"... and a governess and key instructors." If your family was wealthy enough for you to be economically inactive as a youth, and to pay for said governess and

"... and a governess and key instructors." If your family was wealthy enough for you to be economically inactive as a youth, and to pay for said governess and instructors. Higher education was for the rich, too. As you said, a different purpose, mostly social (definitely social for the wealthy young women). All those little, often church-supported, colleges and land-grant state universities and teachers' colleges that sprang up all over the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? That was a revolution: higher education for the non-rich, and mostly for practical purposes.