Harvard University

Harvard University is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. It was founded in 1636 in Cambridge, by the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was opened for instruction two years later and named in 1639 for the English clergyman John Harvard, its first benefactor. The college at first lacked substantial endowments and existed on gifts from individuals and the General Court. Harvard gradually acquired considerable autonomy and private financial support, becoming a chartered university in 1780. Today it has the largest private endowment of any university in the world.

Harvard has steadily developed under the great American educators who have successively served as presidents. During the presidency of Charles W. Eliot (1869 – 1909), Harvard established an elective system for undergraduates, by which they could choose most of their courses themselves. Under Abbott L. Lowell, who was president from 1909 to 1933, the undergraduate house systems of residence and instruction were introduced. Sponsored by Henry Rosovsky, former dean of the faculty of arts and sciences (1973-1984), the undergraduate elective system, or General Education Program, was replaced beginning in 1979 by a new Core Curriculum, designed to prepare truly well-educated men and women for the challenges of modern life. Students are now required to take courses for the equivalent of any academic year in each of five areas: literature and arts, history, social analysis and moral reasoning, science, and foreign cultures. In addition to the new curriculum, the students must spend roughly the equivalent of two years on courses in a field of concentration and one year on elective courses. Students must also demonstrate competence in writing, mathematics, and a foreign language.

From its earliest days Harvard established and maintained a tradition of academic excellence and the training of citizens for national public service. Among many notable alumni are the religious leaders Increase Mather and Cotton Mather; the philosopher and psychologist William James; and men of letters such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Robert Frost, and T. S. Eliot. Most of the US presidents have attended Harvard.

Harvard College, the University’s oldest division, offers undergraduate courses for men and women, leading to a bachelor of arts degree granted by the university. In 1975, Harvard abolished the quota limiting the number of women students. With admission criteria ranking among the most selective in the United States, Harvard accepts less than 20 percent of all applicants.

During their freshman year, students live in halls within Harvard Yard, a walled enclosure containing several structures from the early 18^th century now used as dormitories, dining facilities, libraries, and classrooms. Sophomores, juniors, and seniors live in the 12 residences known as houses. Named in honour of a distinguished alumnus or administrator, each house accommodates approximately 350 students and a group of faculty members who provide individual instruction as tutors; social exchange between students and teachers is thus fostered. Each house also has a library and sponsors cultural activities and intramural athletics. Undergraduate life has the additional attraction of proximity to Boston.

The Harvard campus is also the site of several renowned museums and collections, among them the Fogg Museum, distinguished for its European and American paintings, sculpture, and prints; the Botanical Museum; and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

Harvard’s library system is the oldest in the USA. The central library collection, used for advanced scholarly research, is housed in the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library. Augmented by the Houghton Library of rare books and manuscripts, the undergraduate Lamont, Cabot, and Hilles libraries, and the separate house and departmental libraries, as well as by the graduate schools’ collections, the complex forms the world’s largest university library system. It currently contains more than 13 million volumes, manuscripts, and microfilms.

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