In the USA Harvard University is supposed to be one of the oldest ones and no doubt education there considered very prestigious. The Times Higher Education Supplement and the Academic Ranking of World Universities proclaimed this higher educational establishment best in the world. There was also ranking in the US News and World Report, which claim that Harvard in a tie with Princeton is the leading one. Apart from being the most prestigious it also became the withiest University (after receiving a $25.5 billion grant).
The University was established in 1663 and registered as “The President and Fellows of Harvard College.” Today it is situated in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Its named University received after John Harvard in 1639, who was a young priest and the institution’s main sponsor. John Harvard left inheritance of several hundred pounds and several hundred books to the college, which later became the basis of the college library collection. The first time, when the college was officially called a “university” was in 1780, when this notion appeared in the Massachusetts Constitution.
The institution turned out to be the modern research university after a stage of drastic changes, which happened when Charles Park was a president of it (1869 to 1909). After these courses entrance examinations were established, students received the right to select the subjects and the groups has less people. Due to effectiveness of the reforms, Harvard started to influence the American educational system in a great way, including also the secondary levels.
Radcliffe College (or better known as “Harvard Annex”, which was started as an institution for women only) in 1999, was united with Harvard University with the aim of establishing the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
Nowadays, Harvard’s library is the fourth largest in the world. Great sums of tuition are received every year by the University. More than 6,000 undergraduate and 13,000 postgraduate students study there and plus 2,300 staff members. “Veritas” or truth is known to be the University’s motto. Harvard sport team and the University newspaper bear the name of a color, which in 1875 became the official school color, crimson.
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