Postsecondary Education of White Women in 1900

This article uses state-level data from 1900 to examine relationships between social-structural characteristics and enrollments in three types of institutions of higher education: coeducational colleges and universities, women's colleges, and normal schools. Historically, higher education served diverse functions for women and society, including occupational preparation, training in domestic and social skills, status maintenance, and warehousing of idle populations. The three types of institutions differed in their fulfillment of these functions. Furthermore, empirical relationships between social-structural variables and enrollments varied across institutional categories, a finding concealed by analyses of combined enrollments. The implications of the findings for theory and research on the functions of higher education are discussed.