Review: Robert A. McCaughey’s A College of Her Own: The History of Barnard
A College of Her Own: The History of Barnard
By Robert McCaughey
Columbia University Press, 2020
384 pages
Reviewed by Kelly Marino
In A College of Her Own, scholar Robert McCaughey examines the history of Barnard College and the changes in its leadership, programs, and demographics from its founding in 1889 to the present. He argues that the school's administrators, location in New York City, and relationship with Columbia University made Barnard distinct among the “Seven Sisters,'' the group of elite women’s liberal arts colleges in the Northeast. He suggests that over time Barnard grew from an institution, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, designed to serve primarily New York women and shaped centrally by its place in the city, to an institution, by the late 1900s and early 2000s, with a broader vision to celebrate its relationship with New York but also serve the larger national and global community. Further, across the 20th century, he notes that the college moved from having a subordinate and inferior to a more equal relationship with Columbia University, it’s affiliate institution. At the helm of these changes were the school’s impassioned female leaders, who wielded a great deal of power and showed much persistence in what was a relatively conservative era for women’s education. His book is primarily an institutional and educational history that contributes most significantly to scholarship on the history of the university, but that also gives small nods to urban history and US women’s and gender history.
Although much of Barnard’s success is fueled by the actions of dedicated women, the story of the school’s founding begins with a prominent man sympathetic to the cause of female advancement. Frederick A.P. Barnard, inspired by a growing push for women’s entrance into the academy and civic life, planted the early seeds for the institution. By the late 1800s, activists were calling for equal opportunities for both sexes in public education, partly as a way to socialize and assimilate new immigrants. Advocates of women’s education, in particular, were arguing for female inclusion in higher education to prepare women for the changing realities of the industrial and modernizing world.
In 1879, Barnard started a push for new educational opportunities for women in the city, urging Columbia to become coeducational, which he hoped would put the institution at the vanguard of academic innovation. His ideas were gaining traction by the late 1800s, as Columbia administrators took note of the developments at other educational institutions, particularly Harvard University, Columbia’s chief rival, which had started to consider and offer a place for female students, increasingly becoming active in civic life. By 1884, Columbia still did not allow women to sit in classes side-by-side with men, but it did allow them to study a curriculum and take the same exams to earn a degree.
Annie Nathan Meyer enrolled in the new program at Columbia and soon became a leading proponent of women’s higher education in New York. She was part of a new generation of women looking to create expanded opportunities for the female sex in society. Meyer advanced a new, modified version of Barnard’s campaign by proposing a women’s college affiliated with the all-male Columbia. Meyer started her campaign with a 4,500-word publication in The Nation laying out her rationale to Columbia administrators and New Yorkers. She started by noting that there already existed a robust potential clientele for a women’s college in the city, particularly among the 1,6000 female students attending the city’s tuition-free Female Normal and High School, who might be interested in a better education but enrolled in that program due to convenience. Meyer argued that her research showed a large number of the students’ parents could afford a better education for their daughters. If the possibility was offered nearby, they “would gladly send their daughters to a private college where a higher curriculum and degrees could be procured.” She emphasized that within New York City, there was and would be growing demand for a new women’s college. But she also walked a careful line, highlighting pragmatism above all. Meyer wrote, “I had the shrewd theory that to put any radical idea across, it must be done in the most conservative manner possible.” She learned from the mistakes of past-proponents taking up similar causes with little success.
Meyer’s efforts were complemented by the actions of many other strong female leaders. Ella Weed, a female trustee, was the college’s first appointed leader; there was no official president or dean. Barnard was at first, and in many ways throughout its history, a school for women, funded and directed by mostly women. One of Weed’s achievements was helping to arrange an agreement with Columbia’s president Seth Low that formalized the terms of the relationship between Barnard and Columbia. Barnard would have its own “separate and freestanding” faculty but share other important resources that would allow for the college’s sustainability. Over time, Barnard moved from being a coordinate institution, associated and surviving off of Columbia, to an equally viable and respected college in the city whose affiliation with the all-male college became mutually beneficial.
Administrators took advantage of New York’s wealthy, entrepreneurial, and philanthropic upper class to generate financial support for new projects. Leaders sought funds for new spaces and buildings, especially, using the money to move and expand the campus to better meet the needs of the enlarging student body. Barnard’s original location, for example, was a rented brownstone on Madison Avenue, but when Columbia announced plans to move to Morningside Heights in 1892, Barnard took steps to also construct a new campus nearby. This was only the beginning, as new structures and properties continued to be obtained and constructed and are still being added, even today.
A consistent theme in the book is how life at Barnard was intertwined with major events in New York. Barnard was involved, for example, in wartime mobilization at different moments across the 20th century. During the two world wars, administrators and students assisted with home front defense work. By the 1960s and 70s, the campus community was drawn into other campaigns popular in the city, including the peace movement. And since then, and in more recent years, administrations, faculty, and students have remained engaged in other causes such as civil, women’s, and LGBTQ rights.
McCaughey should be applauded for his efforts to highlight how important the development of New York City was to the creation of the institution, its mission, and its identity. From reading his book, it is apparent that when Barnard was founded, it had an important local purpose. In the late 1800s, there were indeed few options for female students in New York City seeking higher education beyond the Female Normal and High School. By 1908, a large portion of the 24,000 students attending local public schools were girls, and many were thinking about the future in which they may or may not be reliant on a man (as more women historically during this period remained unmarried compared to prior eras). By the 1950s, thirty-five - forty percent of the student body still came from New York City public schools, showing that the college continued to fill an important gap. McCaughey’s text successfully makes the case that the school was built for and by New Yorkers and also funded through the donations of countless local prominent figures, including notables such as J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and Joseph Pulitzer. The reader also learns that trends in the school’s endowment and economic future were shaped by the larger economic fortune of the city and its residents. When New York City was prospering, so was the college.
Despite the book’s focus on a historic women’s college, McCaughey does not delve deeply into women’s and gender history, which is a missed opportunity. In his preface, he notes that it will not be a primary focus of his, but implicitly, readers do walk away with the impression that the college was successful because of its female founders, benefactors, and administrators. Although his book does not offer a full-fledged gender analysis, another key takeaway is how sexism operated and affected the lives of those associated with the college, particularly its faculty. Early on in Barnard’s history, efforts to recruit permanent male faculty were difficult. Many men used their time at Barnard as a stepping stone for better opportunities at Columbia and elsewhere. Half of the men hired tended to move to other positions, while the female faculty often stayed. Despite this, men were given the best paid positions and most prestigious titles. Often women were only instructors, while men were offered full professorships. Few women achieved the rank of full professor until the 1970s, when both Columbia and Barnard started to revise and standardize the requirements for promotion and tenure, placing a greater emphasis on developing scholar-teachers at each institution who advanced based on publications contributed to their field.
Another shortcoming of the book is that McCaughey professes early on that he will take a largely top-down perspective. The central actors in the book are the institution and its various deans. The reader learns a lot about what key figures and college leaders did to shape the campus from an administrative vantage point and much less about campus culture related to student life or even the contributions of individual faculty. Since students, generally, play an important role in shaping the culture of any institution, much more about their preferences, social and political organizations, and activities would enrich an already intriguing and comprehensive book by making it more well-rounded.
Overall, McCaughey’s book provides an interesting, comprehensible sketch of the history of Barnard. Due to its accessible prose and easy-to-follow chronological format, it would be suitable for undergraduate or graduate students, or the general public interested in learning about the history of higher education. It also would provide scholars focused on urban history and New York history important insight into Barnard’s development as a key historic landmark and an institution that shapes New York and is in turn shaped by New York.
Dr. Kelly Marino is a historian of 20th century America with a focus on women’s history and the history of sexuality. She is an Assistant Lecturer in the History Department at Sacred Heart University.