TCU was much smaller in the early 1930s when Margie Nance Frost ’31 was earning her degree. In 1931, the year she graduated, enrollment was 1,239; of those, 637 — slightly more than half — were women. This reflected a national trend of the time.

Between 1900 and 1930, roughly equal numbers of men and women were in college in the United States, mainly because a lot of women were being trained as teachers. There was a movement for teachers to be college-educated, which hadn’t been the norm previously.

Perhaps another factor in TCU’s gender balance was that when the university first opened its door, both men and women were welcome and educated together, unusual for its time.

In 1873, TCU was founded as Add-Ran Male and Female College. Its location was Thorp Spring, then Waco and eventually Fort Worth. By the time Frost got her degree, TCU had been at its Fort Worth campus for 20 years.

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