany did not provide hardly any secondary schooling for girls until the end of the nineteenth century. When separate girls' secondary schools were introduced, they were vastly inferior to boys' schools.[2]
Coeducation is less prevalent in the Middle East, where religious and cultural values restrict the interaction of males and females. While some primary schools are coeducational, most are separated by gender. In the United Arab Emirates, for example, most primary and all secondary schools are not coeducational
Coeducation in History
Coeducation is the integrated education of males and females at the same school facilities. The term "Co-ed" is a shortened version of "co-educational," and is also sometimes used as an informal and increasingly archaic reference to a female college student, particularly in the United States. Before the 1960s, many private institutions of higher education restricted their enrollment to a single sex. Indeed, most institutions of higher education, both public and private, restricted their enrollment to a single sex at some point in their history.
Modern-day education is primarily co-educational, but many single-sex educational institutions exist, and single-sex education is undergoing a rebirth of popularity.
Modern-day education is primarily co-educational, but many single-sex educational institutions exist, and single-sex education is undergoing a rebirth of popularity.
World history shows a clear preference for the education of boys over girls; the education of girls, when it existed, was usually informal and at home. In most ancient societies, such as Greece, India, and Egypt, organized educational systems were for boys only. The education of women in general was rare; coeducation even more so.Sparta, a Greek city-state, was one of the few places in the ancient world with organized schooling for girls as well as boys. Although the two were separate, many historians believe that both schools were very similar in nature. Most education in Sparta was of a physical nature; the goal of a Spartan education was to create ideal soldiers and strong young women who would bear strong babies.[1]
Before the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, most schools were single-sex. In cases like one room schoolhouses in frontier America, coeducation was necessary from a practical standpoint; a single teacher was responsible for the education of all children in a given area, and separation by age or sex was impractical. In England, the first public boarding school to become coeducational was Bedales School founded in 1893 by John Haden Badley and coeducational since 1898. TheScottish Dollar Academy claims to be the first coeducational boarding school in the UK (in 1818). In the 1960s, many Western countries shifted to coeducation. Not only was coeducation a less expensive way of schooling children, but it also supported the thrust towards gender equality. In 1972, U.S. schools made coeducation mandatory in public schools.
Institutions of higher education have also been historically for men only. In most countries, when women were given the option of a higher education, their only choice was to attend an all-female college.
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