In the forty years since Michigan opened her doors, the advance of women
under conditions of co-education has been steady and rapid. In Harvard
and Columbia opportunity takes the form of annexes where women can
secure almost any educational opportunities they desire. In other
universities, like Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins, women are admitted to
graduate study. Most of the institutions of higher education that do not
yet admit women are theological and technical schools, or small colleges
like Haverford, where there are equivalents in Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr,
for women who wish to attend a Friend's College. A woman can work in
almost any important university in America to-day if she cares to do so.
In 1910 there were conferred in the United States 12,590 A.B. degrees,
and women took 44.1 per cent. of them.

Meantime, there have been no important reactions in institutions which
have once opened their doors to women.[22] In 1902, Chicago University
separated men and women students, but only during the first two years of
their undergraduate work. Practically this has affected only one-half of
the women in the first year and a very much smaller proportion in the
second year.[23] When Leland Stanford Junior University was opened in
1891, 25.4% of the students were women. This proportion rose in
successive years as follows: 1892, 29.7%; 1893, 30.4%; 1894, 33.8%;
1895, 35.3%; 1896, 36.6%; 1897, 37.4%; 1898, 40.1%. Fearing that the
institution would be swamped with women, and that able men students
would stay away, Mrs. Stanford ruled that there should never be more
than five hundred women students in the university at one time. This
limit was reached in 1902, and it was then provided that women should
not be received as special students, nor in partial standing. Later, men
in partial standing were cut out, though they continued to be received
as special students. Women are now admitted in order of application,