Harvard University

    Harvard University is a clandestine Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts founded in 1636, whose history, influence and wealth have made it one of the most prominent universities in the world. Founded by the Massachusetts legislature and soon afterward named for John Harvard (its first patron), Harvard is the United States' ageist institution of higher learning, and the Harvard Corporation (officially, the President and Fellows of Harvard College) is its first licensed corporation. Although never officially associated with any denomination, the early College mainly taught Congregationalist and Unitarian clergy. Its curriculum and student body were slowly secularized during the 18th century, and by the 19th century Harvard had appeared as the central cultural institution among Boston elites. After the American Civil War, President Charles W. Eliot's extensive term (1869–1909) changed the college and associated professional schools into a modern research university; Harvard was a original member of the Association of American Universities in 1900. James Bryant Conant directed the university through the Great Depression and World War II and began to develop the curriculum and ease up admissions after the war. The undergraduate college became coeducational after its 1977 fusion with Radcliffe College.

    The University is structured into eleven part of educational units—ten faculties and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study—with colleges all over the Boston metropolitan area: its 209-acre (85 ha) main college is centrally located on Harvard Yard in Cambridge, about 3 miles (5 km) northwest of Boston; the business school and athletics facilities, comprising Harvard Stadium, are situated across the Charles River in the Allston region of Boston and the medical, dental, and public health schools are located in the Longwood Medical Area. Harvard has the highest financial donation of any educational institution in the world that stands at $36.4 billion.

    Harvard is a huge, vastly residential research university. The minimum cost of attendance is high, but the University's big donation allows it to tender charitable financial aid packages. It functions several arts, cultural, and scientific museums, along with the Harvard Library, which is the world's largest educational and private library system, comprising 79 individual libraries with over 18 million volumes of books. Harvard's alumni include eight U.S. presidents, several foreign heads of state, 62 living billionaires, 242 Marshall Scholars, and335 Rhodes Scholars. To date, some 150 Nobel laureates and 5 Fields Medalists (when awarded) have been associated as students, faculty, or staff.

History

    Harvard was created in 1636 by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was originally called "New College" or "the college at New Towne". In 1638, the college became habitat for North America's first known printing press, passed by the ship John of London. In 1639, the college was renamed Harvard College after deceased clergyman John Harvard, who was an alumnus of the University of Cambridge. He had left the school £779 and his library of some 400 books. The license creating the Harvard Corporation was approved in 1650. During the 20th century, Harvard's international status grew as a growing donation and well-known professors expanded the university's scope. Speedy enrollment growth continued as new graduate schools were begun and the undergraduate College extended. Radcliffe College, founded in 1879 as sister school of Harvard College, became one of the most well-known schools for women in the United States. Harvard became a naissance member of the Association of American Universities in 1900.

    In the early 20th century, the student body was prevailed "old-stock, high-status Protestants, especially Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians"—a group later called "WASPs" (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants).  By the 1970s it was much more expanded James Bryant Conant (president, 1933–1953) revived artistic scholarship to pledge its superiority among research institutions. He saw higher education as a medium of opportunity for the brilliant rather than a privilege for the wealthy, so Conant work out programs to identify, recruit, and support gifted youth. In 1943, he asked the faculty make a ultimate statement about what general education should be, at the secondary as well as the college level. The resulting Report, published in 1945, was one of the most significant manifestos in the history of American education in the 20th century.  In 1945–1960 admissions policies were unwrapped to bring in students from a more varied applicant pool. No longer portrayal mostly from rich alumni of select New England prep schools, the undergraduate college was now open to striving middle class students from public schools; many more Jews and Catholics were admitted, but few blacks, Hispanics or Asians.