Cambridge, Massachusetts is home to Harvard University, a private Ivy League institution. It was created in 1636 in accordance with Massachusetts colonial law. With 10 academic units at the moment, Harvard is the oldest higher education institution in the United States. It is America’s first and oldest corporation. The College of New Town or New College was its original name. It is named after John Harvard, who gave the college $779 in donations that included a 400-book library to keep it running efficiently. In the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, Harvard was given its first-ever university prefix. During Charles Baker’s forty-year presidency at Harvard, the university transformed into a contemporary research institution.
Established in 1636 by the Massachusetts government, Harvard University is a private Ivy League institution with its main campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The first president of the corporation, the Harvard College Fellows, is the oldest institution of higher learning in the country. After its first donor, Harvard John was given that name. The college largely prepared clergy for Congregationalist and Unitarian churches, while never having an official affiliation with one.
In the eighteenth century, Harvard’s curriculum and students became more and more secular, and by the nineteenth century, Harvard had become the main center of culture for Boston’s aristocracy. Following the American Civil War, under the forty-year leadership of President Charles W. Eliot, the college’s linked business schools were turned into a consolidated research institution, and Harvard was made a founding member of the Association.
The institution went through the Great Depression and World War II, and after the war, it started revamping the curriculum and opening up admissions. The graduate school merged with Radcliffe College in 1977, at which point it became coeducational. Drew Gilpin Faust, the university’s first female president, was chosen as the 28th president in 2007. With a $25.6 billion endowment as of September 2009, Harvard has the highest financial endowment of any university in the entire globe. As a result, it has become one of the most renowned colleges in the entire globe.
THANKS FOR READING: Harvard University National ranking #3
ALSO READ: Massachusetts Institute of Technology National ranking #2