Note 49 — Front matter

The health investigation of English women students showed that the average age of marriage for students was 26.70 as against 25.53 for sisters, and that 10.25 per cent of the students were married and 19.33 per cent of the sisters, or, omitting the students who had just left college when the returns were sent in, about 12 per cent of students. The rate of marriage of students after their college course was completed and of their sisters seemed to be the same, the difference in the total number of marriages being apparently accounted for by causes existing before the termination of the college course, “possibly the desire to go to college, or to remain in college may be among them, but having been in college is not one of them.” (See summary of results by Mrs. Sidgwick, page 59.) Mrs. Sidgwick concludes as a result of the investigation that not more than one-half of English women of the social class of women students or their sisters marry. The American investigation of 1883 showed that 27.8 per cent of the American college graduates, their average age being 28½ years, were at that time married, and that, judging by the indications of the marriage percentages among older graduates, about 50 per cent were likely sooner or later to be married. In an investigation of the marriage of Vassar graduates made in 1895, and not including the graduates of that year, it was found that rather under 38 per cent of the whole number of students, and about 63 per cent of the first four classes, were married, see Frances M. Abbott: A Generation of college women, The Forum, vol. XX, p. 378. Out of the total number of 8,956 graduates, including those graduating in June, 1899, of the 16 colleges belonging to the Association of collegiate alumnæ that have kept accurate marriage statistics, 2,059 are married, or 23.0 per cent.