Harvard College

Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees (the other being Harvard Extension School). Founded in 1636, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and one of the most prestigious in the world. In 1636 the New College came into existence by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony—though without a single building, instructor, or student. In 1639 it was re-named in honor of deceased Charlestown minister John Harvard, who had bequeathed to the school his entire library and half of his monetary estate. Harvard's first instructor, schoolmaster Nathaniel Eaton, was also its first instructor to be dismissed—in...