NEW YORK State has no State university in the usual sense of the term. In 1784 the legislature passed a bill ‘for establishing a University within this State’; but by the term ‘university’ the legislators meant, not a school in the modern sense, but an entire system of education under State control. A Board of Regents was set up as a corporation to supervise this system. When a Columbia College group gained control of the Board of Regents, popular demand forced the establishment of a Department of Public Instruction to administer the’ common schools.’ In 1904 the two agencies were combined in a State Education Department, and since 1910 the Board of Regents has been the head and the Commissioner of Education the chief executive officer of the Department. The Board, now numbering 12, is elected, one member each year for a 12-year term, by a joint session of the senate and assembly, and serves without pay. Thus, as a result of a historical development, the State educational system is governed in part by a group of public-spirited citizens devoted to its welfare.
The Education Department, acting through the Board of Regents and the Commissioner, performs a wide variety of duties. It charters colleges and universities, associations for the promotion of education, literature, science, art, and so on; it has a voice in budgeting the State-supported colleges of agriculture, veterinary medicine, and home economics at Cornell University, the College of Forestry at Syracuse University, and the College of Ceramics at Alfred University; it exercises complete jurisdiction over the six State agriculture schools, the merchant marine academy in New York City, the two State teachers’ colleges and nine normal schools. It prescribes regulations for admission to professional study, and, with the exception of Law, issues licenses for the practice of the professions after examination; and for secondary schools it prescribes syllabi and examinations—formidable barriers known to high school students briefly as ‘regents’—leading to a diploma generally accepted for admission to college. It administers the State library and the State museum and directs the preservation and publication of public records; and it reviews and licenses motion pictures to be exhibited in the State. Finally, at the annual convocation of the University of the State of New York it confers honorary degrees. The Commissioner of Education, as executive officer of the Department, with the approval of the Regents apportions State aid and exercises judicial power in all purely educational controversies.
While the general administration of the educational system has thus been centralized, a large measure of local independence remains. More than 150 cities and villages manage their own school affairs, subject only to review by the State Department. Outside of these the State is divided into districts under elected trustees and qualified district superintendents, who are responsible to the Commissioner of Education.
The first schoolmaster to teach in New Amsterdam had to take in washing to make enough to live on. A public school, free for 20 pupils, seems to have been opened in New York City in 1732, but for more than 150 years the clergyman dominated in the classroom. The most notable educational event of provincial times was the incorporation of King’s College, now Columbia, under Royal charter in 1754. A free school for Negro children was opened by the Manumission Society of New York in 1787; and in 1805 the Free School Society, of which Mayor De Witt Clinton was president, was organized to provide educational opportunity for children not eligible for admission to the church schools. In 1826 the society became the Public School Society. A public board of education was established in 1842, which co-operated with the society until the bodies merged under legislative act in 1853. In the 48 years of its existence the society trained nearly 1,200 teachers, who instructed about 600,000 children; further, it started a free academy, which grew into the present City College.
When the rural districts were set up in the upstate area in 1812, they were made small because of the difficulties of transportation; and the result was the one-room, one-teacher school, the ‘little red schoolhouse’ over which the American public has waxed sentimental but which in the eyes of the professional educator is both expensive and inefficient. Under the Union Free School Act of 1853, a few hundred districts were consolidated into larger ‘union free school’ districts; and after 1925, under the stimulus of generous State grants, some 2,500 districts were consolidated into about 180 centralized districts, which erected the new central schools that enhance the appearance of many a roadside village. Yet in 1938 there were still 6,000 one-room, one-teacher schools, 2,000 of them with less than 10 children and 2,800 with from 10 to 20 children.
Secondary education in the State first took the form of private and semipublic academies, which were chartered in large numbers and which dominated the field until after the Civil War. Then, as the common school system was extended upward, most of these were absorbed within the expanding public high school system. The first teacher-training courses with State aid were given in several academies in 1835. The first State normal school was opened in Albany in 1844.
Union College, chartered in 1795, is the oldest upstate institution of higher learning. For many years before the Civil War, under the administration of Eliphalet Nott, it was the largest college in the country. The introduction of a civil engineering course in 1845 determined its permanent character, combining the pursuit of the liberal arts and pure sciences with the professional study of engineering within the limits of a small college. Hamilton College, chartered in 1812, has remained a purely liberal arts institution. Hobart was chartered in 1825. In 1826 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute was incorporated ‘for the purpose of instructing persons who may choose to apply themselves in the application of science to the common purposes of life’; today it is the oldest engineering school in the country. Madison—now Colgate—University was incorporated in 1846; Rochester in 1851; St. Lawrence in 1856; Alfred in 1857; Cornell in 1865; Syracuse, 1870; St. Bonaventure’s, 1875; Canisius and Niagara, 1883.
While many female seminaries and ‘colleges’ existed earlier, Elmira, chartered in 1855, was the first institution of full collegiate rank in the country devoted to the education of women. Vassar College, incorporated in 1861, was opened in 1865; Wells College was chartered in 1868. Other institutions, like Cornell, Buffalo, St. Lawrence, Syracuse, and Rochester, are coeducational.
Best known of New York City’s institutions of higher learning is Columbia University, with which are affiliated Barnard College, Bard College, and the New York Post-Graduate Medical School. New York University is another large institution, its Washington Square branch offering extensive cultural and professional curricula in evening classes. Fordham University is the largest Catholic institution of higher learning in the United States, and Manhattan College is another Catholic institution of considerable renown. Cooper Union, chartered in 1859 for the advancement of science and art, has given more than 200,000 students free instruction in science, engineering, and the fine arts. The city department of education exercises jurisdiction over the public libraries of the metropolis and controls the operation of City, Hunter, Brooklyn, and Queens Colleges, all financed by the city. From 400,000 to 500,000 adults annually take advantage of free educational facilities offered in New York City.
In 1936 New York State, including the city and Long Island, had 70 degree-granting colleges, universities, and professional schools; 1,200 high schools and academies; about 11,000 elementary schools, 100 vocational and continuation schools, 11 State teachers’ institutions, 130 training schools for nurses, 16 schools for defectives and delinquents, and 22 Indian schools on the reservations. The student body included 1,750,000 in the elementary and 800,000 in the secondary schools, 100,000 in vocational and continuation schools, 150,000 in colleges and universities, 8,000 in teacher-training institutions, and 5,000 in special schools. About 400,000 pupils were enrolled in parochial and private schools. Members of the teaching profession in the State numbered close to 100,000. In 1936 expenditures for the public school system amounted to $350,000,000, one third contributed by the State, the rest raised locally.
When to these expenditures are added the sums spent for private schools and colleges and universities, it may safely be stated that the State of New York spends more than $1,000,000 a day on education. To complete the picture it is necessary to add the important contributions made by libraries and museums—historical, scientific, art—and their varied services, university extension, public forums, adult education, and education by radio.
