Barzun, Paul Lazarsfeld, Mark Van Doren, Lionel Trilling, and I.I. Rabi, to

name just a few of the great minds of the Morningside campus. The

University’s graduates during this time were equally accomplished—for

example, two alumni of Columbia’s Law School, Charles Evans Hughes and

Harlan Fiske Stone (who also held the position of Law School dean), served

successively as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Research into the atom by faculty members I.I. Rabi, Enrico Fermi, and

Polykarp Kusch placed Columbia’s Physics Department in the international

spotlight in the 1940s, and the founding of the School of International

Affairs (now the School of International and Public Affairs) in 1946 marked

the beginning of intensive growth in international relations as a major

scholarly focus of the University. The Oral History movement in the United

States was launched at Columbia in 1948.

Columbia celebrated its Bicentennial in 1954 during a period of steady

expansion. This growth mandated a major campus-building program in the

1960s, and, by the end of the decade, five of the University’s schools were

housed in new buildings.

The revival of spirit and energy on Columbia’s campus in recent years has

been even more sweeping. The 1980s saw the completion of over $145 million

worth of new construction, including two residence halls, a computer

science center, the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, a chemistry building,

the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Lawrence A. Wien Stadium, and

much more. The quality of student life on campus has been a primary

concern, and the opening of Morris A. Schapiro Hall in 1988 enabled

Columbia College to achieve its long-held goal of offering four years of

housing to all undergraduate students. A second gift from this farsighted

benefactor led to the opening in 1992 of the Morris A. Schapiro Center for

Engineering and Physical Science Research, which is helping to secure

Columbia’s leadership in telecommunications and high-tech research.

On the Health Sciences campus, a generous commitment from the Sherman

Fairchild Foundation has lent impetus to the development of the Audubon

Biomedical Science and Technology Park by providing funds for construction

of the Center for Disease Prevention. In addition to securing Columbia’s

place at the forefront of medical research, this project will help spur the

growth of the biotechnology industry in New York City, forge vital new

links between Columbia and the local community, and help to revitalize the

area around the medical center.

Thanks to concerted efforts to place the University on the strongest

possible foundations, Columbia is approaching the twenty-first century with

a firm sense of the importance of what has been accomplished in the past

and confidence in what it can achieve in the years to come.

In 1897, the University moved from 49th Street and Madison Avenue, where it

had stood for fifty years, to its present location on Morningside Heights

at 116th Street and Broadway. Seth Low, the President of the University at

the time of the move, sought to create an academic village in a more

spacious setting. Charles Follen McKim of the architectural firm of McKim,

Mead & White modeled the new campus after the Athenian agora. The Columbia

campus comprises the largest single collection of McKim, Mead & White

buildings in existence.

The architectural centerpiece of the campus is Low Memorial Library, named

in honor of Seth Low’s father. Built in the Roman classical style, it

appears in the New York City Register of Historic Places. The building

today houses the University’s central administration offices and the

Visitors Center.

A broad flight of steps descends from Low Library to an expansive plaza, a

popular place for students to gather, and from there to College Walk, a

promenade that bisects the central campus. Beyond College Walk is the South

Campus, where Butler Library, the University’s main library, stands. South

Campus is also the site of many of Columbia College’s facilities, including

student residences, the Ferris Booth Hall activities center, and the

College’s administrative offices and classroom buildings, along with the

building housing the Journalism School.

To the north of Low Library stands Pupin Hall, which in 1966 was designated

a national historic landmark in recognition of the atomic research

undertaken there by Columbia’s scientists beginning in 1925. To the east is

St. Paul’s Chapel, which is listed with the New York City Register of

Historic Places.

Many newer buildings surround the original campus. Among the most

impressive are the Sherman Fairchild Center for the Life Sciences, the

Computer Science building, Morris A. Schapiro Hall, and the Morris A.

Schapiro Center for Engineering and Physical Science Research.

Two miles to the north of Morningside Heights is the twenty-acre campus of

the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, overlooking the Hudson River in

Manhattan’s Washington Heights. Among the most prominent buildings on the

site are the twenty-story Julius and Armand Hammer Health Sciences Center,

the William Black Medical Research building, and the seventeen-story tower

of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 1989, The Presbyterian

Hospital opened the Milstein Hospital Building, a 745-bed facility that

incorporates the very latest advances in medical technology and patient

care. To the west is the New York State Psychiatric Institute; east of

Broadway will be the Audubon Biomedical Science and Technology Park, which

will include the new Center for Disease Prevention. The Park is being

developed as a major urban research complex to house activities on the

cutting edge of scientific and medical research.

Other interesting information.

It is also very interesting, that in the USA many universities are

connected with each other. They belong to different unions. For example,

Dartmouth College, Brown University, Columbia University, Princeton

University and Yale University are the parts of «Ivy League». It is a union

of the most respectable and famous universities in the United States of

America.

«Ivy League» consists of eight colleges and universities. All of them are

rather old and popular. But they are not cheap, because students must pay

much money for their education.

The most expensive University is Dartmouth. The cheapest one is Yale.

All the universities have their own emblems, which are always different and

have definite meanings.

The

Report.

Klimenko Ekaterina.

9

form «V».

Education and Culture

In the United States, education, cultural activities, and the

communications media exert a tremendous influence on the lives of

individuals. Through these means, knowledge and cultural values are

generated, transmitted, and preserved from one generation to the next.

In most of the United States, illiteracy has been virtually eliminated.

However, census estimates suggest that 2.4 percent of the population over

age 25 is functionally illiterate, that is, they are unable to read and

write well enough to meet the demands of everyday life. More of the

population has received more education than ever before. Among Americans

aged 25 and older in 1993, about four-fifths had completed high school, as

compared with only about one-fourth as recently as 1940. In 1993 nearly 22

percent of the population had com pleted four or more years of college.

This same trend toward increased accessibility and usage applies to

America's cultural institutions, which have continued to thrive despite a

troubled economy.

Education

In the United States, education is offered at all levels from

prekindergarten to graduate school by both public and private institutions.

Elementary and secondary education involves 12 years of schooling, the

successful completion of which leads to a high school diploma. Although

public education can be defined in various ways, one key concept is the

accountability of school officials to the voters. In theory, responsibility

for operating the public education system in the United States is local. In

fact, much of the local control has been superseded, and state legislation

controls financing methods, academic standards, and policy and curriculum

guidelines. Because public education is separately developed within each

state, variations exist from one state to another. Parallel paths among

states have developed, however, in part because public education is also a

matter of national interest.

Public elementary and secondary education is supported financially by three

levels of government—local, state, and federal. Local school districts

often levy property taxes, which are the major source of financing for the

public school systems. One of the problems that arises because of the heavy

reliance on local property tax is a disparity in the quality of education

received by students. Rich communities can afford to pay more per student

than poorer communities; consequently, the disparity in wealth affects the

quality of education received. Some states have taken measures to level

this imbalance by distributing property tax collections to school districts

based on the number of students enrolled.

When public education was established in the American colonies in the mid-

17th century, it was viewed by many as an instrument that would break down

the barriers of social class and prejudice. Public schools were intended

for all creeds, classes, and religions. In addition to the development of

individuals, public schools were to promote social harmony by equalizing

the conditions of the population.

Most students attended private schools, however, until well into the 19th

century. Then, in the decades before the American Civil War (1861-1865), a

transition took place from private to public school education. This

transition was to provide children of all classes with a free education.

The idea of free public education did, however, encounter opposition. The

nonw hite population, which consisted primarily of blacks, was either

totally denied an education or allowed to attend only racially segregated

schools.

School Segregation

Before the Civil War, public school segregation was common both in the

South and in the North. In every southern state except Kentucky and

Maryland, laws existed that forbade the teaching of reading and writing to

slaves.

In 1867, after the end of the Civil War, schools for blacks began to be

established in various parts of the South. For nearly a century, until

1954, most education facilities in the southern states remained racially

segregated by state laws. Not only were schools segregated, but, in schools

for blacks, the physical conditions and facilities were poor,

transportation to such schools was meager or nonexistent, and expenditures

per black pupil fell below those per white pupil.

In the northern states during this same period, most black chi ldren also

attended separate schools. Sometimes this was the result of state laws;

more often it was the result of policy decisions, either officially

acknowledged or clandestine. Examples of the latter are gerrymandered

school districts and pupil transfer systems. The result, in the South and

the North, was a dual system of education for blacks and whites.

In 1954 the Supreme Court of the United States declared racial segregation

in schools illegal, in its landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

decision. Since then progress has been made toward desegregation; however,

widespread de facto segregation still exists today in both suburban and

urban areas. In the late 1980s more than 60 percent of black and Hispanic

American students attended schools where minority group enrollment

constituted over 50 percent of the total. In some large cities, either

because of residential patterns or because of an intent to segregate

schools, entire school districts are still segregated. Some districts have

attempted the busing of pupils to help achieve integration, but this has

proved generally unpopular and unworkable. Thus, the right to a

desegregated education remains more theoretical than real for many

children.

Elementary and Secondary Enrollments

In 1993 some 59,680 public elementary and 19,995 public secondary schools

were in operation in the United States, in addition to 4826 special-purpose

or combined schools. Enrollment in public schools in 1993 totaled about 31

million elementary pupils and about 11.7 million secondary students. In

addition, private elementary and secondary schools together enrolled about

4.9 million students in 1991. The largest system of private education in

the United States is that of the Roman Catholic church, with some 2.6

million students in 1991. In public schools, the average expenditure per

pupil in the United States in 1993 was about $5574, ranging from a low of

about $3218 in Utah to a high of about $9712 in New Jersey.

Higher Education

The first American colleges were small and attended by an aristocratic

student body. The earliest institutions were established in the United

States between the mid-17th and mid-18th centuries: Harvard University

(1636), the College of William and Mary (1693), Yale University (1701), the

University of Pennsylvania (1740), Princeton University (1746), Columbia

University (1754), Brown University (1764), Rutgers University (1771), and

Dartmouth College (1769). These private institutions initially prepared

students for careers in theology, law, medicine, and teaching—a curriculum

too narrow for a country experiencing a rapid expansion of its territory,

industry, and industrial population.

An important development occurred in 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln

signed the Morrill Act (see Land-Grant Colleges), which donated public

lands to the several states and territories to provide colleges with the

resources necessary to teach such branches of learning as agriculture and

the mechanical arts. The Morrill Act was designed to promote the liberal

and practical education of the new industrial population. Based on the act,

each state was granted 12,141 hectares (30,000 acres) of federal land for

each member it had in Congress. In addition to creating colleges, the

Morrill Act extended education to groups that would benefit from higher

education regardless of financial background and greatly accelerated the

admission of women to institutions of higher learning. Some of the larger

institutions that were established or expanded as a result of the Morrill

Act include the University of Arizona (1885), the University of California

at Berkeley (1868), the University of Florida (1853), the University of

Illinois (1867), Purdue University (1865), the University of Maryland

(1807), Michigan State University (1855), Ohio State University (1870),

Pennsylvania State University (1855), and the University of Wisconsin

(1849).

Higher education, like elementary and secondary education, has historically

been racially segregated in the United States. Before 1954 most blacks

gained access to higher education only by attending colleges and

universities established for blacks, nearly all of which were located in

the southern states. With the gradual dissolution of most traditional

racial barriers, more and more blacks enrolled in institutions where whites

made up the majority of the student body. By 1990 only about 17 percent of

all black students were enrolled in the 105 historically black colleges and

universities.

Accreditation

A unique feature of higher education in the United States is the device

known as accreditation, which includes voluntary self-evaluation by a

school and appraisal by a group of its peers. This process operates through

nationally recognized accrediting agencies and associations and certain

state bodies. These agencies or associations have established educational

criteria to evaluate institutions in terms of their own objectives and to

ascertain whether programs of educational quality are being maintained.

They provide institutions with continued stimulus for improvement, to

ensure that accredited status may serve as an authentic index of

educational quality.

Costs of Higher Education

The cost of higher education varies by type of institution. Tuition is

highest at private four-year institutions, and lowest at public two-year

institutions. The private four-year colleges nearly quadrupled their

average tuition rates between 1975 and 1990. For private four-year

colleges, tuition and fees for the 1992-1993 academic year averaged about

$13,043, compared with about $2827 at public four-year colleges. The cost

of attending an institution of higher education includes not only tuition

and fees, however, but also books and supplies, transportation, personal

expenses and, sometimes, room and board. Although tuition and fees

generally are substantially lower at public institutions than at private

ones, the other student costs are about the same. The average cost for

tuition, fees, and room and board for the 1992-1993 academic year at

private four-year colleges was about $18,892. At public four-year colleges

the average combined cost was about $6449.

Enrollment Trends

In 1992 about 62.1 million people were enrolled in elementary and secondary

schools and institutions of higher education, about 1.1 million more than

the number enrolled in 1975.

Nursery school enrollment increased sharply between 1970 and 1992, from

about 1.1 million to about 2.9 million children. This rise in nursery

school enrollment may have occurred because of the increasingly recognized

value of preprimary education as well as the growth in employment outside

the home of women with young children. College and university enrollment

also increased substantially, from some 8.6 million students in 1970 to

14.5 million in 1992. The increase in enrollment in institutions of higher

education was primarily due to the growth in attendance by women. Of the

total school enrollment in 1992, whites constituted about 83 percent,

blacks about 10 percent, and Hispanic Americans (who may be of any race)

about 7 percent.

Libraries

. The beginning……………………………………………………….1-2

. Princeton University…………………………………………….2

. The College of William and Mary…………………………..2-7

. Yale University……………………………………………………..7

. Rutgers College……………………………………………………7-8

. Brown University…………………………………………………8-10

. University of Pensilvania………………………………………10-14

. Washington and Lee University…………………………….14-16

. Columbia University…………………………………………….16-22

. Other interesting information…………………………………22

. « Ivy League »………………………………………………………23-24

. Education and Culture……………………………………………25

. Education…………………………………………………………….25-31

. Literature…………………………………………………………….32

. N. V. Bagramova.

T. I. Vorontsova.

«The book for reading in area studies. The United States of America

(country and people)»

«Publishers Soyuz», St. Petersburg, 2000 year.

. O. L. Soboleva.

«Students Encyclopedia. Russian language, Literature, Russian history,

English language.»

Moscow, «AST-PRESS», 2001 year.

. Internet.

Official web sites of the colleges and universities.

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