March 24, 2017 – Williamsburg and William and Mary College

          I started the day by exploring historic colonial Williamsburg, which is to say I started the day by exploring the college of William and Mary.  William and Mary is the second oldest college in the country.  Harvard may be older by a few years but William and Mary has the distinction of having the oldest college building in the United States.  The Sir Christopher Wren Building, constructed between 1695 and 1699, originally housed the entire college.  It is now the cornerstone jewel of a university that defines and makes up the majority of the buildings in the city of Williamsburg.  Much like Oxford or Cambridge, Williamsburg is picturesque, classical and dripping in living academic history due to the presence of its functioning university.  

           Wandering the buildings, lawns and courtyards I felt a bit of guilt, as this University is also not a two-year college.  But as all the community colleges in the state of Virginia are run centrally visiting more of them in this state kinds of feels like visiting multiple post offices.  The buildings may differ but the organization and function at each site is the same.  Besides as I learned more about the history of this particular university I realized history itself was trying to tell me an important lesson that I would not have learned if I were only looking at community colleges.             Today William and Mary is a public institution, but it was not always so.  The University was established under a patent charter from the King of England.  Its earliest schools were set up to teach the children of the local Indians as well as Virginians.  Under the King, the ultimate in central command and monopoly at the time, education was a state regulated political tool, to achieve the desired outcomes and means of the state. One of the first additions to the Wren Building was to add a chapel, because at the time church and education were inseparable, and centrally imposed.  All students at the college were required to be religiously Anglican.

            After the revolutionary war ended and representative government was established, the University was privately run.  This model of no centralized control is a hallmark of education principles in the US and lead to the accreditation system we now work with where even the regulation of Universities and Colleges is done by private businesses and organizations.  This principle is based on an ideal of not letting a ruler or government use education to further its own agenda.             Enter the next chapter of history…. William and Mary goes bankrupt…  Turns out businesses often fail, and such was the case over the years William and Mary was loosing money.  Rather than close one of our oldest universities, a decision was made to have the college become a public institution under the state of Virginia.  This is not a morality play or value judgment where public vs. private is concerned.  In this country we have both public and private options for higher education.  Both public and private colleges are accredited via the same non-governmental accreditation structure.  But I find the history of this college interesting on a couple of levels as it illustrates some basic conflicts that all colleges including community colleges have to deal with.