First university in the United States

Harvard University has operated under the same corporation since 1650, making it the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States.

The first university in the United States is a status asserted by more than one university in the United States. Harvard University, founded in 1636, is the oldest operating university in the United States. From 1898 to 1946, however, when the Philippines were a U.S. territory, the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, established in 1611, was considered the oldest university under the American flag.

There is no consensus national definition of what entitles an institution to be considered a university versus a college. Differing definitions are used at the state level, and the common understanding of university has evolved over time. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica describes the gradual emergence of U.S. universities as follows:

In the United States the word university has been applied to institutions of the most diverse character, and it is only since 1880 or thereabouts that an effort has been seriously made to distinguish between collegiate and university instruction; nor has that effort yet completely succeeded. Harvard, William and Mary, and Yale . . . were organized . . . on the plans of the English colleges which constitute the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Graduates of Harvard and Yale carried these British traditions to other places, and similar colleges grew up in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Rhode Island.... Around or near these nuclei, during the course of the 19th century, one or more professional schools were frequently attached, and so the word university was naturally applied to a group of schools associated more or less closely with a central school or college. Harvard, for example, most comprehensive of all, has seventeen distinct departments, and Yale has almost as many. Columbia and Penn have a similar scope. In the latter part of the 19th century Yale, Columbia, Princeton and Brown, in recognition of their enlargement, formally changed their titles from colleges to universities.

The issue is further confused by the fact that at time of founding of many of the institutions in question, the United States did not exist as a sovereign nation. Questions of institutional continuity sometimes make it difficult to determine the true age of any institution. The status of first university, which includes private universities, is distinct from the claim of oldest public university in the United States, a title claimed by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (first operating), University of Georgia (first chartered), and the College of William & Mary (initially private).

Claimants and potential claimants

Several universities claim to be the first university in the United States:

• Harvard University, founded in 1636, claims to be "the oldest institution of higher education in the United States". The claim of being "the first university" has been made on its behalf by others. An early official mention of Harvard as "the University" is found in the Massachusetts Constitution, first submitted on October 28, 1779, by James Bowdoin, Samuel Adams, and John Adams.
• The University of Pennsylvania, which makes a disputed claim to have been established in 1740, considers itself to be America's first university, a title it claims on its website and in other published materials, due to its (1) medical school being established separate from college in 1765 and (2) receiving a revised charter in 1779 naming it a "University in Philadelphia". The university has published a book about being the first university in America, and its website contains numerous instances of the phrase "America's First University".
• The College of William and Mary's website states, "The College of William and Mary was the first college to become a university (1779)."
• Johns Hopkins University opened in 1876 and claims to be "America's first research university".

Claims of first university in the United States

Institutional age

Harvard University calls itself "the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States", and this claim is rarely challenged. It is possible to disagree what year should be taken as Harvard's real founding date. Harvard uses the earliest possible one, 1636, the year in which the Massachusetts General Court resolved to establish a fund in a year's time for a "School or College" to be started, which occurred in 1637 when the Massachusetts Bay Colony issued Harvard a charter. However, Harvard has operated since 1650 under the same corporation, the "President and Fellows of Harvard College"; as such, it has an unbroken institutional history dating back to the mid seventeenth century.

The University of Pennsylvania claims to be the first university in America, drawing a distinction between this and the first college: "In the Anglo-American model, a college, by definition, is a faculty whose subject specialization is in a single academic field. This is usually arts and sciences (often referred to as 'liberal arts'), but may also be one of the professions: law, medicine, theology, etc. A university, by contrast, is the co-existence, under a single institutional umbrella, of more than one faculty. With the founding of the first medical school in America (in 1765; Columbia was second), Penn became America's first university."

The College of William & Mary calls itself "the second-oldest institution of higher learning in the country", acknowledging Harvard's claim but adding that: "Harvard may have opened first, but William & Mary was already planned. Original 1619 plans for W&M called for a campus at Henrico." This refers to the College of Henricopolis or University of Henrico established by the Virginia Company near Richmond, Virginia. With respect to the title of first university in America, it makes the claim on its website that "in 1781, by uniting the faculties of law, medicine, and the arts, William & Mary became America's first true university." Elsewhere on the website, it also claims to be the "First institution of higher education to have a law school, which made us the first college in the country to become a university (1779)".

Official designation as a university

Harvard University

Further information: Harvard University

The Constitution of Massachusetts, submitted by James Bowdoin, Samuel Adams, and John Adams to the full Convention on October 28, 1779 and ratified on June 15, 1780, contains this language:

Chapter V. The University at Cambridge, and Encouragement of Literature, etc.

Section I. The University.

Art. I.--Whereas our wise and pious ancestors, so early as the year one thousand six hundred and thirty six, laid the foundation of Harvard-College, in which University many persons of great eminence have, by the blessing of GOD, been initiated in those arts and sciences, which qualified them for public employments, both in Church and State: And whereas the encouragement of Arts and Sciences, and all good literature, tends to the honor of God, the advantage of the christian religion, and the great benefit of this, and the other United States of America--It is declared, That the PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD-COLLEGE, in their corporate capacity, and their successors in that capacity, their officers and servants, shall have, hold, use, exercise and enjoy, all the powers, authorities, rights, liberties, privileges, immunities and franchises, which they now have, or are entitled to have, hold, use, exercise and enjoy: And the same are hereby ratified and confirmed unto them, the said President and Fellows of Harvard-College, and to their successors, and to their officers and servants, respectively, forever.

The word "university" is used a total of five times in reference to Harvard in the Massachusetts Constitution. It is not clear from context, either above or in the paragraphs that follow, that the constitution meant to draw any semantic distinction between "college" and "university."

In George Washington's honorary Doctor of Laws degree, conferred by Harvard on April 30, 1776, the text of the degree refers to Harvard twice as "our University".

University of Pennsylvania

Further information: University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania claims that the 1779 charter from the Pennsylvania state legislature, establishing the university in Philadelphia and passing of a 1785 law naming the "University of the State of Pennsylvania" allows Penn to assert that "No other American institution of higher learning was named "University " before Penn was so named."

The newly–designated university was intended to continue the College of Philadelphia, established by Benjamin Franklin and chartered in 1755 alongside an academy chartered in 1753. However, the Pennsylvania legislature in 1779 suspected the provost of the College of Philadelphia, William Smith, and the existing board of trustees of loyalist sympathies. They therefore created a new board for the university, taking over the old college and academy. Following protests by Smith and the trustees of the college, the legislature reinstated the college's 1753 and 1755 charters in 1789 and the college regained possession of its buildings, with the university moving to the Philosophical Society Hall. This arrangement lasted two years before, following the adoption of a new constitution by the state, a new charter in 1791 merged the College of Philadelphia and the University of the State of Pennsylvania, forming the University of Pennsylvania.

William and Mary

Further information: College of William & Mary

On December 4, 1779, just seven days after the founding of the "University of the State of Pennsylvania", an event occurred which the College of William & Mary describes 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 & Mary, like Dartmouth College and Boston College, has continued to use "college" rather than "university" in its official name.

In 2020, William and Mary law professor Thomas McSweeney along with two undergraduate students published an article in the William and Mary Law Review pointing out that the Latin text of the university's 1693 royal charter referred to the institution as a studium generale, translated in the English text by the relatively insignificant "place of universal study". They argue that by creating the institution as a studium generale, which was the technical term used for a university in the middle ages, William and Mary was granted the status of a university in its 1693 charter. The same phrase was noted by Jurgen Herbst in 1982, who said: "The charter used the Latin term studium generale to suggest possible growth into a full-fledged university". Edward Eggleston in 1900 noted that: "[the English text of the charter] is printed with Harwell, Blair and Clinton's account of Virginia, and the copy of the latter in the Library of Congress is annotated by some critic, who notes slight variations on the sense of the English version of the charter from the Latin original. The phrase 'studium generale' has a sense hardly appreciated by those who copied it from the ancient charter for William and Mary."

Doctorate degrees

If a university is defined as an institution that awards doctoral degrees, then there are a number of contenders for the title of oldest United States university based on that criterion. Among the conflicting interpretations is whether the date the first doctoral degree is awarded should be the determining factor, or the date a doctoral program was first attempted is the determinant. Harvard University, which awarded its first doctoral degree in 1692, was the first university in the nation to offer doctorates.

Harvard University

Harvard University has awarded honorary "doctorates" since the 17th century. In 1692, it issued a Doctor of Sacred Theology degree to Increase Mather, the first honorary degree in the New World.

University of Pennsylvania

In 1765, the University of Pennsylvania founded the first medical school in the nation, according to Penn's archivist, although this did not initially award doctorates.

Columbia University

Further information: Columbia University

King's College (now Columbia University) organized a medical faculty in 1767, and in 1769 became the first institution in the North American Colonies to confer the degree of Doctor of Medicine, according to the College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Yale University

Further information: Yale University

Yale University's established its Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1847, which awarded the first PhD in the United States in 1861.

Georgetown University

Further information: Georgetown University

Georgetown University founded its graduate school in 1820, with the first doctoral program being established in 1897.

See also

• Colonial colleges
• List of oldest universities in continuous operation
• Oldest public university in the United States

Further reading

• Rhodes, Frank Harold Trevor. The creation of the future: The role of the American university (Cornell University Press, 2001). online has an in-depth discussion of the "first" American university on pp 1-8.