Private Higher Education

Higher education in the United States began as a private enterprise.Between the founding of Harvard in 1636 and the American Revolution in 1776, scores of private colleges were established in the American colonies to provide educational opportunity for the youth of the new nation.Most of these colleges still exist, and many of them are now among the leading colleges and universities in the world.he first state institution, the University of North Carolina, was established in 1789, and a great period of development of state institutions began with the passage of the Morrill Act in 1862.Even so, all through the 19th century there was a spectacular growth also in the number of private colleges and universities, and even frontier commu12ities in the Mi Western and Western states eges almost before the com-Iii recent years state colleges and universities lave grown so rapidly that to , in the nation as a whole, some 62 percent of college and university students are enrolled nstitutions under rol.In the state of California this figure college students increases, not