During the twentieth century, Harvard's international reputation grew as a burgeoning endowment and prominent professors expanded the university's scope. Explosive growth in the student population continued with the addition of new graduate schools and the expansion of the undergraduate program. Radcliffe College, established in 1879 as sister school of Harvard College, became one of the most prominent schools for women in the United States.

James Bryant Conant (president, 1933–1953) reinvigorated creative scholarship to guarantee its preeminence among research institutions. He saw higher education as a vehicle of opportunity for the talented rather than an entitlement for the wealthy, so Conant devised programs to identify, recruit, and support talented youth. In 1943, he asked the faculty make a definitive statement about what general education ought to be, at the secondary as well as the college level. The resulting Report, published in 1945, was one of the most influential manifestos in the history of American education in the 20th century.

In 1945-1960 admissions policies were opened up to bring in students from a more diverse applicant pool. No longer drawing mostly from rich alumni of select New England prep schools, the undergraduate college was now open to striving middle class students from public schools; many more Jews and Catholics were admitted, but few blacks, Hispanics or Asians.

Harvard and its affiliates, like many American universities, are considered by some to be politically liberal (left of center).[28] Conservative author William F. Buckley, Jr. quipped that he would rather be governed by the first 2000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty, Richard Nixon famously referred to Harvard as the "Kremlin on the Charles" around 1970, and Vice President George H.W. Bush disparaged what he saw to be Harvard's liberalism during the 1988 presidential election.[31] Republicans remain a small minority of faculty, and the University has refused to officially recognize the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) program — forcing students to commission through nearby MIT.The Harvard College Handbook explains, "Current federal policy of excluding known lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals from admission to ROTC or of discharging them from service is inconsistent with Harvard’s values as stated in its policy on discrimination."

President Lawrence Summers resigned his presidency in 2006. His resignation came just one week before a second planned vote of no confidence by the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Former president Derek Bok served as interim president. Members of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which instructs graduate students in GSAS and undergraduates in Harvard College, had passed an earlier motion of "lack of confidence" in Summers' leadership on March 15, 2005 by a 218-185 vote, with 18 abstentions. The 2005 motion was precipitated by comments about the causes of gender demographics in academia made at a closed academic conference and leaked to the press.[34] In response, Summers convened two committees to study this issue: the Task Force on Women Faculty and the Task Force on Women in Science and Engineering. Summers had also pledged $50 million to support their recommendations and other proposed reforms. Drew Gilpin Faust is the 28th president of Harvard. An American historian, former dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and Lincoln Professor of History at Harvard University, Faust is the first female president in the university's history.

Harvard was founded in 1636 by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, making it the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Initially called "New College" or "the college at New Towne", the institution was renamed Harvard College on March 13, 1639. It was named after John Harvard, a young English clergyman from Southwark, London, an alumnus of the University of Cambridge (after which Cambridge, Massachusetts is named), who bequeathed the College his library of four hundred books and £779 pounds sterling, which was half of his estate. The charter creating the corporation of Harvard College came in 1650. In the early years, the College trained many Puritan ministers.The college offered a classic academic course based on the English university model—many leaders in the colony had attended Cambridge University—but one consistent with the prevailing Puritan philosophy. The College 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.[18] An early brochure, published in 1643, justified the College's existence: "To advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministery to the Churche".

Religion and philosophy

The takeover of Harvard by the Unitarians in 1805 resulted in the secularization of the American college. By 1850 Harvard was the "Unitarian Vatican." The "liberals" (Unitarians) allied themselves with high Federalists and began to create a set of private societies and institutions meant to shore up their cultural and political authority, a movement that prefigured the emergence of the Boston Brahmin class. On the other hand, the theological conservatives used print media to argue for the maintenance of open debate and democratic governance through a diverse public sphere, seeing the liberals' movement as an attempt to create a cultural oligarchy in opposition to Congregationalist tradition and republican political principles.

In 1846, the natural history lectures of Louis Agassiz were acclaimed both in New York and on the campus at Harvard College. Agassiz's approach was distinctly idealist and posited Americans' 'participation in the Divine Nature' and the possibility of understanding 'intellectual existences.' Agassiz's perspective on science combined observation with intuition and the assumption that one can grasp the 'divine plan' in all phenomena. When it came to explaining life-forms, Agassiz resorted to matters of shape based on a presumed archetype for his evidence. This dual view of knowledge was in concert with the teachings of Common Sense Realism derived from Scottish philosophers Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart, whose works were part of the Harvard curriculum at the time. The popularity of Agassiz's efforts to 'soar with Plato' probably also derived from other writings to which Harvard students were exposed, including Platonic treatises by Ralph Cudworth, John Norris, and, in a Romantic vein, Samuel Coleridge. The library records at Harvard reveal that the writings of Plato and his early modern and Romantic followers were almost as regularly read during the 19th century as those of the 'official philosophy' of the more empirical and more deistic Scottish school.

Charles W. Eliot, president 1869-1909, eliminated the favored position of Christianity from the curriculum while opening it to student self-direction. While Eliot was the most crucial figure in the secularization of American higher education, he was motivated not by a desire to secularize education, but by Transcendentalist Unitarian convictions. Derived from William Ellery Channing and Ralph Waldo Emerson, these convictions were focused on the dignity and worth of human nature, the right and ability of each person to perceive truth, and the indwelling God in each person

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation (officially The President and Fellows of Harvard College) chartered in the country.

Harvard was named after its first benefactor, John Harvard. Although it was never formally affiliated with a church, the college primarily trained Congregationalist and Unitarian clergy. Harvard's curriculum and students became increasingly secular throughout the eighteenth century and by the nineteenth century had emerged as the central cultural establishment among Boston elites. Following the American Civil War, President Charles W. Eliot's forty year tenure (1869–1909) transformed the college and affiliated professional schools into a centralized research university and Harvard became a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900.[9] James Bryant Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II and began to reform the curriculum and liberalize admissions after the war. The undergraduate college became coeducational after its 1977 merger with Radcliffe College. Drew Gilpin Faust was elected the 28th president in 2007 and is the first woman to lead the university. Harvard has the largest financial endowment of any school in the world, standing at $25.6 billion as of September 2009.[3] Harvard's history, influence, and wealth have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

The university comprises ten separate academic units with campuses throughout the Boston metropolitan area.Harvard's 210-acre (85 ha) main campus is centered on Harvard Yard in Cambridge, approximately 3.4 miles (5.5 km) northwest of downtown Boston. The business school and athletics facilities, including Harvard Stadium, are located across the Charles River in Allston and the medical, dental, and public health schools are located in the Longwood Medical Area.

As of 2010, Harvard employs about 2,100 faculty to teach and advise, approximately 6,700 undergraduates (Harvard College) and 14,500 graduate and professional students.[13] Eight U.S. Presidents have graduated from Harvard and 75 Nobel Laureates have been affiliated with the university as students, faculty, or staff. Harvard is also the alma mater of sixty-two living billionaires, the most in the country.[14] The Harvard University Library is the largest academic library in the United States, and the third largest library in the country.[15]

The Harvard Crimson competes in 41 intercollegiate sports in the NCAA Division I Ivy League. Harvard has an intense athletic rivalry with Yale University traditionally culminating in The Game, although the Harvard-Yale Regatta predates the football game.

Arizona State University

Arizona universities propose tuition hikes

Arizona’s three state universities released proposals to increase tuition for the 2009-10 school year Thursday.
Arizona State University proposes its typical 5 percent hike, which was approved by the Arizona Board of Regents in 2007. The board’s action limits increases for returning in-state undergraduate students to 5 percent each year for up to five years after enrollment. New in-state undergraduate students will be subject to the same 5 percent increase cap for up to four years.
With that 5 percent increase, continuing in-state students in the second year of their guarantee will pay $5,316 at the Tempe and Downtown Phoenix campuses and $5,093 at the Polytechnic and West campuses. Those entering the first year of their guarantee will pay $5,679 on all campuses.
New in-state undergraduate students will pay $5,997, while in-state graduate students will be at $7,128. Out-of-state undergraduate and graduate student tuition also will increase by 5 percent to $18,582 and $20,322, respectively.
President John Haeger said 40 percent of NAU students will be exempt from his proposal to increase tuition and fees by 6.5 percent for resident students. Those not impacted by the increase are part of NAU’s Pledge program, which guarantees the same tuition for four years for new freshmen and transfer students.
Tuition and fees would be $5,648 in 2009-10 for Pledge participants on the Flagstaff campus. He also recommended setting the four-year Pledge tuition for new 2009-10 resident students at $6,153. The only increases they would see would be in required fees.
Haeger also recommends a 6.5 percent increase for resident graduate students on the Flagstaff campus. Their combined tuition and fees would be $6,067.
Because non-resident undergraduate and graduate students at the Flagstaff campus already pay more than residents, Haeger said he plans to increase their costs by only $400. As a result, non-resident undergraduates would pay $16,057 in tuition and fees and non-resident graduate students would pay $16,482.
The University of Arizona in Tucson, which welcomed the largest freshman class in its history, proposes a $659 increase in resident undergraduate tuition at its main campus. At its UA South campus, the proposed increase is $450.
Non-resident undergraduate tuition at both its main campus and UA South campus would see a $2,575 increase. Resident graduate students at both campuses would see a $659 hike, while non-resident graduates at both campuses would get a $2,575 boost.
In addition to these increases, special colleges are planning their own hikes. For example, The Eller College of Management seeks a $4,000 increase to the fee for its Executive MBA Program. If approved, the program would have a full cost of $54,000.
UA President Robert Shelton recommends setting aside 15 percent of tuition revenue for financial aid. UA is offering a financial aid package called Arizona Assurance, which offers four years of debt-free education to any Arizona resident whose family income is $42,400 or less.
ASU officials said students and parents should not be deterred by tuition increases. This year, ASU will award more than $100 million in scholarships and grants. In addition, Arizona residents whose family income is $25,000 or less can qualify for the school’s Advantage program.
The Arizona Regents will conduct hearings to give the public a chance to have a say on the tuition increases on Nov. 17 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. throughout the state. In the Phoenix area, those hearings will be at ASU’s Carson Ballroom in Tempe; University Center, LaSala C at its West campus; room 147 of the Academic Center at its Polytechnic campus; and in room 107 of the University Center at its Downtown campus.

US universities

Why US universities are wealthy while Israel's are broke

Writing in Haaretz last month, Prof. Eli Podeh of Hebrew University aptly summarized the root of the university funding crisis in three words: "Nobody really cares." He even correctly attributed this apathy to Israelis' "negative view of academe." Yet rather than acknowledging the universities' own responsibility for this attitude, he blamed it on the population's obsession with "reality television and the pursuit of money" - a theory that unfortunately fails to explain why Americans, equally obsessed with reality television and making money, nevertheless boast the world's best and wealthiest universities.

Students hold a "tutorial" session with a junior lecturer outside of the gates of the Ben Gurion University during last year's strike.Photo: Dani Machlis
When comparing the Israeli and American systems, two facts immediately stand out. First, while our universities are state-funded, America's best and wealthiest universities are private. Second, annual tuition at top American schools is about 15 times the NIS 8,600 here.
These differences are not coincidental. In societies where money is considered a measure of value, American tuition proclaims higher education valuable, while local tuition labels it virtually worthless. Moreover, while our system makes higher education another state-funded entitlement, America's private system makes it a privilege.
Top American schools are therefore attractive to funders, who like the idea of enabling deserving students to obtain a valuable but otherwise unaffordable education. Moreover, since high tuition means that a majority of students receive financial aid, alumni feel obligated to help others as they were helped.
This country's universities, however, face strong disincentives to giving: Private donors object to funding a government entitlement; most alumni paid "full" tuition, and therefore feel no obligation to help others; and the product, as indicated by its price, is worthless anyway - a point that also argues against generous government funding.
And since, as last week's column explained, all Western universities must increase their non-state funding to survive, these disincentives put our schools at a serious disadvantage. Hence the importance of raising tuition, as the Shochat Committee recommended last year. In addition to increasing the universities' revenues in itself, it would encourage private donations by sending the signals necessary to attract them - that higher education is valuable, that it is not a government entitlement for which civil society bears no responsibility and that many deserving students cannot afford it without help.


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YET FOR all the importance of this issue, another American-Israeli difference that is less immediately obvious may be even more important. Prof. Israel Bartal, Hebrew University's dean of the humanities, enunciated this difference in the Los Angeles-based Jewish Journal last February, when he declared that "trying to shape a generation of Jewish leaders" is "beyond our scope." Substitute the appropriate nationality, and that statement would appall most leading non-Israeli schools.
England's Oxford and Cambridge, France's grande ecoles, America's Harvard, Yale and Princeton - all view producing future leaders as part of their job. That is why France has a grande ecole devoted exclusively to public administration, why Harvard's Kennedy School of Government or Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs rank among their respective universities' most prestigious departments, why a school like Princeton unabashedly boasts of "Princeton in the nation's service."
It is also why American scholars easily move between academia and government - people like Larry Summers (who left Harvard for government service, ultimately became secretary of the treasury, then returned as Harvard's president), Henry Kissinger (who left Harvard to become national security adviser and secretary of state, then returned to Georgetown University) or Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (a former Stanford provost). In Israel, such transitions are exceedingly rare.
The point is not that Israel needs more academics in politics; rather, it is the attitude this trend reflects. While American (or British or French) universities feel a responsibility to give back to the communities that produced them, our universities acknowledge no such responsibility. They view their job strictly as churning out experts in particular academic fields. But if universities feel no obligation toward society, why should society feel any obligation toward them?
OUR UNIVERSITIES do not even feel obliged to produce well-rounded citizens with a broad base of knowledge. Except at Bar-Ilan, where students must take some Jewish studies courses, there are no distribution requirements. Thus science majors can graduate without ever taking a humanities or social science course, while humanities majors can graduate without studying any natural or social science.
The result, as Nobel laureate in chemistry Prof. Aharon Ciechanover lamented in Yediot Aharonot two years ago, is that "even among people with academic degrees, I find garbled language, a lack of cultural depth and ignorance of general history and the history of the Jewish people. We need institutions of higher learning headed by path-breaking leadership, but that kind of leadership has disappeared."
Added to all this is rampant academic post-Zionism. Consider some examples: Two lecturers at Ben-Gurion University and its affiliate, Sapir College, refused to teach IDF reservists in uniform; many of their fellows supported them. A University of Haifa master's student received top marks for a thesis accusing IDF soldiers of massacring Arabs during the War of Independence, yet the veterans later won a libel suit by proving gross fabrications of the evidence. A Tel Aviv University professor published a book asserting that there is no Jewish people. A Ben-Gurion lecturer described his university, located well within pre-1967 Israel, as being in "Palestinian territory." Sociology professors awarded a prize to a Hebrew University graduate student for a paper claiming that IDF soldiers rarely rape Palestinian women because they view Palestinians as subhuman.

US universities

Why US universities are wealthy while Israel's are broke

Writing in Haaretz last month, Prof. Eli Podeh of Hebrew University aptly summarized the root of the university funding crisis in three words: "Nobody really cares." He even correctly attributed this apathy to Israelis' "negative view of academe." Yet rather than acknowledging the universities' own responsibility for this attitude, he blamed it on the population's obsession with "reality television and the pursuit of money" - a theory that unfortunately fails to explain why Americans, equally obsessed with reality television and making money, nevertheless boast the world's best and wealthiest universities.

Students hold a "tutorial" session with a junior lecturer outside of the gates of the Ben Gurion University during last year's strike.Photo: Dani Machlis
When comparing the Israeli and American systems, two facts immediately stand out. First, while our universities are state-funded, America's best and wealthiest universities are private. Second, annual tuition at top American schools is about 15 times the NIS 8,600 here.
These differences are not coincidental. In societies where money is considered a measure of value, American tuition proclaims higher education valuable, while local tuition labels it virtually worthless. Moreover, while our system makes higher education another state-funded entitlement, America's private system makes it a privilege.
Top American schools are therefore attractive to funders, who like the idea of enabling deserving students to obtain a valuable but otherwise unaffordable education. Moreover, since high tuition means that a majority of students receive financial aid, alumni feel obligated to help others as they were helped.
This country's universities, however, face strong disincentives to giving: Private donors object to funding a government entitlement; most alumni paid "full" tuition, and therefore feel no obligation to help others; and the product, as indicated by its price, is worthless anyway - a point that also argues against generous government funding.
And since, as last week's column explained, all Western universities must increase their non-state funding to survive, these disincentives put our schools at a serious disadvantage. Hence the importance of raising tuition, as the Shochat Committee recommended last year. In addition to increasing the universities' revenues in itself, it would encourage private donations by sending the signals necessary to attract them - that higher education is valuable, that it is not a government entitlement for which civil society bears no responsibility and that many deserving students cannot afford it without help.


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YET FOR all the importance of this issue, another American-Israeli difference that is less immediately obvious may be even more important. Prof. Israel Bartal, Hebrew University's dean of the humanities, enunciated this difference in the Los Angeles-based Jewish Journal last February, when he declared that "trying to shape a generation of Jewish leaders" is "beyond our scope." Substitute the appropriate nationality, and that statement would appall most leading non-Israeli schools.
England's Oxford and Cambridge, France's grande ecoles, America's Harvard, Yale and Princeton - all view producing future leaders as part of their job. That is why France has a grande ecole devoted exclusively to public administration, why Harvard's Kennedy School of Government or Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs rank among their respective universities' most prestigious departments, why a school like Princeton unabashedly boasts of "Princeton in the nation's service."
It is also why American scholars easily move between academia and government - people like Larry Summers (who left Harvard for government service, ultimately became secretary of the treasury, then returned as Harvard's president), Henry Kissinger (who left Harvard to become national security adviser and secretary of state, then returned to Georgetown University) or Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (a former Stanford provost). In Israel, such transitions are exceedingly rare.
The point is not that Israel needs more academics in politics; rather, it is the attitude this trend reflects. While American (or British or French) universities feel a responsibility to give back to the communities that produced them, our universities acknowledge no such responsibility. They view their job strictly as churning out experts in particular academic fields. But if universities feel no obligation toward society, why should society feel any obligation toward them?
OUR UNIVERSITIES do not even feel obliged to produce well-rounded citizens with a broad base of knowledge. Except at Bar-Ilan, where students must take some Jewish studies courses, there are no distribution requirements. Thus science majors can graduate without ever taking a humanities or social science course, while humanities majors can graduate without studying any natural or social science.
The result, as Nobel laureate in chemistry Prof. Aharon Ciechanover lamented in Yediot Aharonot two years ago, is that "even among people with academic degrees, I find garbled language, a lack of cultural depth and ignorance of general history and the history of the Jewish people. We need institutions of higher learning headed by path-breaking leadership, but that kind of leadership has disappeared."
Added to all this is rampant academic post-Zionism. Consider some examples: Two lecturers at Ben-Gurion University and its affiliate, Sapir College, refused to teach IDF reservists in uniform; many of their fellows supported them. A University of Haifa master's student received top marks for a thesis accusing IDF soldiers of massacring Arabs during the War of Independence, yet the veterans later won a libel suit by proving gross fabrications of the evidence. A Tel Aviv University professor published a book asserting that there is no Jewish people. A Ben-Gurion lecturer described his university, located well within pre-1967 Israel, as being in "Palestinian territory." Sociology professors awarded a prize to a Hebrew University graduate student for a paper claiming that IDF soldiers rarely rape Palestinian women because they view Palestinians as subhuman.