liberal of co-education universities—­Manchester, for example, where the conditions are exceptionally good.  This fact should not deter fully qualified women from applying for professorial chairs.  The power of suggestion is very great, and it is well to accustom appointment committees to the consideration of women’s claims:  in time it may appear less strange to choose a strong woman candidate than to reject her in favour of a less qualified male applicant.

It must be confessed, however, that the case does not at present often arise.  The girl who has had a brilliant undergraduate career, and who has real capacity for advanced study, exists in her hundreds.  But in almost every case when she is not financially independent, at best after an interval of preparation for her M.A., she accepts a junior lectureship or demonstratorship, and from that time onwards is swallowed up in the vortex of teaching and routine work.  Often she makes heroic efforts and succeeds in producing independent results, but, so far, to nothing like the extent that would be commensurate with the promise of her undergraduate achievement.  Generally she is too conscientious about detail, too interested in her students individually and collectively, to secure sufficient time for her own studies.

If a lecturer be known to teach between twenty and thirty hours a week, it is tolerably, though not entirely, safe to assume that it is a woman who is so foolish.  In so doing, she is destroying her chances of advancement—­intellectual and professional—­and is laying her whole sex open to the charge of being unsuited to university work except in its lower branches.

It is certain that the number of University appointments open to women is on the increase, and that there is no present likelihood that the demand for qualified women will remain stationary.  On the other hand, the necessary qualifications, personal as well as intellectual, are high; the work is hard, though attractive, and it is in every respect undesirable that those whose talents can better be exerted in other branches of the profession should endeavour to obtain College posts.  Roughly speaking such openings are of four kinds :—­

(1) Administrative posts.  These are usually the reward of long and successful service in junior appointments.  The heads of the various women’s University Colleges are often, but by no means invariably, well paid, and may look forward to a salary ranging from L400 to L1,000.  Such posts are obviously few in number and entail hard work and grave responsibility.  They necessarily preclude much time for research, or even for teaching.  The corresponding, but much less responsible, influential, and well-paid position in a co-educational University is that of Dean or Tutor of Women Students.  This post is usually, and should always be held by a woman of senior academic standing, whose position in the class-room or laboratory commands as much respect as her authority outside.  The Dean or Tutor is responsible for the welfare and discipline of all women students, and is nowadays usually a member of the Senate or academic governing body.  Sometimes she is also Warden of a Women’s Hostel, but this is obviously undesirable if there be more than one Hall of Residence, lest she may appear to favour her own students at the expense of the others.