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Happy Birthday University of Wisconsin!
February 5 marks the anniversary of the opening of Wisconsin's largest institution of higher education, the University of Wisconsin. But when the school opened its doors to 20 students under the direction of Professor John W. Sterling in 1849, it was not the first college in Wisconsin or, at the time, the largest. Before statehood, the Wisconsin Legislature had incorporated four private colleges: Carroll College, Beloit College, Lawrence Institute (now Lawrence University) and Sinsinawa Mound College. Ripon College, then known as Brockway College, was founded soon after the University of Wisconsin, in 1851. And there must be something about opening schools in the depths of Wisconsin winter as four schools were chartered in the last week of January and first week of February: Ripon on January 29, Carroll College on January 31, Beloit on February 2, and the UW on February 5.
Many of the New Englanders who settled in Wisconsin in the early 1900s were shocked at the conditions of Wisconsin's first schools and enthusiastically supported the creation of a public education system. Education was so important to Wisconsin residents that the state constitution included provisions for both a state university and a system of free common schools — a startling advancement at a time when few, if any, schools in the United States were entirely free. The schools were to be funded by taxes and land sales, making education widely available for school-age kids between the ages of 4 and 20.
Limited resources and money constrained school improvements until the Civil War, however. Though the Legislature established the University of Wisconsin in 1848, it didn't have a single building until 1851 and the university received no state funding until 1866. The first classes were held at the Madison Female Academy, which had been provided to the fledgling university free of charge by the city. The course of study included English grammar, ancient and modern geography, history, algebra, Caesar's Commentaries, antiquities of Greece and Rome, penmanship, and composition. Tuition was $20 per student per year.
The first women's college in the state, the Milwaukee Female Seminary, opened in 1848 and soon came to the attention of well-known educational reformer Catherine Beecher. After visiting the school, she offered financial assistance to convert the school into a nondenominational college (it had been operated by the wife of the minister of the city's independent Free Congregational Church). The school accepted her offer and the institution was reorganized as the Milwaukee Female College in 1852. It became Milwaukee-Downer College in 1895.
The first system of vocational, technical and adult education in the country was established in Wisconsin in 1911 when the Legislature created the State Board of Industrial Education. Its purpose was to provide part-time educational opportunities for youths and adults not enrolled in regular schools.
Learn more about higher education in Wisconsin:
:: Posted February 5, 2007
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