2015-07-14
290
The most famous American higher educational institutions that were already in operation during the early period came into being through the religious zeal and philanthropy of their founders.
Higher education began in the United States long time ago, when the Puritan leaders of the settlement called the Massachusetts Bay Colony founded in 1636 Harvard College (Massachusetts). Established by John Harvard, English clergyman, this college was to turn into the most famous of the American Universities.
The College of William and Mary (Virginia, 1693) was the second institution of higher education founded in the Colonies. In 1701 Connecticut Puritans established Yale College (Connecticut).
All these Colonial colleges which were gradually turned into Universities with classical education established a balance between the Humanities and Science. Their aim was to train men for service in church and civil state.
By the 1770s several more colleges had been opened: University of Pennsylvania (Pennsylvania, 1740), Princeton University (New Jersey, 1746), Washington and Lee University (Virginia, 1749), Columbia University (New York, 1754), Brown University (Rhode Island, 1764), Rutgers College (New Jersey, 1766), Dartmouth College (New Hampshire, 1769).
Though the colleges in the first half of the 19th century were numerous and widely scattered over the settled area, their enrollments were comparatively small. Since 1870s the colleges have developed enormously. Their resources have multiplied, the number of their students has increased by leaps and bounds, the program of studies has broadened and deepened, the standards have been raised, and the efficiency of the instruction has greatly increased. Rigidly prescribed courses of study have given way to elective courses.
In the course of time, when research centers and experiment stations were attached to the Universities, these institutions turned into the strongholds of science and higher education. They developed a unique, typically American structure unlike any other existing University system in the world.
