Talk:First university in the United States

message: This page is an outgrowth of discussion on the Talk:University_of_Pennsylvania page.   Please see it for a more detailed background of how/why this page arose.  Maybe someone could move/copy some of the more appropriate text to this Talk page? -Bindingtheory 00:14, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Intro

message: :Funny, I was doing the same thing at User:Dpbsmith/firstuniversity but didn't think it was ready for prime time. I'll probably do some merging and tinkering with yours. If you get there first please feel free to use what I've assembled here and at First university in the United States. There are three problems I see with First university in the United States currently. 
:First, we have to find a way to completely stay away from trying to adjudicate what should count as a university. We can't express our own opinion. And there's no need to. There's no need to "decide" the issue. There's no reason why four or five articles can't contain the true fact that "X calls itself the 'first university in the U.S.'". But there's some good reason for presenting in some central place a clear and neutral exposition of the actual facts that lie behind the claim.
:And don't present it as a debate. The sources that claim "X was the first university" are not interested in laying out the terms of the debate, they are only interested in presenting a one-sided case in a way that implies that there isn't any debate. It's not as if there were general agreement on how to frame the debate.
:Second, I don't think this should be a whole article. Gotta boil it down into at most a half-dozen paragraphs that could be a section of some other article, such as University.
:Third, the more I look at it, personally, the better I like Johns Hopkins. Johns Hopkins is "the first thingy that dpbsmith would recognize as being a 'real' university." I'm guessing that on close examination it will turn out that there's something fluky about those early Yale Ph.D.'s. Not that they didn't issue a piece of parchment with those letters on them... but Johns Hopkins established a graduate school and started churning out Ph.D.s systematically, bigtime. Was Yale revving up the speed and Johns Hopkins just passed them (to be in turn passed by Harvard)? Or was Yale just sputtering out a stray Ph.D. here and there because some department head thought what they were doing in Europe was cool? Dpbsmith (talk) 13:46, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Moved from [[Talk:University of Pennsylvania]]:

message: As it currently stands, this article is too close to being a "personal essay" and goes much too far in the direction of making reasonable, but unsupported judgements. The article is really more like what should have been on a talk page. Here's what I think should be done. The article should get two large sections, entitled "Facts that have been used to support claims" and "Definitions and criteria that have been used to support claims." Most of my "factoids" will do in the first section. Most of Bindingtheory's current content go in the second section.
Bindingtheory's stuff needs to be revised so that it is more in the nature of simply quoting and paraphrasing the definitions that universities have used, and less musing on what a disinterested observer might think. 
I'm going to put in section titles now, but both sections are works in progress. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:07, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article structure and content 

message: I put in Cornell's note that it was "Once called 'the first American university' by educational historian Frederick Rudolph."" because, well, it fooled me. I thought this was yet another claim to being the "first university in the United States." Discussion at Talk:Cornell University convinces me that that is almost certainly wrong, and that "first American university" is supposed to convey something different from "America's first university." Rather than let this possibly-misleading statement hang there, I'm putting in an explanation based on the remarks of choster and btm, who've read Rudolph's book, and sticking a fact tag on it immediately as a reminder that it needs to be better sourced: 
:Cornell University says it was "Once called 'the first American university' by educational historian Frederick Rudolph." However, Rudolph did not mean that Cornell was the first university in America, but rather that it was in the vanguard of sweeping changes, brought about by with the Land Grant movement which created a characteristically American style of institution: coeducational, nonsectarian, egalitarian, and with a curriculum not focussed on the Latin and Greek classics.[citation needed]
btm mentions [the Yale Report of 1828 and Rudolph's American College and University: A History. I've ordered the latter through interlibrary loan and hope to be able to give a better reference soon... Dpbsmith (talk) 11:27, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I should note that the quote you've added to this article is in Rudolph's book "Curriculum", .  btm talk 00:33, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cornell 

message: I still want to separate facts from arguments.
Since Penn uses "America's first university" as a slogan, and since it Lloyd has a quasi-official, short, succinct argument supporting that slogan, there is a case to be made that Lloyd's argument in full belongs in this article. However, I'm putting it in a separate section because it mixes two different issues, 1) providing postgraduate education, and b) officially receiving the name "University," and because it is an argument, intended not as a neutral presentation of facts but as a marshalling of facts in support of a point of view. 
The following comments are intended to show not that Lloyd is wrong, but that his presentation is non-neutral.
Lloyd says
*In the Anglo-American model, a college, by definition, is a faculty whose subject specialization is in a single academic field.
Unfortunately, there is no clean, bright-line "definition" of either "college" or "university," particularly in the United States. And there is no "Anglo-American model" since American universities were not closely similar to British universities. Vaguely similar, yes. Intentionally architecturally similar, yes. He's calling on general knowledge and opinion here. You'll notice that he does not cite any source as a definition of the word "college." 
If  "college" were defined as "an institution that offers baccalaureate but not doctoral degrees" and "university" as "an institution that offers both baccalaureate and doctoral degrees" then things would be clear, but if you check you will find that dictionaries do not, not, not do this, because the words are much too fuzzy and flexible to be pinned down that way. Let's look at one such definition (AHD4):
:1a. An institution of higher learning that grants the bachelor's degree in liberal arts or science or both. b. An undergraduate division or school of a university offering courses and granting degrees in a particular field. c. A school, sometimes but not always a university, offering special instruction in professional or technical subjects. ... f. Chiefly British A self-governing society of scholars for study or instruction, incorporated within a university. 
Notice how  the dictionary gives four different definitions, which have a vague fuzzy similarity to Lloyd's but by no means a clear coincidence. "Liberal arts or sciences or both." Hmmmm. Both? Then a college is not restricted to a "single" academic field? Or are the arts and sciences a single field? If so, then how come they have different degrees? Oh, wait, some schools issue the same degree for both? But others don't? 
How about "a school, sometimes but not always a university, offering special instruction in professional or technical subjects?" Oh, then "special instruction in professional or technical subjects" could be offered by a college without automatically disqualifying it as a "college" and turning it into a "university?" 
Now, as to Lloyd's point about the name. There is a very tricky issue that needs to be described carefully. If we accept Penn's founding date and the normal description of its origins, Penn is the descendant of the College of Philadelphia. But if this is true, then the first institution in the U. S. to be formally chartered with the name "University" was not the College of Philadelphia, but its rival, the University of the State of Pennsylvania. Does it matter, since they merged in 1791 to become the "University of Pennsylvania?" Maybe not, but I am not sure this is really the same thing as saying that the institution which is present-day Penn received the name "University" in 1779. To his credit, Lloyd acknowledges this issue (without, of course, stressing it).
Does that make any difference? Probably not, for the only competing claim would seem to be William and Mary's, and they sort of botched that by insisting on retaining the name "college." I still haven't found out the details of what exactly happened on December 4, 1779; the William and Mary website description sounds like it might or might not have become a "de facto university" in Lloyd's terminology on that date. The question, though, to which I currently don't know the answer, is this: when "under the leadership of Thomas Jefferson, then governor of Virginia and a member of the Board of Visitors, William and Mary became a university," does this mean that some formal document exists that applies the word "university" to the college? 
I'm not being very serious about any of this, just trying to show that Lloyd's argument is synthetic, and presented in a way that makes it seem simpler, clearer, and more conclusive than the facts behind it. Dpbsmith (talk) 12:12, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Separate section for Lloyd's argument 

message: This page appears when you click on the United States in the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, but it doesn't actually say which U.S. university has been in continuous operation the longest.  This is obviously a different question from the earliest founding date or the earliest transformation to a university.  Most of the colonial colleges seem not to have operated during parts of the Revolution, and some old institutions (Columbia, Penn, Rutgers, and W&M at least) have had gaps in operation of four years or more before 1890.  Is there a U.S. university that has graduated a class each year since before 1771 (Dartmouth College)?  Did Harvard continue to operate during the Revolution, or perhaps Brown? --Editing 21:21, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Oldest university in continuous operation 

message: This clause comes off as unnecessary in an encyclopedic article: although requirements weren't the same then as they were now
I have removed it and reworded the sentence slightly to make it more objective and to remove some POV. Antelan talk 19:08, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  'Requirements weren't then.. 

message: "In the U.S. there is no bright-line definition of what entitles an institution to be considered a university versus a college,"    What is this supposed to mean ?? Eregli bob (talk) 02:58, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  There is no definition of bright-line definition 

message: None of the claims made on behalf of Georgetown are backed by sources cited. 
Georgetown itself makes only the claim that "Founded in 1789, the same year the U.S. Constitution took effect, Georgetown University is the nation's oldest Catholic and Jesuit university."About Georgetown. 
The History section of the "About Georgetown" page makes no mention of any history prior to 1788, and does not say anything about the graduate school being founded in 1820 or granting a degree in 1821. Neither does the web page of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:11, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Georgetown

message: Although Harvard, Yale, Penn & the College of William and Mary are in contention for the title of "First University in the United States," the United States itself did not exist when they were founded. Possibly for that reason, some contributors speak of "The First University in America." But none of these US institutions could be "The First University in America." 
The first university in North America was the Royal University of Mexico, now the National Autonomous University of Mexico, chartered by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1551 and opened in 1553. 
The first university on the American mainland was the University of San Marcos in Lima, which received its charter from Charles V a few months earlier in 1551 and opened a few days earlier in 1553. If a medical school is required for a real university, its Faculty of Medicine opened in 1573. 
But the first university in the Americas was the University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, now the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, which was originally a Dominican seminary but received a charter from Pope Paul III to become a university in 1538. NRPanikker (talk) 23:56, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  First University in America 

message: Removing:
* Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute claims to be the oldest technological university in the English-speaking world.
The topic of this article is the first university in the United States, not the first technology university or the first medical school or the first college of optometry. Perhaps a section on alleged firsts in various specialties might be interesting if someone wanted to make it fairly comprehensive. Dpbsmith (talk) 02:45, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: RPI

message: I love the way it synthesizes a lot of original research, makes novel claims, and explicitly instructs the reader to make up his/her mind about a controversial topic. 
Sure isn't an encyclopedia article! 07:05, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  This is a great essay! 

message: I'm moving this item here:
* It may also be noted that Washington at Chester, now known as Washington College, was the first institution of higher learning accredited after the Declaration of Independence was signed.  The school takes claim that they are the first college in the United States of America, in a literal sense.
The topic is not the first college in the United States or the first institution of higher learning in the United States, but the first university in the United States.Dpbsmith (talk) 01:42, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  The topic is the "first '''university,'''" not the first college 

message: The section titled "First "research" university in the United States" is quite compelling; however, much of the text is copied verbatim from this reference. It would be wonderful if the content could be preserved while the text is edited so as to avoid plagiarism. Tesseran (talk) 06:44, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copying in "First "research" university" section 

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