The object of the State in establishing this school is to provide for the young women of Georgia an institution in which they may get such special instruction and training as will prepare them to earn their own living by the vocation of teaching or by those industrial arts that are suitable for women to pursue. Subsidiary to these two main objectives the institution also teaches those branches of learning that constitute a good general education. It furthermore instructs and trains its pupils in those household arts that are essential to the complete education of every woman, whatever her calling in life may be or in whatever sphere of society she may move.

In other words, the purpose of the college is to prepare Georgia girls:

1. To do intelligent work as teachers, according to the best methods known to modern pedagogics.
2. To earn their own livelihood by the practice of some one or another of those industrial arts suitable for women to follow.
3. To exert an uplifting and refining influence on family and society by means of cultured intellect, which can only be attained by systematic education in the higher branches of learning.
4. To be-skillful and expert in those domestic arts that lie at the foundation of all successful housekeeping and home-making.

To accomplish this fourfold educational purpose, the courses of study to be pursued in the school are divided, in a general way, into four principal departments, namely:

1. The Normal Department.
2. The Industrial Department.
3. The Collegiate Department.
4. The Domestic Department.

It must not be supposed that each of these departments constitutes a distinct and separate school. On the contrary, they are co-ordinate and coequal parts of one complete system, and are so united as to form the one harmonious whole. Many of the studies pursued in the college belong in common to all of the departments, but in certain lines of study the departments differentiate, giving rise to the above fourfold classification.

Georgia Normal and Industrial College Catalog 1892-1893