American Higher Education And American Culture, 2021
Oct 9th, 2021 | By Dr. Jim Eckman![](http://issuesinperspective.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/ken-theimer-PoE6Q48B-5k-unsplash-150x100.jpg)
Colonial America saw the founding of important institutions of higher education, all of which stressed preparing men for leadership in the colonies, especially spiritual leadership: Harvard (1636), Yale (1701), the College of William and Mary (1693), the College of New Jersey [later known as Princeton University] (1746), and the Academy of Philadelphia [later known as the University of Pennsylvania] (1755). As each developed a unique intellectual identity, each wrestled with Puritan theology or Anglican theology, as well as the 18th century Enlightenment, which by the 1740s was penetrating all facets of American intellectual life. Each produced the key leaders of the American movement towards independence from Great Britain (e.g., Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison). These educational institutions were centers of both Protestant Reformation thinking and Enlightenment thinking. The tension that arose between these two intellectual and theological revolutions shaped the development of America.