America's Public Universities
American Higher Education
Higher education has been a vital aspect of American life since 1636. Before our country was even established, the Puritans launched a vibrant system of universities. A nation founded on the ideals of opportunity and self-making, the university emerged as a physical structure exemplifying a vital need of our society. Harvard College was borne of this necessity. An article from New England’s First Fruits in 1643 states, “after erecting shelter, a house of worship, and the framework of government, ‘One of the next things we longed for, and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity’”[2] For the next four hundred years learning and the perpetuation of it to posterity would coalesce within the institution.
![Harvard College [1]](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/805d47_d363801ef37144b2b1d44d6e11daac8f~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_500,h_423,al_c,q_80,enc_auto/805d47_d363801ef37144b2b1d44d6e11daac8f~mv2.jpg)
The Harvard Charter of 1650 enshrined American higher education into our history. The university was established to aid in “the advancement and education of youth, in all manner of good literature, arts, and sciences.”[3] For fifty-eight years Harvard remained the only institution of higher education in the United States until the College of William and Mary was established in 1694. Over the following decades numerous institutions would be established, but it would not be until the late eighteenth century that the idea of a public institution would emerge.
Public Higher Education
The founding fathers saw education as essential to the Republic. They believed that “providing a public education was the only means by which to ensure that citizens were prepared to exercise the freedoms and responsibilities granted to them in the Constitution and thereby preserve the ideals of liberty and freedom.”[4] Therefore, the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 were drafted to establish exactly how education would be mandated within newly inhabited lands of the United States. The Land Ordinance of 1785 states:
“There shall be reserved for the United States out of every township, the four lots, being numbered 8, 11, 26, 29, and out of every fractional part of a township, so many lots of the same numbers as shall be found thereon, for future sale. There shall be reserved the lot N 16, of every township, for the maintenance of public schools.”[5]
Two years later the Land Ordinance of 1787 was established and broadly stated, “schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”[6] The states were granted their lands and expected to establish schools for their citizens; public universities were included within this new pact.
While the Ordinances helped establish higher education’s place in the new republic, the Universities of North Carolina and Georgia fought over who deserved the right to be called “the first state university.” Georgia received its charter in 1785 but did not enroll its first student until 1801 while North Carolina did not receive its charter until 1789 but admitted its first student in 1795.[7] While the debate still continues, the importance lies in the movement toward state-sponsored academia as a necessity to ensure an educated citizenry. These universities were created in twofold: “to promote the positive externalities that higher education provides and to serve as an engine of economic and social mobility.”[8] The growth of higher education during the nineteenth century relied heavily on both public funds and an ideology that the state would benefit from an educated populace. This ideology spread across the country and the nineteenth century saw a mass influx of state sponsored universities.
Next Week's Blog: The Establishment of Public Universities in Ohio
Sources:
[1] http://192.254.229.247/990-harvard-college.html
[2] Rudolph, Frederick. The American College and University, a History. (New York, Alferd. A. Knopf, 1962), 4.
[3] “The Charter of the President and Fellows of Harvard College.” (Harvard University, 1650).
[4] Usher, Alexander. “Federal Schools and the Original Federal Land Grant Program.” (Center on Education Policy, 2011), 5.
[5] "Land Ordinance of 1785." Land Ordinance Of 1785 (1785): 375.
[6] Knight, History of Higher Education in Ohio, 30
[7] Thelin, John R. A History of American Higher Education, 2nd Edition. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2004), 45.
[8] Vedder, Richard K. “Thirty-Six Steps”. (Washington, D.C., Center for College Affordability and Productivity, 2014), 39.
About the Author:
Lukas Wenrick spends his days working to develop innovative solutions to the most complex issues universities face. He does so to ensure that the most marginalized students may pursue an alternative trajectory than the one laid out by their zip code. He believes that universities and other educational enterprises have the duty to expand educational opportunity to as many individuals as possible and that excellence should be judged by the students that an institution includes, rather than those that it excludes.
Lukas holds a Master's of Education in Higher Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Bachelor of Arts in Social Science Education from Wright State University. His experiences at both an open access public university and an elite private institution inform the work he does every day. Currently, Lukas serves as a University Innovation Fellow at Arizona State University where he works to leverage the ASU enterprise to resolve educational and social inequities in the world.
If you'd like to know more about Lukas you can find him on the following sites:
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