The Emergent American University, 1860 – 1920: A Timeline
|
Year |
Event |
Tags |
| 1861 | Massachusetts legislature grants charter for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; classes commence in 1865 | |
| 1861 | Yale the first American academic institution to award the PhD degree | |
| 1862 | Congress passes Morrill College Land Grant Act; provides federal support to Union states to establish schools of technology | |
| 1864 | School of Mines opens as part of Columbia College | |
| 1864 | Columbia trustees make Frederick A.P. Barnard their 10th president; to serve until 1888. | |
| 1866 | Cornell University opens in Ithaca, New York; funds from benefactor Ezra Cornell and New York State; Andrew Dickson White its first president (1866-1885) | |
| 1869 | Charles W. Eliot elected president of Harvard University; to serve until 1909 | |
| 1873 | Johns Hopkins gives $3.5 million to Baltimore to establish a hospital and University. | |
| 1872 | Cornell becomes the 2nd American academic institution to award the PhD. | |
| 1873 | New Yorker Cornelius Vanderbilt gives $1 million to create Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Methodist in denominational character. | |
| 1873 | Harvard becomes the 3rd American institution to award the PhD. | |
| 1875 | Columbia College becomes the 4th institution to award the PhD; does so through its School of Mines. | |
| 1876 | Johns Hopkins University opens in Baltimore; Daniel Coit Gilman its founding president (1876-1901) | |
| 1878 | Hopkins awards its first PhDs; soon the national leader in doing so | |
| 1881 | Joseph Wharton gave $100,000 to the University of Pennsylvania to establish The Wharton School of Finance and Economy | |
| 1883 | The Modern Language Association (MLA) organized to promote the professional study of modern languages and literature | |
| 1884 | The American Historical Association (AHA) founded to advance the professional study of history. | |
| 1884 | Columbia political scientist John W. Burgess publishes his pamphlet, The American University: | |
| 1885 | The American Economic Association (AEA) founded; Columbia’s Edwin R.A. Seligman among the prime movers. | |
| 1889 | Jonas Clark provides $1 million to start Clark University in Worcester, Mass.; originally an exclusively graduate university. The psychologist G. Stanley Hall its founding president (1889- 1920) | |
| 1890 | Second Morrill Land Grant Act extends federal support to southern states excluded in the original 1862 legislation. | |
| 1891 | Leland Stanford, Jr. University opens in Palo Alto, California, with $24 million in funding from railroader Leland Stanford. The biologist David Starr Jordan its first president. | |
| 1892 | The American Psychological Association (APA) is founded. Columbian James McKeen Cattell a prime mover. | |
| 1892 | John D. Rockefeller provides $34 million in funding to establish the University of Chicago; William Rainey Harper its founding president (1892-1902). | |
| 1897 | Columbia University moves to its new campus on Morningside Heights, following receipt of several $500,000-plus gifts for several buildings. | |
| 1900 | By 1900, six major American universities JHU, Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Chicago) had awarded nearly 1700 PhDs | |
| 1900 | Fourteen universities form the Association of American Universities | |
| 1903 | Harvard philosopher William James publishes “The PhD Octopus,” a criticism of colleges for insisting on the PhD as a requirement for a teaching position. | |
| 1905 | Andrew Carnegie founded and funded the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Set out to assist universities by providing retirement support for faculty | |
| 1905 | Columbia psychologist James McKeen Cattell publishes the first version of his American Men of Science, a pioneering effort to rank scientists and universities by their research productivity | |
| 1915 | American Association of University Professors (AAUP) organized to protect the “academic freedom” of the senior professoriate. | |
| 1917 | The journalist and Columbia graduate Randolph Bourne published a critiques of the pro-interventionist sentiments of his teachers such as John Dewey in “Twilight of Idols” and “War and the Intellectuals’ | |
| 1917 | Columbia trustees fire James McKeen Cattell for violating University rules on voicing opposition to US entry into WW I | |
| 1917 | October Columbia political scientist Charles A. Beard resigns to protest Trustee action against Cattell and other faculty. | |
| 1918 | Several leading academics participate in the “Inquiry,” a research undertaking to plan for establishing a permanent peace at the close of the war. Columbia’s James T. Shotwell among them. | |
| Last updated: February 16, 2014 | ||
| ram31@columbia.edu | ||
| 1915 | ||