ABSTRACT
In a period in which colleges are more apt to think of the arts of survival than the liberal arts, Bryn Mawr has troubles. Some are local infections, others endemic to higher education. It has a reputation for being snobbish and self-congratulatory. Some people find its standards educationally old-fashioned and psychologically grueling. Bryn Mawr prefers rigorous scholarship; an historical perspective; balanced, serious, and sound conclusions. Bryn Mawr dared, as a women's college, to offer a doctorate under its own faculty, and the first degree it awarded, in 1888, was a PhD. The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, though less famous than the undergraduate college, gives the undergraduate college its intellectual distinction and identity. Bryn Mawr prides itself on the fact that its undergraduates are women. Bryn Mawr offers some classes about blacks and women and six interdisciplinary majors and concentrates. Perhaps the conservative scholarship in which Bryn Mawr specializes necessarily requires diligence and passivity.
