Question: What founded the oldest undergraduate college at Columbia University that is apart of the belief that New Yorkers needed a university designed for young men who would be admitted based on merit?

The African Dorcas Association was a black women's community aid society founded in New York City in January 1828.  The women of this group sewed clothes for New York's black children so that they would have appropriate attire for school.  They were also one of the first societies where "women met independently and without the supervision of men."  Through this work, the members of the African Dorcas Association hoped to make education more accessible for black youth in New York City.  After just one year, this organization distributed 168 articles of clothing to school children.  They became a prominent contributor to encourage young Black children to attend schools.  New Yorkers surrounding the organization did not find it appropriate for black women to be educated or involved in societal issues in this way, yet, despite the opposition, the African Dorcas Association thrived.  The society remained in operation into the 1830s. <SEP>  A group of prominent New York City residents from the city's landed class of merchants, bankers, and traders established NYU on April 18, 1831.  These New Yorkers believed the city needed a university designed for young men who would be admitted based on merit, not birthright or social class.  Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury under Thomas Jefferson, described his motivation in a letter to a friend: "It appeared to me impossible to preserve our democratic institutions and the right of universal suffrage unless we could raise the standard of general education and the mind of the laboring classes nearer to a level with those born under more favorable circumstances."  To the school's founders, the classical curriculum offered at American colonial colleges needed to be combined with a more modern and practical education. The history of New York University begins in the early 19th century.  Educators in Paris, Vienna, and London were beginning to consider a new form of higher learning, where students began to focus not only on the classics and religion, but also modern languages, philosophy, history, political economy, mathematics, and physical science; so students might become merchants, bankers, lawyers, physicians, architects, and engineers.  Although the new school would be non-denominational – unlike many American colonial colleges, which at the time offered classical educations centered on theology – the founding of NYU was also a reaction by evangelical Presbyterians to what they perceived as the Episcopalianism of Columbia College. <SEP>  It was founded in 1754 by the Church of England as King's College, receiving a Royal Charter from King George II of Great Britain.  Columbia College is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York and the fifth oldest in the United States.  The college is distinctive for its comprehensive Core Curriculum.  Columbia College is highly selective in its admissions.  For the class of 2021, the college accepted 5.8% of its applicants, the second lowest acceptance rate in the Ivy League behind only Harvard. Columbia College is the oldest undergraduate college at Columbia University, situated on the university's main campus in Morningside Heights in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. <SEP> The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men from relief families as part of the New Deal.  Originally for young men ages 18–25, it was eventually expanded to young men ages 17–28.  Robert Fechner was the first director of the agency, succeeded by James McEntee following Fechner's death.  The CCC was a major part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal that provided unskilled manual labor jobs related to the conservation and development of natural resources in rural lands owned by federal, state and local governments.  The CCC was designed to provide jobs for young men, and to relieve families who had difficulty finding jobs during the Great Depression in the United States.  At the same time, it implemented a general natural resource conservation program in every state and territory.  Maximum enrollment at any one time was 300,000.  Over the course of its nine years in operation, 3 million young men participated in the CCC, which provided them with shelter, clothing, and food, together with a small wage of $30 (about $547 in 2015) a month ($25 of which had to be sent home to their families).