Harvard University

The oldest and most famous American University is called Harvard University. Sixteen years after the arrival of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, in 1636, they founded an educational institution – Harvard College. It was named after its first benefactor, John Harvard of Charlestown, a young minister who, upon his death in 1638, left his library and half his estate to the new institution.

During its early years, the College offered a classical academic course based on the English university model but consistent with the prevailing Puritan philosophy of the first colonists. An early brochure, published in 1643, justified the College’s existence:

“To advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches”.

As the College grew in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the curriculum was broadened, particularly in the sciences, and the College produced a long list of famous scholars, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and James Russell Lowell.

Charles W. Eliot, who served as president from 1869 to 1909, transformed a small provincial institution into a modern university. The Law and Medical schools were revitalized, and the graduate schools of Business, Dental Medicine, and Arts and Sciences were established.

Under president A. Lawrence Lowell (1909-1933), the undergraduate course of study was redesigned to ensure students a liberal education. A liberal education involves learning about a wide variety of things concentrated in a single field of study. One more Lowell’s most significant accomplishment was the House Plan. It provides undergraduates with a small-college atmosphere within the larger university. Students go only to one of the twelve Houses of the University all the years of their study long. (The 13^th House is for nonresident students.) Each House has a resident Master and a staff of tutors, as well as a dining hall and a library. It also has its own active schedule of sport, social and cultural events. Moreover, it was Lowell who introduced the tutorial system which is still a distinctive feature of Harvard education.

Today, 51 fields of concentration are offered to more than 18,000 degree candidates of Harvard University. In addition to this, about 13,000 students take one or more courses in Harvard Extension School. Over 14,000 people work at Harvard, including more than 2,000 faculties.

It is interesting to know that six presidents of the United States – John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Theodore and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Rutherford B. Hayes, and John Fitzgerald Kennedy – were graduates of Harvard. Its faculties have produced more than 30 Nobel laureates.

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