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.