ABSTRACT
As interest in women's higher education began to grow in post-Civil War America, separate women's colleges gained public support and acceptance, largely since these schools upheld the ideal of separate spheres. Many of these colleges, especially those in the Northeast, claimed to offer an education equal to that of the best men's colleges. But a number of advocates of women's education argued that separate was not equal. Though improving academically and gradually phasing out their preparatory programs and "special" students, these separate institutions were dismissed by proponents of equal education as petty and temporary. 1 Demanding that men and women study the same curriculum under the same professors and "contend together for the same rank and honours," outspoken reformers such as Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Julia Ward Howe prescribed coeducation as the only means of reaching the ideal of equal education.2
