Coeducation at UW

When the University of Wisconsin - Madison opened its doors in 1850, the Regents announced a plan to admit women to its Normal Department (teacher-training course). But little was done about the plan until 1857 when the Regents, encouraged by the success of coeducational experiments at other eastern and Midwestern schools, pledged that U.W. would meet the needs of those who wished to send their daughters there. By 1860, thirty of the 50 graduates from the Normal Department were women. (1)

The Civil War so depleted the male student body at Madison that 15 women in the Normal Department were allowed to take ‘regular’ courses - just to keep up enrollment. By 1865, 18 women were enrolled in a “select course” which meant simply that, as students, they were taking a regular curriculum; but, as women, they were listed in the Normal Department. The University’s reorganization of 1866 looked like the final victory for coeducation; under it “The University and all its departments and colleges shall be open alike to male and female students.” But when the presidency of the University was offered to Paul Chadbourne in 1867 he demanded that coeducation be modified as a condition of his accepting the job. Chadbourne claimed that a coeducational institution would not receive the status, public confidence, or financial support required to succeed.

Under Chadbourne’s three-year administration, the Normal Department was replaced by a ‘Female College.’ This separate college had no separate curriculum or requirements; it simply had separate recitations. Thus, during Chadbourne’s three years at U.W., professors were required to give two separate lectures; one to the men and one to the women. This obviously inefficient and expensive system of segregation was abolished by Chadbourne’s successors, John Twombly and John Bascom, both advocates of complete coeducation at U.W.

(1)Information on the progress of women at U.W. was located in “Coeducation at the Wisconsin State University,” by Helen R. Olin, pamphlet on file at the WSHS. Higher Education in Wisconsin by William F. Allen and David E. Spencer, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1889, pp. 37-41. The University of Wisconsin: A History, 1848-1925, Vol. 1, by Merle Curti and Vernon Carstensen, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1949.

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