University of Texas at Austin

The University of Texas at Austin, informally UT Austin, UT, University of Texas, or Texas in sports a public research university and the flagship institution of The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883 as "The University of Texas," its campus is located in  mile (1,600 m) from the Texas State
Capitol. The institution has thehe university has been labeled one of the "Public Ivies," a publicly funded university considered as providing a quality of education comparable to those of the Ivy League

UT Austin was inducted into the American Association of Universities in 1929, becoming only the third university in the American South to be elected. It is a major center for academic research, with research expenditures exceeding $550 million for the 2014 school year. The university houses seven museums and seventeen libraries, including the Lyndon B

Johnson Library and Museum and the Museum of Art, and operates various auxiliary research facilities, such as the J. J. Pickle Research Campus and the McDonald Observatory. Among university faculty are recipients of the Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize, the Wolf Prize, and the National Medal of Science, as well as many other awards.
UT Austin student athletes compete as the Texas Longhorns and are members of the Big 12 Conference. Its Longhorn Network is unique in that it is the only sports network featuring the college sports of a single university. The Longhorns have won four NCAA Division I National Football 

Championships, six NCAA Division I National Baseball Championships and has claimed more titles in men's and women's sports than any other school in the Big 12 since the league was founded in 1996. Current and former UT Austin athletes have won 130 Olympic medals, including 14 in Beijing in 2008 and 13 in London in 2012. The university was recognized by Sports Illustrated as "America's Best Sports College" in 2002

The first mention of a public university in Texas can be traced to the 1827 constitution for the Mexican state o, Article 217 of that Constitution promised to establish public education in the arts and sciences, no action was taken by the Mexican government. After Texas obtained its independence from Mexico in 1836, the Texas Congress adopted the Constitution of the Republic, 

which, under Section 5 of its General Provisions, stated "It shall be the duty of Congress, as soon as circumstances will permit, to provide, by law, a general system of education."On April 18, 1838, "An Act to Establish the University of Texas" was referred to a special committee of the Texas Congress, but was not reported back for further action.On January 26, 1839, the Texas Congress agreed to set

aside fifty leagues of land (approx. 288,000 acres) towards the establishment of a publicly funded addition, 40 acres (160,he new capital of Austin were reserved and designated "College Hill."(The term "Forty Acres" is colloquially used to refer to the University as a whole. The original forty acres is the area from Guadalupe to Speedway and 21st Street to

In 1845, Texas was annexed into the United States. Interestingly, the state's Constitution of 1845 failed to mention the subject of the Seventh Texas Legislature approved O.B. 102, an act to establish the University of Texas, which set aside $100,000 in United States bonds toward construction of the state's first publicly  $100,000 was an allocation from the $10 million the state received pursuant to

 the Compromise of 1850 and Texas' relinquishing claims to lands outside its present boundaries). In addition, the legislature designated land previously reserved for the encouragement of railroad construction toward the university's endowment. 

On January 31, 1860, the state legislature, wanting to avoid raising taxes, passed an act authorizing the money set aside for the University of Texas to instead be used for frontier defense in west Texas to protect settlers from Indian attacks Texas' secession from the Union and the American Civil War delayed repayment of the borrowed monies.

 At the end of the Civil War in 1865, The University of Texas' endowment consisted of a little over $16,000 in warrant and nothing substantive had yet been done to organize the university's operations. This effort to establish a University was again mandated by Article 7, Section 10 of the Texas Constitution of 1876 which directed the legislature to "establish, organize and provide for the

maintenance, support and direction of a university of the first class, to be located by a vote of the people of this State, and styled "The wealth fund managed by the Board of Regents of the University of Texas and dedicated for the maintenance of the university. Because some state legislators perceived an extravagance in the construction of academic buildings

of other universities, Article 7, Section 14 of the Constitution expressly prohibited the legislature from using the state's general revenue to fund construction of any university buildings. Funds for constructing university buildings had to come from the university's endowment or from private gifts to the university, but operational expenses for the university could come from the state's general revenues.

Yale University

Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in  the Collegiate School, the University is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. In 1718, the school was renamed Yale College in recognition of a gift from

Yale, a governor of the British East India Company and in 1731 received a further gift of land and slaves from Bishop Berkeley. Established to train Congregationalist ministers in theology and sacred languages, by 1777 the school's curriculum began to incorporate

humanities and sciences and in the 19th century gradually incorporated graduate and professional instruction, awarding the fir the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887.
Yale is organized into twelve constituent schools: the original undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 

e university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each school's faculty oversees its degree programs. In addition to a centraUniverowns athletic facilities in western New Haven, including the Yale Bowl, a

 campus in West Haven, Connecticut, and forest and nature preserves throughout New England. The university's assets include an endowment valued at $23.9 billion as of September 27, 2014, the second largest of any educational institution in the world

Yale College undergraduates follow a liberal arts curriculum with departmental majors and are organized into a system of residential colleges. Almost all faculty teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually

e Yale University Library, serving all twelve schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United of academic studies, students  Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I Ivy League.

Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including five U.S. Presidents, 19 U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 13 living billionaires, and many foreign heads of state. In addition, Yale has graduated hundreds of members of Congress and many high-level U.S.

 diplomats, including former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and current Secretary of State John Kerry. Fifty-two Nobel laureates have been affiliated with the University as students, faculty, or staff, and 230 Rhodes Scholars graduated from the University.

Meanwhile, there was a rift forming at Harvard between its sixth president Increase Mather and the rest of the Harvard clergy, whom Mather viewed as increasingly liberal, ecclesiastically lax, and
overly broad in Church polity. The feud the success of the Collegiate School in the hope that it would maintain the Puritan religious orthodoxy in a way that Harvard had not.
In 1718, at the behest of either Rector Samuel Andrew or the colony's Governor  Cotton Mather contacted a successful in Wales but had been born in Boston and whose father, David, had been one of the original settlers in New Haven,

 to ask him for financial help in constructing a new building for the college. Through the persuasion d made a fortune through trade while living in Madras as a representative of the East India Company, donated nine bales of goods, which were 

sold for more than £560, a substantial sum at the time. Cotton Mather suggested that the school change its name to Yale College. Meanwhile,
a Harvard graduate working in England convinced some 180 prominent intellectuals that they should donate books to Yale. The 1714 shipment of 500 books represented the best of modern English literature, science, philosophy and theology It effect on intellectuals a

University of Maryland

public research universit located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, approximately 4 miles (6.4 km) from the northeast border of Washington, D.C. Founded in

1856, the University of Maryland is the flagship institution of the University System of Maryland. With a fall 2010 enrollment of more than 37,000 students, over 100 undergraduate majors, and 120 

graduate programs, Maryland is the largest university in the state and the largest in the Washington Metropolitan Area.It is a member of the Association of American Universities and competes athletically as a member of the Big Ten Conference.

The University of Maryland's proximity to the nation's capital has resulted in strong research partnerships with the Federal government. Many members of t faculty receive research funding and   institutional support from agencies 

such as the National Institutes of Health, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration,  the In f and Technology, and the Department of Security

.

The operating budget of the University of Maryland during the 2009 fiscal year was projected to be approximately US$he same fiscal year, the University of Maryland 

received a total of $518 million in research funding, surpassing its 2008 mark by $118  of May 12012, the university's "Great Expectations" campaign had exceeded $950 million in private donations.

During the Civil War, financial problems forced the administrators to sell off 200 acres and the continuing decline in enrollment sent the Maryland Agricultural College into bankruptcy. For the next two years the campus was used as a boys preparatory school.the Civil War, in February 1866 the

Maryland legislature assumed half ownership of the school. The college thus became in part a state institution. By October 1867, the school reopened with 11 students. In the next six years, enrollment grew and the school's debt was paid off.

Twenty years later, the school's reputation as a research institution began, as the federally funded Agricultural Experiment Station was established there.

 During the same period, a number of state laws granted the college regulatory powers in several  farm disease, inspecting feed,

 establishing a state weather bureau and geological survey, and housing the board of forestryHall (the oldest instructional building still in use on cam was built the following yea

University of California

of the 10 campuses of the University of California system. Located in Davis, California, just west of Sacramento, it encompasses 5,300 acres of land, making it the second largest  campus in terms of land ownership,Davis also has the third-largest enrollment in 

The 2015 U.S. News & World Report college rankings named as the 9th best public university, 38th nationally, and 4th of following Berkeley, , an Die one of 62 members in the 

The Carnegie Foundation as a comprehensive doctoral research university with a medical program, and very high includes 23 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 25 members 

of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 17 members of the American Law Institute, 14 members of the Institute of Medicine, and 14 members of the National Academy of  faculty, alumni, and researchers have won the Nobel Peace Prize, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Pulitzer Prize, MacArthur Fellowship, National Medal of Science, and Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering

The university has expanded over the past century to include graduate and professional programs in medicine (which includes the Davis Medical Center), law, veterinary medicine,

 education, nursing, and business management, in addition to 90 research programs offered Graduate Studies. Davis' School of Veterinary Medicine is the largest in the United States and is ranked first in the nation

The athletic teams compete in the NCAA Division I level, primarily in the Big West Conference as well as the Big Sky Conference (Football only) and the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation. In its first year of full Division I status, meas qualified for NCAA post-season competition.

the time, Berkeley was the sole campus of the university).commission took a year to select a site for the campus, a tiny town then known as Davis opened its doors as the "University Farm" to 40 degree students (all male) from  Berkeley in January 1909. (The farm had begun accepting students in non-degree farmers' short cor

in October 1908; around 115 men attended.)

The Farm was established largely the result of the vision and perseverance of Peter J. Shields, secretary of the State Agricultural Society. The Peter J.

Shields Library  Davis was named in his honor. Shields began to champion the cause of a University Farm to teach agriculture after learning that California students were going to out-of-state universities to pursue such education.

Shields later said:

University of South Alabama

The University of South Alabama (USA) is a public, national research university in Mobile, Alabama, United States. It was created by the Alabama Legislature in May, 1963, and replaced

 existing extension programs operated in Mobile by the University of Alabama.

USA is the only major public institution of higher learning on the upper Gulf Coast. With Alabama's

 two older universities more than 200 miles distant, the University is strategically located in the greater Mobile area, which has a population of more than a million within a 

Basketball, Baseball, Tennis, Cross Country, Golf, Indoor Track and Field, and Outdoor Track and Field. Women's sports include Basketball, Softball, Soccer, Tennis, Cross Country, Volleyball, 

Indoor Track and Field, Outdoor Track and Field, and Golf. All sports participate to as simply "South", "USA", or the "Jags", but the more formal South Alabama is often used as well.

The university announced the creation of a NCAA sanctioned football team on December 6, 2007, with the goal of fast tracking 

he school's first ever game was played on September 5, 2009 in front of 26,00+ fans. The Jaguars football team is led by head coach Joey Jones, former Alabama player under Paul "Bear" Bryant. The Jaguars lost at NC Stat 

 League Baseball talent. The most notable current as both the 2011 National League Championship Series MVP and 2011 World Series  for the St. Louis Cardinals, and Juan Pierre, a World Series winner with the Florida Marlins in 2003. Coach Steve 

the end of the 2011 season and handed over the position to the coach in waiting, Mark Cd been on staff \The basketball program has reached the NCAA tournament eight times, with its only win coming against the University 

e Jaguars have been beaten by the eventual national champion 3 of those 8 times (Michigan, Arizona, & the Michigan loss occurring in the second round.

Columbia University

Columbia Universit

officially Columbia University in the City of New York) is a  Ivy League research university in Upper Manhattan, New York City. Originally established in 1754 as

King's College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in New York State, as well as one of the country's nine colonial colleges

After the revolutionary war, King's College briefly became a state entity, and was renamed Columbia College in 1 1787784. A charter placed the institution

 under a private board of trustees before it was further renamed Columbia University in 1896 when the campus was moved from Madison Avenue to its  land of 32 acres 

 Columbia is one of the fourteen founding members of the Association of American Universities, and was the first school in the United States to grant the M.D. degree

 has affiliation with several other institutions nearby, including Teachers College,

e University is organized into twenty schools alongside global research outposts in Amman, 

 Barnard College, and Union Theological Seminary, with joint undergraduate programs available through the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Sciences Po Paris and 

Columbia annually administers the Pulitzer Prize.It is

 regularly placed among the best universities worldwide by a nu of the United States; nine Justices of the United States Supreme , including three United States Presidents.Additionally, 101 Nobel Prize laureates have been affiliated with it as students, faculty, or staff

Discussions regarding the founding of a college in the Province of New York began as early as 1704, when Colonel Lewis Morris wrote to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 

the missionary arm of the Church of England, persuading the society that New York City was an ideal community in which to establish a college however, not until the founding of Princeton University across the Hudson River in New Jersey did the City of New York seriously consider founding a college.

In 1746 an act was passed by the general assembly of New York to raise funds for the foundation of a new college. In 1751, the assembly appointed  of ten New 

York residents, seven of whom were members of the Church of England, to direct the funds accrued by the state lottery the foundation of a

Classes were initially held in July 1754 and were presided over by the college's first president, Dr. Samuel Johnson. Dr. Johnson was the only instructor of the c

st class, which consisted of a mere eight students. Instruction was held in a new schoolhous adjoining Trinity Church, located on what is now lower Broadway in

he college was officially founded on October 31, 1754, as King's College by royal charter of King George II, making it the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York and the fifth oldest in the United States.

In 1763, Dr. Johnson was succeeded in the presidency by Myles Cooper, a graduate of The Queen's College, Oxford, and an ardent Tory. In the charged political climate of the American Revolution, his chief opponent in discussions at the College was an undergraduate of the class of 1777, Alexander Hamilto

 The American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, and was catastrophic for the operation of King's College, which suspended instruction for eight years beginning in 1776 with the arrival of the Continental Army. The suspension continued through

 the military occupation of New York City by British troops until their departure in 1783. The college's library was looted and its sole building requisitioned for use as a military hospital first by American and then British forces

 Loyalists were forced to abandon their King's College in New York, which was seized by the rebels and renamed Columbia University. The Loyalists, led by Bishop Charles Inglis fled to Windsor, Nova Scotia, where th

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, established in 1636. Its history,   wealth have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world

Established originally by the Massachusetts legislature and soon thereafter named for John Harvard (its first benefactor), Harvard is the United States' oldest institution of higher learning,and the 

Harvard Corporation (formally, the President and Fellows of is its first chartered corporation. Although never formally affiliated with any denomination, the early College primarily 

trained  and Unitarian clergy. Its curriculum and student body were gradually secularized during the 18th century, and by the 19th century Harvard had emerged as the central cultural establishment among Boston elites.

 Following the American Civil War, President Charles W. Eliot's long tenure transformed the college and affiliated professional schools into a modern research university; Harvard was a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900.

The University is organized into eleven separate  and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced campuses throughout the Boston metropolitan area:

its 209-acre (85 ha) main campus is centered on Harvard Yard in Cambridge, approximately 3 miles (5 km) northwest of Boston; the business school and athletics facilities, including Harvard Stadium, 

and public health s

Harvard has the largest financial endowment of any academic institution in the world, standing at $32.3 billion as of June 2013

Harvard is a large, highly residential research university.The nominal cost of attendance is high, but the University's large endowment allows it to offer generous financial aid packages.

operates several arts, cultural, and scientific museums, alongside the Harvard Library, which is the world's largest academic and private library system, comprising 79 individual libraries with over 18 

date, some 150 Nobel laureates have been affiliated as students, faculty, or staff.

Harvard was formed in 1636 by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was initially called "New College" or "the college at New. In 1638, the college became home for North America's first known printing press, carried by the ship John of London.

n 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.charter creating the Harvard Corporation was granted in 1650.

In the early years the College trained many Puritan ministers.The college offered a classic academic 

 was never affiliated with any particular denomination, but many of its earliest graduates went on to become clergymen in Congregational and Unitarian churches throughout New England.

An early brochure, published in 1643, described the founding of the college as a response to the desire "to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the c

The leading Boston divine Increase Mather served as president from 1685 to 1701. In 1708, John Leverett became the first president who was not also a clergyman, which marked a turning of the college toward intellectual independence from Puritanism.