Women's Higher Education

      The Gilded Age and Progressive Era was a time period in which women's higher education took a turn for the better in the United States. A specifically noteworthy event is when Bryn Mawr College was founded. Bryn Mawr College was founded in 1885 to provide a more rigorous education for women than had been available before ¹. The founders desired to open up more opportunities for women to be able to obtain a quality education that went past high school. 

      The establishment of Radcliffe College in 1879, a female counterpart of Harvard University, was an additional noteworthy event that occured during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. This is important due to the window of opportunity of an Ivy League school's curriculum and resources being opened to women as it previously was not. In the beginning stages of Radcliffe College, it was actually referred to as the 'Harvard Annex.' The way that women were taught in the early stages of the college were by "a selective group of Harvard professors were to repeat lectures and examinations, comparable to those they presented to young men in the College, to groups of private women students"².