American Colonial Colleges 271
the study of Hebrew, which he considered a “gentleman’s
accomplishment,” as well as Greek and his own favorite sub-
ject, Philosophy. As in Philadelphia, the brave announce-
ment of modern and practical subjects was soon forgotten,
and a conventional college curriculum was established, with
Latin disputations and orations at Commencement. This
does not seem to have been what the young men of New York
wanted; for in the earliest register of students admitted to
King’s one finds remarks such as “in his 2d year went to mer-
chandize,” “Removed to Philadelphia College,” “Left Col-
lege in his 2d year after having behaved very indifferently,”
against a considerable number of the matriculants’ names.
King’s made a bid for university status with a medical
school only a year after Philadelphia ; she acquired six part-
time medical professors as early as 1767, and granted her
first medical degrees in 1769. Only the outbreak of the Rev-
olution prevented her obtaining a new charter from George
III as a university. Apart from this school of medicine,
King’s, until the occupation of New York by the King’s
forces, was a liberal arts college of the traditional type, edu-
cating such men as John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, who
were soon to be colleagues or rivals of the Adamses of Har-
vard, Madison of Princeton, Hopkinson of Philadelphia,
and Jefferson of William and Mary.
The problem of supporting the earliest colonial colleges
was exceedingly difficult, and interesting to us, as it shows
a gradual adaptation to American social and economic con-
ditions. No university since the middle ages has been wholly
self-supporting. It has always been necessary to supplement
the fees that students pay from some other source. The
English who settled Virginia and New England were unused
to supporting education out of taxation. Their schools and
university colleges were maintained by endowments, largely