Coeducation
Coeducation is the integrated education of men and women. Before coeducation became predominant, most important institutions of higher education restricted their enrollment to men. Women were educated in all-female schools, if at all.
Coeducation in the United States
The first coeducational institution of higher education in the United States was Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. The agitation for coeducation by feminists grew through the American Civil War era, and by 1872 there were 97 American universities admitting women. Some institutions refused to integrate fully, but were willing to educate women in closely associated schools--a variation on the later "separate but equal" standard of racially segregated schools followed in some parts of the US. Examples of this parallelism include Radcliffe College at Harvard University in Massachusetts and Barnard College at Columbia University in New York. A variety of gender-segregated women's institutions were founded, notably the Seven Sisters schools. Some of these "girls schools" are now coeducational (e.g. Vassar), others are not (e.g. Wellesley).
It should be noted that many or most "common schools"--the neighborhood, village and county schools that educated most Americans through the end of the 19th century--were coeducational from the beginning, in part because small school districts could not fund separate educational facilities for girls and boys.
Remarkably, after a little more than than a century in the mainstream higher education system of the United States, American women now earn the majority of bachelor's degrees and account for 60% of the enrolled undergraduate population.
U.S. institutions of higher education coeducational from establishment
Years Canadian educational institutions became coeducational
Years U.S. educational institutions became coeducational
- Italics: Schools that were previously all-female
| 1860 | University of Wisconsin |
| 1865 | Cornell University |
| 1867 | DePauw University, Indiana University |
| 1868 | University of Iowa Law School |
| 1870 | University of Michigan |
| 1872 | Cornell University |
| 1882 | Florida State University |
| 1883 | Bucknell University |
| 1885 | University of Mississippi |
| 1888 | George Washington University, University of Kentucky, Tulane University Pharamaceutical School |
| 1892 | Auburn University |
| 1893 | Macalester College, University of Connecticut |
| 1894 | Boalt Hall |
| 1895 | University of Pittsburgh |
| 1897 | University of Buffalo Law School, University of North Carolina (graduate students) |
| 1900 | University of Virginia (nursing only) |
| 1902 | Miami University |
| 1909 | Tulane University School of Dentistry |
| 1914 | University of Pennsylvania Medical School, Tulane University Medical School |
| 1918 | College of William and Mary |
| 1920 | University of Virginia (graduate students) |
| 1922 | Northeastern University School of Law |
| 1931 | Seattle University |
| 1942 | Wake Forest University |
| 1946 | James Madison University (de facto) |
| 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 | Princeton University, Virginia Tech |
| 1969 | Yale University, Georgetown University, Kenyon College, Vassar College, Trinity College (Connecticut) |
| 1970 | University of Virginia (all programs), Johns Hopkins University |
| 1972 | University of Notre Dame, Washington and Lee University Law School, Davidson College, University of Mary Washington, Radford University |
| 1974 | United States Merchant Marine Academy |
| 1976 | United States Military Academy, United States Naval Academy, United States Air Force Academy, United States Coast Guard Academy, Claremont McKenna College |
| 1983 | Columbia College - Columbia University |
| 1985 | Washington and Lee University |
| 1991 | Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology |
| 1993 | The Citadel |
| 1997 | Virginia Military Institute |
