The greater part of the college education of the United States, however, is carried on in private, not in state universities. In 1897 over 70 per cent of all the college students in the United States were studying in private colleges, so that for women’s higher education their admission to private colleges is really a matter of much greater importance. The part taken by Cornell university in New York state in opening private colleges to women was as significant as the part taken by Michigan in opening state universities. Cornell is in a restricted sense a state university, inasmuch as part of its endowment, like that of the state universities, is derived from state and national funds. Nevertheless, there is little reason to suppose that Cornell would have admitted women had it not been for the generosity of Henry W. Sage, who offered to build and endow a large hall of residence for women at Cornell university. After carefully investigating coeducation in all the institutions where it then existed, and especially in Michigan, the trustees of the university admitted women in 1872. The example set by Cornell was followed very slowly by the other private colleges of the New England and middle states. For the next twenty years the colleges in this section of the United States admitting women might be counted on the fingers of one hand. In Massachusetts Boston university opened its department of arts in 1873, and admitted women to it from the first; but no college for men followed the example of Boston until 1883, when the Massachusetts institute of technology, the most important technical and scientific school in the state, and one of the most important in the United States, admitted women. This school, like Cornell, is supported in part from state and national funds. Very recently, in 1892, Tufts college was opened to women. In the west and south the case is different, and the list of private colleges that one after another have become coeducational is too long to be inserted here. Among new coeducational foundations the most important are, on the Pacific coast, the Leland Stanford junior university, opened in 1891, and, in the middle west, Chicago university, opened in 1892. To show the differing attitude toward coeducation of the different sections of the United States, I have arranged the 480 coeducational colleges and separate colleges for men given in the U.S. education report for 1897–98 in a table on the opposite page. In matters like women’s education, which are powerfully affected by prejudice and conservative opinion, we find not only a sharp cleavage in opinion and practice between the west and the east of the United States, but also distinct phases of differing opinion, corresponding in the main to the old geographical division of the states into New England, middle, southern and western.[7] I _20 western states and 3 territories_