in the five classes of group 3 (higher education)
of the Educational Department, I would say that only
in the cases of the several large female colleges
which installed exhibits at the fair were there
special women’s exhibits distinct from those
of men. In the United States section valuable
and important displays were made by Vassar, Bryn
Mawr, Woman’s College of Baltimore, Smith, Wellesley,
Mount Holyoke, Pratt Institute (New York), Milwaukee-Downer
College (Milwaukee), and several lesser women’s
colleges, while in the English section a wonderfully
interesting showing of women’s activity
in “higher education” was made by the Oxford
Association for the education of women, including
Lady Margaret Hall, Summerville College, St. Hugh
Hall, St. Hilda’s Hall; by Girton College
and Newham College, Cambridge University; by Westfield
College and the London School of Medicine for Women
of the London University; by Owen’s College
of the Victoria University of Manchester; by University
Hall of the University of St. Andrew, and by Dublin
Alexandra College.
In the German section no special exhibit of a woman’s department was made by any university or college. According to the German system women’s education is carried on side by side with men’s. Women acquiring a leaving certificate from a classical gymnasium can matriculate on an equal footing with male students in the universities of Heidelberg, Frieburg, Erlangen, Wuerzburg, and Munich. In the other universities, except Muenster, by permission of the rector, or under the statutes, women are permitted to hear lectures. In all the German universities there are in attendance many women, either as matriculants or as hearers, ranging from 10 to 200 women at each university.
In the universities of France, Belgium, and Japan a similar plan of educating men and women together exists. But outside the University of Paris, of Louvain and of Tokio, the number of women attending the courses does not compare with the number in attendance at the German, English, and American universities. Among the lesser nations at the fair, as Italy, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, China, Canada, Sweden, Ceylon, and Cuba, the exhibits so often appearing under the name of college work scarcely represented work in higher education, except in the line of art.
The very fact that at St. Louis women’s work was nowhere separated from men’s, but was shown side by side with it, was in itself a radical advance in the last eleven years. While this applied to every department of the exposition, it applied with greatest impressiveness to the Department of Higher Education, for this in the past had been set apart as man’s special province, though, of course, down through the ages there have been brilliant exceptional cases of women becoming profound students and learned teachers, as Hypatia, Maria Agnesi, and others.
In the five classes of group 3 (higher