For a girl, except in the rarest cases, it is either a gate-key or a final effort, either her life's work takes a different turn, or she thinks she has had enough.
The line of common studies is adapted for man's work and programme of life.

It has been made to fit woman's professional work, but the fit is not perfect.

It has a marked unfitness in its adaptation for women to the real end of higher education, or university education, which is the perfecting of the individual mind, according to its kind, in surroundings favourable to its complete development.
Atmosphere is a most important element at all periods of education, and in the education of girls all-important, and an atmosphere for the higher education of girls has not yet been created in the universities.
The girl students are few, their position is not unassailable, their aims not very well defined, and the thing which is above all required for the intellectual development of girls--quiet of mind--is not assured.
It is obvious that there can never be great tradition and a past to look back to, unless there is a present, and a beginning, and a long period of growth.

But everything for the future consists in having a noble beginning, however lowly, true foundations and clear aims, and this we have not yet secured.

It seems almost as if we had begun at the wrong end, that the foundations of character were not made strong enough, before the intellectual superstructure began to be raised--and that this gives the sense of insecurity.