Standards (1890-1920)
The College Board and Women's Colleges
The four all-female colleges who participated in chartering the Board hoped through their support of [College Board] activities ... to raise standards in women's higher education and to command attention for women's liberal arts institutions.
Andrea Walton
"Cultivating a Place for Selective All-Female Education in a Coeducational World: Women Educators and Professional Voluntary Associations, 1880-1926"
All-Female Chartering-Member Institutions of the College Board:
- Bryn Mawr College
- Barnard College
- Vassar College
- Women's College of Baltimore
(now Goucher College)
The College Board served other purposes for the women's colleges and their leaders involved in the formation of the College Board.
Women's college leaders recognized that the College Board's system of common examinations provided a vision of academic standards that were not biased by gender. In supporting those standards through College Board membership, these institutions' leaders believed that they were promoting the standards of their own institutions.
As leaders in all-female education, these institutions upheld standards for all women's colleges. That such standards were the same as those for men's elite institutions, such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, supported the idea that women could and did engage in academic work equally with men.
Participation in College Board activities also gave female educators the opportunity to engage alongside men in a wider discussion about higher education.
