Note 31 — Front matter

It is difficult for those interested in women’s education in England to understand the existence in America of independent colleges for women, and if American education were organized like English education they would, indeed, have no reason to exist. In an English university, consisting, as it does, of many separate colleges whose students live in their separate halls of residence, are taught by their own teachers, hear in common with the students of other colleges the lectures offered by the central university organization, and compete against each other in honor examinations conducted by a common board of university examiners, the colleges for women—at Cambridge, Girton and Newnham, and at Oxford, Somerville hall, Lady Margaret hall and St. Hugh’s hall—are organized in precisely the same way as colleges for men. They may, or may not, be as well equipped as the best men’s colleges, but the difference is a matter of endowment, not of university organization; there are differences also between the various colleges for men. Examinations, again, play a far more important part in English than in American education. There are in Great Britain only a few examining and degree-giving bodies, for whose examinations all the various colleges prepare their students. The degrees mean that certain examinations have been passed, and have a definite and universally acknowledged value. A degree given by an American college means that the person receiving it has lived for some time in a community of a certain kind, enjoying certain opportunities of which he has conscientiously availed himself. For this reason no one of the 491 colleges of the United States enumerated in the U. S. education report for 1897–98 bestows its degree in recognition of examinations passed in any other college. For this reason Harvard college has had logic on its side in declining to confer upon the students completing their undergraduate course in Radcliffe college the Harvard B. A. They have not lived in the same community, nor yet had all the opportunities of the Harvard student. The certificate received by the student of Girton or Newnham represents exactly the same thing as the Cambridge degree; the B. A. of Radcliffe does not represent the same thing as the Harvard B. A. What is represented by the degrees of different colleges in the United States may, or may not, be equal, but never is the same. Nevertheless Columbia, Brown, Tulane and Western reserve confer their degrees upon the women graduates of their affiliated colleges for women.