WOMEN’S COLLEGES.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 527, 25 February 1876, Page 3

WOMEN’S COLLEGES.

(Spectator.} The natural and passionate desire of many women to find out a career for themselves is regarded with different feelings by different classes of well-wishers. With ourselves, the wish that women may try the experiment in whatever ways may from time to time offer themselves has predominated over the fear that they may not succeed; or that success, when achieved, may be found to have its accompanying drawbacks. In others, on the contrary, the modes in which women’s desire to make a career and a subsistence for themselves shows itself inspire only doubt and uneasiness. Nothing but the favourable issue of the experiment will convince their timid friends that their forebodings are uncalled for or exaggerated. They will continue to shake their heads over the social changes which the new theory of the industrial position of women seems to them to postulate, and to lament that those who build their hopes on the changes in question should be sometimes so ready to ignore physical and economical laws, if they happen to stand in their way. It is to this class that we propose to particularly address ourselves. They are bound to be especially glad when an occasion presents itself which opens out to women a road in which they may shortly be able to start with the same advantages and to achieve the same success as men, without raising any of the problems which are connected with their efforts to rival men in the callings which they have till now regarded as specially their own. Their very distrust of some recent efforts at throwing open this or that calling to women, makes it all the more incumbent on them to help to create a career which men have never dreamed of appropriating. A few years since, it would have been mockery to speak of education as supplying an occasion of this kind. The precarious and ill-paid labour of a governess, or the risk and anxiety attendant upon the management of a girls’ school, was the only alternative that the word could have conjured up. The labours of the Endowed Schools Commission have done much to provide a third alternative. It is no longer necessary that a competent teacher should either seek employment in a family, or buy the good-will of an established school, or take the chances of setting up a school for herself. There are now many schools, either already opened or shortly about to be opened, in which the salaries of the principal mistress range from £250 upwards. There are larger prizes than these in prospect,—prizes so large, indeed, that we hardly expect to be believed when we name them. Down to a very short time since, if any one had said that in 1875 one woman would have been making £I3OO a year by teaching, and that in another school, to be opened by-and-by, the head mistress, supposing the school to be full, will have a minimum salary of the same amount, with a chance of its reaching £2900, he would certainly have been set down as a dreamer. It is not, however, these magnificent possibilities that constitute the stuff of which the career we speak of is made. They can but be what the head masterships of the great public schools are to the great body of masterships in schools. It is the smaller places, the places of £250 a year and upwards, that promise to make so great a difference in the position of educated women who have to earn their own living. The new schools which are gradually growing up under the Endowed Schools Commission are certain to be only the forerunners of many more. In the first place, the work of the Commission is still going on, many endowments yet remain to be reorganised, and under any circumstances, a certain proportion of these is likely to be devoted to the provision of a better education for girls. In the next place, this proportion will probably be increased in the later schemes, if the earlier schools create, as they are likely to do, an increased demand for this better education. In the third place, the raising of the standard, or rather the Institution of a wholly new standard of girls’ education, by the foundation of public schools, will react upon private schools, and provide in them also opportunities analogous in character to those provided by the Commission. For a very long time to come, therefore, the scope of the career will be constantly growing wider. The wants that have to be supplied

arc as yet scarcely guessed at. The ground ha’, so to speak, been only scratched, and the mine which it covers may for present purposes be set down as inexhaustible. Yory few of those to whom this new career is proposed are at present qualified to follow it. Already the number of women who have received anything like a thorough and complete education is quite inadequate to the demand. It is plain that if this deficiency of competent teachers continues, it must be fatal to the success of the movement. Endowments may be devoted to it, and the growing sense among parents of the value of education for their daughters may fill every place in the public schools, and lead to the foundation of private schools in rivalry with them ; but neither of these results will have any real or lasting effect, if there are not competent teachers in addition. The future of girls’ education, and with it the opeuing-up of a new career for women, depends upon this want being supplied, and supplied promptly. As regards this aspect of the question, the Endowed Schools Commissioners are powerless. They can, under certain circumstances, found schools for girls, but they cannot found training-schools for the teachers of girls. Nor can the existing girls’ schools, even when they are really good, discharge this particular function. A girl’s education ordinarily ends at eighteen, and if she is to be a thoroughly competent teacher, she needs to be preparing for her work not merely up to eighteen, but during the three or four critical years that follow 7 . It is an open question how far the education of girls generally will be prolonged beyond the age at which they take their place in society, but it is not an open question whether girls who intend to make teaching a profession will need a longer preparation for their work. Something in the nature of a University course must be provided for them, before they can make any good use of the chances which fortune seems at length to have in store for them.

There is at present only one place in which this extended preparation is to be had, and that is Girton College. So far as the education given there is concerned, it completely answers to the want. It is given by teachers of the first rank ; it comprises all that a liberal education ought to comprise ; and it has already enabled some of the students to pass with distinction examinations in all respects as hard as the Honor examinations in the University of Cambridge. The staff of teachers includes nine distinguished Cambridge tutors. The course of study consists of divinity, classics, mathematics, the moral and natural sciences, modern languages, and vocal music, Two kinds of certificates are given—the Degree certificate, which implies that the student has fulfilled, so far as in the judgment of the College may be practicable, aU the conditions imposed by the University of Cambridge on candidates for degrees; and the College certificate, which implies that the student has fulfilled the same conditions, with the substitution of modern languages for classics. Only two things are needed, therefore, to make the College a successstudents to be educated, and rooms for them to live in. As to the former requisite the friends of the College have no longer any cause for anxiety. There are already more students in residence than can properly be accommodated, all but two of these hope to be still in residence next October, and there are some twelve or fifteen new students who propose to enter at the same time. If room can be found for these additional students, the work of the College will be in every way benefited. The lecturers will be able to take larger classes than is possible when there are only twentythree students in all, and in this and other ways there will be a comparative reduction in the expenditure, combined with a positive increase in efficiency. It is the second requisite, rooms for the students to live in, that the College does not see its way to providing. The fees paid by the students cover the current expenses of the College, but that is all. A portion of the debt incurred in building the present College remains to be paid off, and if the existing buildings are to be enlarged, there must be a further contribution on the part of those who take an interest in the movement. The committee of the College are anxious to build rooms for nineteen additional students, two lecture rooms, and a second staircase, between now and October next. The cost of these additions is estimated at £6OOO, and when they are completed, the building will contain rooms for the mistress, two assistant lecturers, and thirty-eight students ; four lecture-rooms and a laboratory ; and a dining hall, chapel, library, and gymnasium. Unless new students are to be refused next October for want of room, the work must be undertaken without loss of time, and it is consequently of the highest importance to the success of the College that a large part of the £6OOO should be at once raised. Something over £llOO has been already promised. In order to ensure speedy and adequate additions to this sura, it will be enough, we hope, to have shown how large and how promising is the opening which educational work is about to afford to women who have the capacity and the training to take advantage of it.