Thu Ya Naing from Burma wants to know how many colleges and universities are in the United States. Alexander Romashchenko in Russia wonders which university in the United States is the oldest. And Mohamad Firouzi in Iran would like to know more about Harvard University.
The National Center for Education Statistics says more than 4,200 colleges and universities award degrees. These include two-year schools as well as four-year schools.
The oldest institution of higher learning in the country is Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was established in 1636 as Harvard College. Massachusetts was an English colony at the time.The school was named for a Puritan religious leader. John Harvard gave the college all his books and half his property when he died.
At first, Harvard had one teacher and nine students. Today it has almost 20,000 students. Nearly 4,000 of them this past year were from outside the United States.
There are 14 schools at Harvard. They include Harvard College and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Harvard College is the undergraduate division of the university and Radcliffe is a former college for women.
So Harvard came first. Later, in 1780, the Massachusetts Constitution went into effect and officially recognized Harvard as a university. Some Harvard materials call it America's oldest university.
But the University of Pennsylvania calls itself America's oldest university. Penn officials note that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania recognized their school as a university in 1779. That was one year before Harvard.Yet the history gets a little complex. Penn considers its anniversary date to be 1740. That was when the Charity School of Philadelphia was established, though it never opened. Benjamin Franklin later presented his ideas for a learning institution that included the Charity School. It opened in 1751 and became the university.
Today, more than 23,000 students attend the University of Pennsylvania. 4,000 of them come from other countries.
Note: First picture is Harvard Hall; Second picture is College Hall at the University of Pennsylvania.
