First university in the United States
There is no objective way to identify the "first university in the United States" because the word "university" is not well defined, and because of other issues such as institutional continuity. In this section we gather some facts that have been used to support arguments that a particular institution is "the first," but make no attempt to settle the issue. Whenever one of these facts itself uses a phrase like "the first," as in "Yale was the first U.S. institution to award a Ph.D." it means that a source has been found for that claim and that so far no source has been found for a competing claim. In many cases our source for a claim is the university itself and the reader must judge the reliability accordingly.
Claimants edit
(In alphabetical order by full institutional name):
- The College of William and Mary, e.g. William and Mary School of Law: Achievements and Firsts "The College of William and Mary was the first college to become a university (1779)."
- Harvard University; e.g. *Bush, George Gary (1886). Harvard, the First American University. Cupples, Upham and Company, Boston., reprinted in 2005 by Kessinger, ISBN 1417957794.
- Johns Hopkins University; e.g. their website says "The Johns Hopkins University was the first research university in the United States."
- University of Pennsylvania, e.g. The University of Pennsylvania: America's First University (from Penn's website)
Institutional continuity edit
Harvard University calls itself "the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and this claim does not seem to be seriously challenged.
It is possible to quibble over what year should be taken as the "true" founding date. Harvard, of course uses the earliest possible one, 1636, when the institution was chartered by the Massachusetts Bay Colony. But it doesn't matter, because Harvard has operated since 1650 under the same corporation, the "President and Fellows of Harvard College," so Harvard has an unbroken continuous institutional history dating back at least that far, making it many decades older than (say) William and Mary. William and Mary implicitly acknowledges this by calling themselves "America's second-oldest college."
A College of Henricopolis or University of Henrico near Jamestown was chartered in 1618 and possibly started, but was destroyed with the town in the Indian Massacre of 1622 and not rebuilt).
So, of all universities in the United States, Harvard has been in existence as a continuous institution for the longest.
Officially designated as a "university" edit
University of Pennsylvania edit
November 27, 1779 is the date of chartering of the "University of the State of Pennsylvania." as given in Penn's current Statutes of the Trustees).
The "University of Pennsylvania," however, was not established until 1791. Because of Penn's history, the second event cannot be considered simply a change of name.
An article from UPenn's archives department says that the College of Philadelphia and two earlier institutions, the Academy and Charitable School, were "part of the same institution and were overseen by the same board of Trustees." In 1779 the College of Philadelphia was under the direction of Provost William Smith.
One might have expected the new University to be a continuation of the College of Philadelphia, but it was not. "Since the Revolutionary state legislature felt that the board of trustees led by Provost Smith contained too many suspected loyalist sympathizers, they created a new board of trustees." Thus, the University of the State of Pennsylvania was a completely new institution. A schism occurred, with an attenuated College of Philadelphia continuing under Dr. Smith's direction.
In 1791 Pennsylvania adopted a new state constitution which rejoined the two institutions into the "University of Pennsylvania," with a board of trustees comprised of twelve men from each of the two parent institutions. "It is this institution and this board of trustees that has continued to this day."
William and Mary edit
On December 4, 1779— just eight days after the "University of the State of Pennsylvania"—an event occurred which William and Mary describes [1] thus:
- Under the leadership of Thomas Jefferson, then governor of Virginia and a member of the Board of Visitors, William and Mary became a university. The grammar and divinity schools were discontinued, and a professorship of anatomy and medicine, and the first American chairs of law and police and modern languages were established. The elective system of studies was introduced at this time, the first such program in the United States.
For historical reasons, the College of William and Mary (like Dartmouth College and Boston College) continue to use "college" rather than "university" in their official name.
First postgraduate school edit
(Penn's claim of "becoming a university" with the establishment of its medical school)
First graduate school, first Ph.D. edit
(Yale's "establishment of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1847 (which, in 1861, awarded the first Ph.D. in the United States") Is there something fluky here? Why doesn't Yale claim to be the "first university" (or does it)?
http://www.yale.edu/opa/president/speeches/20040804.html Yale and Harvard Ph.D. stuff
Johns Hopkins