Education: Educated Women

Authoress Willa Gather went to college (University of Nebraska, 1895). Authoress Edith Wharton did not.* Faced with these facts, young ladies contemplating authorship and undecided about going to college may well hesitate. Nor will Dr. Bertha Beach Tharp’s educational analysis of eminent women, published in the August Scientific Monthly, be much more helpful. Of 1,000 women culled at random from Who’s Who in America for 1929, one-third were authors, slightly less than one-half of whom had gone to college.

For young women looking toward law or medicine, Dr. Tharp’s survey is more convincing. Her eminent women lawyers and physicians were 100% college-trained. Librarians came next with 85.18%, then educators with 76.11%, missionaries with 72.72%, scientists with 70.27%. Footing the classes were artists, musicians and actresses, with about 20% each.

Other facts about 1,000 successful women:

¶One-half were college-trained, as compared with one-third of all women in Who’s Who for 1903.

¶258 had traveled abroad. ¶13.4%, as compared with 5.34% in 1903, had attended either Bryn Mawr, Vassar, Smith, Radcliffe or Wellesley.

¶67% of the college women had at tended co-educational institutions. ¶The less-educated artists, actresses and musicians got more husbands than did the highly-educated physicians, lawyers, educators.

*Privately educated, she has an honorary Litt. D. from Yale.