<p>ucb – I knew there were others, but UC Merced is both the most recent and the most ambitious of them. I was using it not only as proof that there HAVE been new universities created, but also of how difficult and expensive it is to create them.</p>
<p>Add Rockefeller, Cornell, Mellon to that list. Yes, it was rich people, with huge egos and checkbooks, but it was still an amazing effort and amazing accomplishment.</p>
<p>One thing to remember is that the real model of the modern university didn’t exist before that period. Harvard, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Penn, Virginia . . . they had been around for a long time, but they were nowhere near the forefront of education at the time, not yet. As we know, over time they responded pretty successfully to the challenges all these “charter schools” presented – and we shouldn’t forget to include Michigan and Berkeley with them – with their novel concepts like co-education, “majors”, financial aid, graduate degrees, sports, clubs, community service, nondiscrimination . . . .</p>