Student Life

Student life involves deep immersion in years of lectures, supervisions, lab work and exams.

But this system is of quite recent origin. In the first half of the nineteenth century, only professors and a handful of college fellows were expected to teach: most teaching was done by privately-hired coaches. From the 1860s, efforts were made to improve the quality and quantity of college teaching, and many of the men active in promoting reform were supporters of the women’s colleges. As a result, Girton and Newnham were able to pioneer approaches later imitated by the men’s colleges.

Women’s colleges were pioneering in other ways. Until the 1920s many men chose to study for Ordinary degrees, which were much less demanding than Honours degrees. After 1881, women were excluded from the Ordinary degree courses and were required to take the more rigorous Honours courses. The women’s colleges thus adopted an educational model not embraced by the men’s colleges until after the First World War.