Question: Which college was founded first, Williams College or University of Southern California?

The University of Southern California (USC or SC) is a private research university located in Los Angeles, California.  USC has historically educated a large number of the region's business leaders and professionals.  In recent decades, the university has also leveraged its location in Los Angeles to establish relationships with research and cultural institutions throughout Asia and the Pacific Rim.  Founded in 1880, it is the oldest private research university in California.  An engine for economic activity, USC contributes $8 billion annually to the economy of the Los Angeles metropolitan area and California. <SEP> Paul M. Birdsall (???? -May 2, 1970) was a historian and diplomat.  Educated at St. Paul's School, he earned his doctorate at Harvard University in 1928, where he studied under the influence of Charles Howard McIlwain.  He taught European history at Williams College as assistant and then associate professor.  In 1936 he became Dean of Students at Williams College.  He was also a trustee of Vassar College.  He then entered a career in government service.  During World War Two, he served in the Office of Strategic Services.  In 1947, he was assistant military attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Paris.  In 1948-1949 he worked for the Brookings Institution.  He later served as a reserve foreign service officer in Paris and at the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm.  According to obituaries, however, he actually worked for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1949 to 1962.  Birdsall died at the age of seventy in Christiansted, United States Virgin Islands, where he had been in retirement for eight years. <SEP> Williams College is a private liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States.  It was established in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams a colonist from the Province of Massachusetts Bay who was killed in the French and Indian War in 1755.  The college was ranked first in 2017 in the "U.S. News & World Report"' s liberal arts ranking for the 15th consecutive year, and third among liberal art colleges in the 2017 "Forbes" magazine ranking of America's Top Colleges. <SEP> Zephaniah Swift Moore (November 20, 1770 – June 29, 1823) was an American Congregational clergyman and educator.  He taught at Dartmouth College during the early 1810s and had a house built in Hanover, New Hampshire that now serves as Dartmouth's Blunt Alumni Center.  He served as the President of Williams College between 1815 and 1821 and the first President of Amherst College between 1821 and 1823.  He is most famous for abandoning Williams in order to found Amherst, taking some of the faculty and 15 students with him.  Supposedly, he also took portions of the Williams College library with him.  Though plausible, this account is unsubstantiated, and was declared false in 1995 by Williams College President Harry C. Payne.  Moore died two years after Amherst was founded, and was succeeded by Heman Humphrey, a trustee of Williams College.  His departure from Williams established the foundation for the intense Williams-Amherst rivalry that persists to the present.  To this day, he is regarded with a measure of derision on the Williams campus.