From alumni records of the University of Illinois, 54% of the women, 1880-1905, are found to be married.
It is difficult to discuss these figures without extensive study of each case. But that only 53% of the women graduates of three great universities like Illinois, Ohio and Wisconsin, should be married, 10 years after graduation, indicates that something is wrong.
In most cases it is not possible to tell, from the alumni records of the above colleges, whether the male graduates are or are not married. But the class lists of Harvard and Yale have recently been carefully studied by John C. Phillips,7 who finds that in the period 1851-1890 74% of the Harvard graduates and 78% of the Yale graduates married. In that period, he found, the age of marriage has advanced only about 1 year, from a little over 30 to just about 31. This is a much higher rate than that of college women.
Statistics from Stanford University8 offer an interesting comparison because they are available for both men and women. Of 670 male graduates, classes 1892 to 1900, inclusive, 490 or 73.2% were reported as married in 1910. Of 330 women, 160 or 48.5% were married. These figures are not complete, as some of the graduates in the later classes must have married since 1910.
The conditions existing at Stanford are likewise found at Syracuse, on the opposite side of the continent. Here, as H. J. Banker has shown,9 the men graduates marry most frequently 4.5 years after taking their degrees, and the women 4.7 years. Of the women 57% marry, of the men 81%. The women marry at the average age of 27.7 years and the men at 28.8. Less than one-fourth of the marrying men married women within the college. The last five decades he studied show a steady decrease in the number of women graduates who marry, while the men are much more constant. His figures are: