History of the U.S. Education (1794)

Americans have shown a great concern of education since early colonial times. The first settlers, in fact, included an unusually high proportion of educated people. In the Massachusetts Bay colony in the early 1600s there was an average of one university man to every 40 or 50 families – much higher than in Old England. Some of these men, many of them graduates of Cambridge, came together and in 1636 founded Harvard College, 140 years before American independence. Other early institutions of higher learning were the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, established in 1693, and Yale, founded in 1701. Before the Revolution in 1776, nine colleges had already been opened in the colonies, most of them later becoming universities.

From the 1640s on, Massachusetts required all towns with more than 50 families to provide a schoolmaster at public expense. It established the world's first universal and compulsory free schools. In the course of the 17^th century, free schools had been established in a number of places. Many academies (schools offering a classical education as well as more practical training) opened throughout the next century, including the one established by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia in 1751. Soon every state provided for a system of free public schools open to all and paid for by public taxes.

In 1862 Congress passed a law which provided states with public (federal) lands to be used for higher education, especially for the establishment of agricultural and mechanical-arts colleges. As a result, many "land-grant colleges" were established.

Every year about 13 million Americans are enrolled in the over 3,000 colleges and universities of every type: private, public, church-related, small and large, in cities, counties and states.

Americans have won 168 Nobel Prizes in the science alone physics, chemistry and medicine – since the awards were first given in 1901. If most Americans are very critical of their educational system at the elementary and secondary school level, many will also admit that their higher education system is "in many respects, the best in the world".

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