Financial Support of Colleges

Abstract

HE character and purpose of colleges and universities largely L regulate the matter of financial support, and profound changes in character and purpose have taken place since higher education was established in America. In the Colonial period nine denominational colleges were chartered primarily to train ministers; their maintenance was obtained from church, charity, and philanthropy. By the nineteenth century a growing diversity of religious belief had crept into the country until none of the colleges was suited to the public needs. The states then desired not only to aid, but to control, higher education by granting aid to private institutions already established. In consequence, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Dartmouth College each served for brief periods as public institutions. In i8i9, however, the famous Dartmouth College Court Decision held that under its charter Dartmouth College was a private and not a public corporation. This ended attempts of states to control private schools and colleges and led to the establishment of new public institutions of higher education under state control. The University of South Carolina, then South Carolina College, opened under full state control in I 805, and by i 830 eleven of our state universities were in existence. None of the colleges up to this period admitted women students to its With the passage of the Morrill Land-Grant Act of I 862, the Federal Government took a hand in higher education by offering support for at least one college in each state where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes. Since then the majority of colleges and universities have been founded, coeducation sanctioned, separate colleges for women established, and professional schools created. With the exception of the junior colleges, not many fouryear colleges have been chartered since i900, due to the growing tendency of extending the financial support and increasing available facilities of institutions already established. Two-year junior colleges, however, are increasing rapidly in numbers. California, Iowa, and Texas have been particularly active in establishing public junior colleges administered under the public-school systems, while most of the private junior colleges are located in Texas, Missouri, Kentucky, and Virginia. Not all of the two-