Discussion of Report of Council of Senate on the Proposed Arnold Gerstenberg Scholarship, 2 March 1892

Professor Marshall said that the last regulation would suffice to meet the objections of those who thought a time might come for the complete exclusion of women from Cambridge University Examinations; but he hoped that would not occur. It did not however provide for another possibility which he himself hoped might occur, namely the foundation of a University expressly for women, where the main part of women's higher education would be carried on, and the retention of Newnham and Girton colleges for a relatively small class of students who required very advanced instruction, or whose wants could not, for some other reason, be met in the Women's University. The higher education of women was so important that it would be right to forward it even at some risk to the University, if need were. But there was no need for allowing the number of women students here to become nearly equal to the number of men. That would in his opinion cause deterioration in the instruction given, because the same mode of instruction was not suitable to both. He had had twenty years' experience in teaching classes of men, classes of women and mixed classes, and when teaching men alone he taught in a different way from that he adopted when teaching women alone.