Education: Beaver v. Wilson

Any college, especially an obscure female church institution, could find plenty of uses for one million dollars. How sad the plight of one which sees $1,000,000 snatched from its grasp! Such was the plight last week of Beaver College at Jenkintown, Pa. (Philadelphia suburb).

In 1880 a Dr. William Curran of Philadelphia left $50,000 to grow and accumulate in trust, to be given 50 years later as a “foundation for the education of females in or adjacent to Philadelphia.” In 1930 this trust, now worth $50,000 a year, was applied for by the Philadelphia School for Christian Workers, Wilson College at Chambersburg, and Beaver College, all Presbyterian Synodical institutions. The Curran fund was assigned to Beaver by Auditor Francis B. Biddle of Orphans Court. But litigation went on. Last fortnight Judge George Henderson decided in favor of Wilson as a “higher classical institution, highly cultural, with an emphasis on Bible teaching and a missionary spirit,” in spite of the fact that it is neither in or adjacent to Philadelphia.

Wilson (443 young ladies) is approved by the American Association of Universities. Beaver (642), though highly esteemed by the Presbyterian Church, is not. Nonetheless Beaver’s President Walter Burton Greenway was last week planning to appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, on the grounds that most of the evidence had been taken before he assumed office in 1928, that Orphans Court had not given Beaver credit for subsequent changes.