Adopting the viewpoint of the women students involved, this paper examines the first two decades of academic journalism (1908-1930). Pointing out that women students were a sizeable element in journalism schools from their beginning in 1908, the paper calls attention to the fact that women and men students were prepared for quite different lives, with men trained to be influential reporters and editors and women to be society reporters or women's page editors, or to work only briefly in the field before marriage. The paper discusses the key question of the degree to which journalism education reinforced social stereotypes regarding the role of women or broadened oppportunities for them. It then suggests that the aspirations of women often were raised by their education, but their ability to make use of it was curtailed by prejudice against them, both within schools of journalism and in the employment market. The paper poses a final question: Are women students today, who constitute nearly two-thirds of all journalism students, also unable to make full use of their education because of social pressures restricting women's full participation in the field? (HOD)