Колледжи и университеты США
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.