coeducation

 

instruction of both sexes in the same institution. The economic benefits gained from joint classes and the need to secure equality for women in industrial, professional, and political activities have influenced the spread of coeducation. There were scattered examples of coeducation in the late 17th cent. in Scotland and in the American Colonies, but there was no general trend until the great expansion of public education between 1830 and 1845 in the developing W United States. The distance between schools in that region and the small number of pupils caused elementary schools to admit girls. The movement spread naturally to the secondary schools during the reorganization of public education after the Civil War. Oberlin College gave degrees to both men and women as early as 1837, but it was the development of state universities during the post–Civil War era that standardized collegiate coeducation. Since 1960 nearly every formerly single-sex college has become coeducational; only about one hundred, mostly historic women's schools and men's seminaries, remain. The coeducational movement encountered stronger resistance outside the United States. In Europe, the Scandinavian countries were the earliest supporters, but many other nations limited coeducation to institutions of higher learning. Although coeducation has expanded since World War II, there are many nations where it still meets opposition on religious and cultural grounds.

Bibliography

See C. Lasser, ed., Educating Men and Women Together (1987); D. Tyack and E. Hansot, Learning Together (1990).

Coeducation is the integrated education of males and females at the same school facilities. The opposite situation is described as single-sex education. Most older institutions of higher education restricted their enrollment to a single sex at some point in their history, and since then have changed their policies to become coeducational.

Co-ed is a shortened adjectival form of co-educational, and the word co-ed is sometimes also used, in the United States, as a noun to refer to a female college student. The word is also often used to describe a situation in which both genders are integrated in any form (e.g. "The team is co-ed").

Mixed schools in the United Kingdom

Further information: Education in the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, the usual term is mixed,^[1] and today most schools are mixed. In England the first public mixed 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 mixed 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.

Coeducation in the United States

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 co-ed 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 co-ed 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)
• Guilford College, Greensboro, North Carolina (1837)
• Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois (1837)
• Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan, (1844)
• Olivet College, Olivet, Michigan (1844)
• Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin (1847)
• Waynesburg College, Waynesburg, Pennsylvania (1849) (first woman to receive a Bachelor's Degree in Pennsylvania in 1857)
• 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)
• Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas (1863)
• Cornell University, Ithaca, New York (1865) (first woman enrolled in 1870, first woman graduated in 1873)
• Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota (1866)
• University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California (1868)
• Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts (1869)
• Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania (1870)
• Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York (1870)
• Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas (1873)
• Hendrix College, Conway, Arkansas (1876)
• Emerson College, Boston, Massachusetts (1880)
• Pomona College, Claremont, California (1887)
• The College of Idaho, Caldwell, Idaho (1891)
• Stanford University, Stanford, California (1891)
• University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois (1892)
• Reed College, Portland, Oregon (1908)
• Rice University, Houston, Texas (1912)
• Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts (1948)
• Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, California (1955) (first woman graduated in 1960)
• Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts (1965)
• University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California (1965)
• Virtually all of the thousands of institutions of higher education that were founded after Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 are coeducational, and so are not listed.

Years U.S. educational institutions became coeducational

Schools that were previously all-female are listed in italics.

1860	University of Wisconsin-Madison
1867	DePauw University Indiana University
1868	University of Iowa Law School
1869	Northwestern University Ohio University
1870	Michigan State University University of Michigan Washington University in St. Louis (First women admitted to the law school in 1869) Cornell University
1871	Colby College Pennsylvania State University
1872	Wesleyan University (Until 1912, when it became all male once again.)
1876	University of Pennsylvania
1877	Ohio Wesleyan University
1878	Hope College
1883	Bucknell University Middlebury College
1885	University of Mississippi
1888	George Washington University Tulane University Pharamaceutical School University of Kentucky
1892	Auburn University
1893	Macalester College University of Connecticut Johns Hopkins University Graduate School University of Alabama University of Tennessee
1894	Boalt Hall
1895	Beloit College University of Pittsburgh University of South Carolina
1897	University at Buffalo Law School University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (graduate students)
1900	Denison University University of Rochester University of Virginia (nursing only)
1902	Miami University
1909	Tulane University School of Dentistry
1914	Tulane University Medical School University of Pennsylvania Medical School
1917	Georgia Tech (until 1934)
1918	College of William and Mary University of Georgia
1920	University of Virginia (graduate students)
1922	Northeastern University School of Law
1926	Centre College
1930	Roanoke College
1931	Seattle University
1933	Furman University
1941	St. John's College
1942	Clark University Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Wake Forest University
1944	Bard College
1946	James Madison University (de facto)
1947	Florida State University University of Florida
1952	Lincoln University
1953	Georgia Tech (some programs)
1953	Harvard Law School
1963	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (all programs) University of North Carolina at Greensboro
1964	Texas A&M University
1964	University of San Francisco
1966	James Madison University (official) Sarah Lawrence College
1968	Georgia Tech (all programs) Virginia Tech
1969	Connecticut College Franklin and Marshall College Georgetown University Kenyon College La Salle University MacMurray College Princeton University Siena Heights University Trinity College (Connecticut) University of the South Vassar College Yale University
1970	Boston College Colgate University Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University Pitzer College University of Mary Washington Union College University of Virginia (all programs) Williams College
1971	Bowdoin College Brown University Robert College Skidmore College Stevens Institute of Technology
1972	Davidson College Dartmouth College Harvard College - Harvard University Radford University Texas Woman's University University of Notre Dame Washington and Lee University Law School Wesleyan University
1974	Fordham College United States Merchant Marine Academy
1975	Amherst College
1976	Claremont McKenna College United States Air Force Academy United States Coast Guard Academy United States Military Academy United States Naval Academy
1978	Hamilton College
1980	Haverford College
1982	Mississippi University for Women
1983	Columbia College at Columbia University
1985	Washington and Lee University
1991	Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
1993	The Citadel
1997	Virginia Military Institute (last state institution of higher learning to become coeducational)
2001	Notre Dame College
2002	Hood College
2004	Immaculata College
2005	Lesley College of Lesley University Wells College
2006	Valley Forge Military College
2007	Randolph-Macon Woman's College

Coeducation in Canada

Years Canadian educational institutions became coeducational

1884	McGill University
1980	Royal Military College of Canada

Coeducation in mainland China

The first coeducational institution of higher learning in China was the Nanjing Higher Normal School which was renamed National Central University in 1928 and Nanjing University 1949. 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 (規定女子旁聽法案) on the meeting of Nanjing Higher Normal Institute held on December 7th, 1919. He also proposed for the university to recruit female students. The idea was supported by the president Guo Bingwen, academic director Liu Boming, and such famous professors as Lu Zhiwei and Yang Xingfo, but opposed by many famous men of the time. 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 students to audit classes. One of the most notable female students of that time was Jianxiong Wu.

In 1949, the People's Republic of China was founded. The government of PRC has provided equal opportunities for education since then, and all schools and universities have become coeducational. In recent years, however, many female and/or single-sex schools have again emerged for special vocational training needs but equal rights for education still apply to all citizens.

Co-education in Hong Kong

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 World War II it was temporarily merged with St. Paul's College, which is a boys' school. When classes at the campus of St. Paul's College were resumed, it continued to be co-educational, and changed to its present name.

See also

• List of current and historical women's universities and colleges
• Single-sex school
• Single-sex education
• Men's college
• Women's college

External links

• Rosenberg: Coeducation History

References

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