The reason most women were denied formal school training so long after such denial became actively injurious to the family and group life was because the popular conviction still held that the most useful service which women could render the state did not require, would even find inimical to its best exercise, the kind of schooling which had been developed to fit boys for "a man's part in the world." =Formal School Training of Women New.=--When the principle of democracy began to work in women's natures with an irrepressible yeast of revolt against longer denial of opportunity for individual achievement, and the vitally necessary and too-long-delayed "woman's rights movement" was born, its first pressure was against the closed doors of the "man-made" school.

Enlightened women now demanded equal chance with men for preparation for vocations.

The school they sought to enter was inherited from a past in which not only sex lines but class lines held the opportunities of higher education for a small clique.

The ancient college and university did indeed lead towards vocations, but only the three "learned professions" and general training for commanding leadership in state and industrial affairs.
When physical, economic, and social sciences were born the study disciplines they introduced into higher education appeared in answer to an imperious social demand that leadership should be provided in a vastly more varied range than the older civilization required.

At first the leaders in the higher education of women, like all _nouveaux riche_, showed determination to prove themselves adept in the traditions of the scholastic world into which they had so recently entered.