Reply #53: you are BOTH right! [View All]

[northzax]

ain't that fun?

Harvard was chartered in 1636 by the Mass. Bay Colony and began continuous operation as "The Fellows of Harvard College" in 1650 (the same corporation exists today)

UPenn was founded in 1779, a full 129 years later, but has the distinction of being the first organization to use the word 'university' in the founding documents. (Harvard's charter was amended to include the word 'university' in 1780) William & Mary is still technically a 'college' although it was reorganized to be basically a university two days after Penn was chartered. you can even go farther back on Penn by saying the med school dates from (I think) 1766, the first medical school)

it's all pretty arcane. what is a 'college' and what is a 'university'. at the time these were specific terms. a college focused on one subject, a university was a collection of colleges. Harvard, for instance, was bascially a divinity school for the first decades.

other minutia:

Georgetown is believed to have offered the first true, non-professional graduate degree in the US in 1821.

Yale claims the first US Ph.D sometime in the 1860s

and finally, Johns Hopkins was the first 'research' university in the US.

so depending on your definition of 'university' there are six schools that can claim the mantle (oldest of all: Harvard; first medical school: Penn; first to have two professional schools and undergraduates, W&M; first graduate degree, Georgetown; first Ph.D: Yale; first research model: Hopkins.