Mixed-sex education
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 education—regardless of being public or private—restricted their enrollment to a single sex at some point in their history.
"Coed" is an informal (and increasingly archaic) term for a female student attending a formerly all-male college or university.
Coeducation in the United Kingdom
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.
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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 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, Skidmore College and Sarah Lawrence College in New York state, Goucher College in Maryland and Connecticut College.
U.S. institutions of higher education coeducational from establishment
- Franklin and Marshall College (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)
- 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)
- Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, (1893)
- 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.
Coeducation in Canada
Years Canadian educational institutions became coeducational
| 1884 | McGill University |
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Coeducation in China
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, 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 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 Lu Zhiwei, 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 girl 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.
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 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.
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See also
- List of current and historical women's universities and colleges
- Single-sex school
- Men's college
- Women's college