Accepting 22.5 as the age of graduating,[1] graduates of 1895, 1⁄2 years out of college would have attained the age of 30 and must have married between the ages of 22.5 and 30, so that they are comparable to native males of the age group of 20 to 29, with a marriage rate of 27.7 per cent. The Harvard class of '95 shows a somewhat lower rate, 26 per cent., but the Princeton class of the same year a very much higher one—13 per cent. The Princeton class of 1891, ten years only out of college, has 75.4 per cent, of its members married, more than any Harvard class as far back as '72 shows after its twenty-fifth anniversary.
These figures, though small and bearing on only a few of the many colleges, certainly indicate that the male college graduate in this country is not more given to solitary life than the native male of all classes throughout the state and that the supposition of Eubin and Westergaard for Denmark, that the marriage frequency of the professional class is only two thirds that of the average does not hold good for the American alumnus, and probably not for the professional classes of the United States. It shows that a larger per cent, of college graduates marry, and those of some colleges marry in such numbers that it would appear that they marry as early as does the average native male, because the percentage in the earlier years is the same for average males and graduates.
The marriage rate of Harvard graduates alone differs from that recorded for all alumni investigated, from Princeton, Yale, Brown and Bowdoin, so that the alumnus of this institution can not well serve as an exponent of the highly educated part of our population, or even of the average college graduate, differing distinctly from this group and less than that of the native male of the same age throughout Massachusetts with a marriage rate of 79 per cent. (I recall that for purpose of comparison with the 25 year graduates, I have taken the age group 40 to 49 of the native population, which presents the highest marriage rate, 79.02 per cent.)[2]
- ↑ 22.5 years is the average age of graduating for the Princeton classes 1901-02, 22.6 for Yale classes 1882-92, 22.8 for Yale 1892-02; for a crude average 22.5 will answer. For Harvard the age of entering is 19 with a probable 22.9 for graduating, an approximation necessitated by the non-existence of authoritative data.
- ↑ My figures are based on a study of 4,408 alumni from leading eastern colleges: 848 graduates 71⁄2 years out of college, 545 10 and 11 years out and 3,015 25 years out, and I have been careful to record rates for all older classes, i. e., graduated more than 25 years ago, as given at the time of the twenty-fifth anniversary, for purposes of comparison on a just basis. This explains some trifling discrepancies which may be observed between my figures and others recently published. To me it seemed the only correct procedure. The Harvard classes '78, '79 and '80 are reported on a 23, 21 and 20 years' basis respectively, making but a slight difference, as may be seen by a study of Princeton '91.
