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, and the word co-ed is sometimes also used as a noun to refer to a female college student in the United States. 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.

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.

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 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)
• 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)
• 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.

1860	University of Wisconsin
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
1871	Pennsylvania State University
1872	Wesleyan University (Until 1912, when it became all male once again.)
1876	University of Pennsylvania
1877	Ohio Wesleyan University
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	University of Pittsburgh University of South Carolina
1897	University at Buffalo Law School University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (graduate students)
1900	University of Virginia (nursing only)
1902	Miami University
1909	Tulane University School of Dentistry
1914	Tulane University Medical School University of Pennsylvania Medical School
1918	College of William and Mary University of Georgia
1920	University of Virginia (graduate students)
1922	Northeastern University, Boston School of Law
1930	Roanoke College
1931	Seattle University
1942	Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Wake Forest University
1946	James Madison University (de facto)
1947	Florida State University University of Florida
1952	Lincoln University
1953	Georgia Tech
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
1966	James Madison University (official)
1968	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 Johns Hopkins University Rutgers University University of Mary Washington University of Virginia (all programs)
1971	Brown University
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
1976	Claremont McKenna College United States Air Force Academy United States Coast Guard Academy United States Military Academy United States Naval Academy
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
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 China

The first coeducational institution of higher learning in China was the Nanjing Higher Normal Institute which 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 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.

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.

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
• Go Ask Alice!: Concerned over co-ed bathrooms

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