Harvard University has operated since 1650 under the same corporation, making it the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States.[1]
The first university in the United States is a status asserted by more than one U.S. university. When the Philippines was still a United States territory, the University of Santo Tomas, which was established in 1611, was considered the oldest university under the American flag.[2] Presently in the United States, there is no official nationwide definition of what entitles an institution to be considered a university versus a college while differing official 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:[3]
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. Moreover, questions of institutional continuity sometimes make it difficult to determine the true "age" of any institution. Furthermore, contesting of the status of first university should not be confused with the contesting of the status of oldest public university in the United States, which is 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).
^Rudolph, Frederick (1961). The American College and University. University of Georgia Press. p. 3. ISBN 0-8203-1285-1.
^McSweeney, Quentin. "SANTO TOMAS DE MANILA The First University of the Philippines" (PDF). Dominicana Journal. Retrieved January 7, 2017.
^Gilman, Daniel Coit (1911). "Universities" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 27 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 776.
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