Great Libraries From Enoch Pratt—and Others
Enoch Pratt arrived in Baltimore from a Massachusetts farm with nothing but $150 in his pocket, but he was frugal and industrious and eventually thrived in a variety of businesses. Read more…
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Wharton School and Economic Education
Writing to the trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia metals manufacturer Joseph Wharton expressed disillusionment with the state of higher education. Citing his own experience in having to learn Read more…
Bringing Teacher Education to the University
Amid massive changes in Americans’ educational needs in the late nineteenth century, the teaching profession came under scrutiny. Skilled educators were in short supply, and many observers were questioning how Read more…
Johns Hopkins University
American colleges had undergone much growth and change by 1876, but that year might be thought of as the U.S. inauguration of the German university model—featuring academic independence, a high Read more…
Peabody’s Reconstruction Schools
After the Civil War, the American South was badly battered, and improving its economic and social prospects became a central part of repairing our national union. Religious groups were the Read more…
Matthew Vassar’s College for Women
Education philanthropy over the first century of American history was focused predominantly on young men. Then Matthew Vassar got it into his head to try something new. He resolved to Read more…
Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
Peter Cooper was born into a poor family, but even as a child he was inventing things—what may have been the world’s first washing machine, an innovative mower, different ways Read more…
Western Colleges, Eastern Money
A surprising number of colleges were founded in the early American West, but most struggled to find a financial footing. The periodic economic panics took a toll on educational philanthropy Read more…
A College Against Slavery
Oberlin College was built on a strong opposition to slavery, and committed its intellectual resources to helping end the practice. When various financial downturns buffeted its home region in Ohio, Read more…
Educating the Orphaned
Born in France in 1750, Stephen Girard was a financier who immigrated to the United States nearly penniless and then made his name as a businessman and philanthropist of renown. Read more…
Western Reserve University
Western Reserve University, which sprang up in 1826 in a just-burgeoning section of Ohio, survived only through the sacrificial giving of frontier settlers. Western Reserve was not supported by a Read more…
Rensselaer School and the Rise of Scientific Education
Stephen Van Rensselaer was heir to one of the most valuable landholdings in the United States. Comprised of over a thousand farms, Rensselaer’s New York estate and the requirements of Read more…
New York Free School Society
In early nineteenth-century New York City, free primary education was largely the province of church-run charity schools. For families of means there was also the option of private schools maintained Read more…
Washington and Lee University
George Washington was not only “first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen.” He was also first in philanthropic support for higher education in the Read more…
A University Across the Woods
In the early years of the American republic our population erupted over the heights of the Allegheny Mountains, starting the long national journey to the Pacific. Unlike their worldly possessions, Read more…
Philadelphia Library Company
In the first half of the eighteenth century, American libraries were limited to small collections of books in private homes, or at colleges and seminaries, of which there were only Read more…
Endowed College Chairs
The endowed professorship—an educational post funded over a long period of time by the earnings from an initial gift—is among the signal accomplishments of U.S. educational philanthropy. The pervasiveness of Read more…
A School for Slaves
There were about 1,500 African-American slaves living in New York City at the beginning of the 1700s, nearly all illiterate and intellectually degraded. Elias Neau, a French Huguenot who had Read more…
First Fundraising Campaign
Harvard University conducted what is considered to be America’s first recorded fund drive when it launched an appeal in 1643 for donations to build up its new college. A gift Read more…
Early American Colleges
Education philanthropy in the United States is much older than our country. The New College was founded in 1636 by the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and renamed in 1639 after a Read more…