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.