Coeducation
Coeducation is the integrated
education of
men and
women at the same
school facilities;
co-ed is a shortened
adjectival form of
co-educational. Before the 1960s, many
private institutions of higher education restricted their enrollment to a single sex. Indeed, most institutions of higher educationâ€"regardless of being
public or privateâ€"restricted their enrollment to a single sex at some point in their history.
In the
United Kingdom, most
schools are coeducational today. In
England the first public coeducational boarding school was
Bedales School founded in
1893 by
John Haden Badley and coeducational since
1898. The Scottish
Dollar Academy claims to be the first coeducational boarding school in the UK (in 1818). Many previously
single-sex schools have begun to accept both sexes in the past few decades; for example,
Clifton College began to accept girls in
1987.
The first coeducational institution of higher education in the United States was
Franklin College in
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, established in
1787. Its first enrollment class in
1787 consisted of 78 male and 36 female students. Among the latter was
Rebecca Gratz, the first
Jewish female college student in the United States. However, the college began having financial problems and it was reopened as an all-male institution. It became coed again in
1969 under its current name,
Franklin and Marshall College.
The longest continuously operating coeducational school in the
United States is
Oberlin College in
Oberlin, Ohio, which was established in
1833. The first four women to receive bachelor's degrees in the United States earned them at Oberlin in 1841. Later, in 1862, the first African-American woman to receive a bachelor's degree (Mary Jane Patterson) also earned it from Oberlin College.
The
University of Iowa became the first public or state university in the United States to admit women, and for much of the next century, public universities, and land grant universities in particular, would lead the way in higher education coeducation. Many other early coeducational universities, especially west of the Mississippi River, were private, such as
Carleton College (
1866),
Texas Christian University (
1873), and
Stanford University (
1891).
At the same time, according to Irene Harwarth, Mindi Maline, and Elizabeth DeBra, "
women's colleges were founded during the mid- and late-19th century in response to a need for advanced education for women at a time when they were not admitted to most institutions of higher education" [
1]. A notable example is the prestigious
Seven Sisters. Of the seven,
Vassar College is now co-educational and
Radcliffe College has merged with
Harvard University.
Wellesley College,
Smith College,
Mount Holyoke College,
Bryn Mawr College, and
Barnard College are still
women's colleges.
Other notable women's colleges that have become coeducational include
Ohio Wesleyan Female College in
Ohio,
Skidmore College,
Wells College, and
Sarah Lawrence College in New York state,
Goucher College in Maryland and
Connecticut College.
In U.S. slang, "
Coed" is an
informal and increasingly archaic term for a
female student attending a formerly all-male college or university (or any university).
U.S. institutions of higher education coeducational from establishment
*
Franklin and Marshall College,
Lancaster, Pennsylvania (
1787) (
began as a coeducational school but the coed policy was soon changed and it would take 182 years before women were again permitted to enroll in the school)
*Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, (1833) (usually credited as the first consistently coeducational school in the United States
)
*Alfred University, Village of Alfred in western New York State, (1836)
*Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, (1837)
*Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan, (1844)
*Olivet College, Olivet, Michigan, (1844)
*Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin, (1847)
*Urbana University, Urbana, Ohio, (1850)
*Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, (1853)
*Hamline University, Red Wing, Minnesota, (1854)
*Bates College (1855), Lewiston, Maine, (first woman to receive a bachelor's degree in New England in 1869)
*University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, (1856)
*Cornell University, Ithaca, New York (1865) (first woman enrolled in
1870, first woman graduated in
1873'')
*
Carleton College,
Northfield, Minnesota,
1866)
*
Boston University (
1869)
*
Swarthmore College,
Swarthmore, Pennsylvania (
1870)
*
Texas Christian University,
Fort Worth, Texas, (
1873)
*
Stanford University,
Stanford, California, (
1891)
*
University of Chicago (
1892)
*
Rice University,
Houston, Texas, (
1912)
*
Brandeis University,
Waltham, Massachusetts, (
1948)
Years U.S. educational institutions became coeducational
: Schools that were previously all-female are listed in
italics.
Years Canadian educational institutions became coeducational
The first coeducational institution of higher learning in
China was the
Nanjing Higher Normal Institute, now
Nanjing University. For thousands of years in China, education, especially higher education, was the privilege of men. In the 1910s women's universities were established such as
Ginling Women's University and
Peking Girl's Higher Normal School, but coeducation was still prohibited.
Tao Xingzhi, the Chinese advocator of coeducation, proposed
The Audit Law for Women Students (《è¦å®šå¥³åæ—è½æ³•æ¡ˆã€‹) on the meeting of Nanjing Higher Normal Institute hold on December 7th, 1919. He also proposed the university to recruit girl students. They were supported by the president
Guo Bingwen, academic director
Liu Boming, and such famous professors as
Lu Zhiwei and
Yang Xingfo, and were opposed by many famous men of the time.
Finally, the meeting passed the law and decided to recruit women students next year. Nanjing Higher Normal Institute enrolled eight coeducational Chinese women students in 1920. In the same year
Peking University also began to allow women audit students. The most notable female student of that time may be
Chien-Shiung Wu.
After
1949, when the
Communist Party of China controlled
mainland China, almost all schools and universities became coeducational. In recent years, however, many girl schools and women colleges have again emerged.
St. Paul's Co-educational College was the first co-educational
secondary school in
Hong Kong. It was founded in
1915 as St. Paul's Girls' College. At the end of the
World War II operation was temporarily merged with
St. Paul's College, which is a boys' school. When class at the campus of St. Paul's College was resumed, it continued to be co-educational, and changed to its present name.
*
List of current and historical women's universities and colleges*
Single-sex school*
Men's college*
Women's college*
Rosenberg: Coeducation History*
Go Ask Alice!: Concerned over co-ed bathrooms
