Amherst College is a private liberal
arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an
exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,795 students in
the fall of 2015. Students choose courses from 38 major programsin an unusually
open curriculum. Amherst was ranked as the second best liberal arts college in
the country by U.S. News & World Report,and ninth out of all U.S. colleges
and universities by Forbes[8] in their 2015 rankings.
Founded in 1821 as an attempt to
relocate Williams College by its president, Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is
the third oldest institution of higher education in Massachusetts.Amherst was
established as a men's college and became coeducational in 1975.
Amherst has historically had close
relationships and rivalries with Williams College and Wesleyan University which
form the Little Three colleges. It is also a member of the Five College
Consortium
In 1812, funds were raised in
Amherst for a secondary school, Amherst Academy; it opened December 1814. The
institution was named after the town, which in turn had been named after
Jeffery, Lord Amherst, a veteran from the Seven Years' War and later commanding
general of the British forces in North America. On November 18, 1817, a project
was adopted at the Academy to raise funds for the free instruction of
"indigent young men of promising talents and hopeful piety, who shall
manifest a desire to obtain a liberal education with a sole view to the
Christian ministry." This required a substantial investment from
benefactors.
During the fundraising for the
project, it became clear that without larger designs, it would be impossible to
raise sufficient funds. This led the committee overseeing the project to
conclude that a new institution should be created. On August 18, 1818, the
Amherst Academy board of trustees accepted this conclusion and began building a
new college
As early as 1815, six years before
the opening of Amherst College, the question of relocating Williams College to
some more central part of Massachusetts was agitated among its friends and in
its board of trustees. At that time Williams College had two buildings and
fifty-eight students, with two professors and two tutors. The library contained
fourteen hundred volumes. The funds were reduced and the income fell short of
the expenditures. Many of the friends and supporters of the college were fully
persuaded that it could not be sustained in its present location. The chief
ground of this persuasion was the extreme difficulty of the access to it.
At the same meeting of the board of
trustees at which Professor Moore was elected president of Williams College,
May 2, 1815, Dr. Packard of Shelburne introduced the following motion:
"That a committee of six persons be appointed to take into consideration
the removal of the college to some other part of the Commonwealth, to make all
necessary inquiries which have a bearing on the subject, and report at the next
meeting." The motion was adopted, and at the next meeting of the board in
September, the committee reported that "a removal of Williams College from
Williamstown is inexpedient at the present time, and under existing
circumstances."
But the question of removal thus
raised in the board of trustees and thus negatived only "at the present
time and under existing circumstances," continued to be agitated. And at a
meeting on November 10, 1818, influenced more or less doubtless by the action
of the Franklin County Association of Congregational Ministers, and the
Convention of Congregational and Presbyterian Ministers in Amherst, the board
of trustees resolved that it was expedient to remove the college on certain
conditions. President Moore advocated the removal, and even expressed his
purpose to resign the office of president unless it could be effected, inasmuch
as when he accepted the presidency he had no idea that the college was to
remain at Williamstown, but was authorized to expect that it would be removed
to Hampshire County. Nine out of twelve of the trustees voted for the
resolutions, which were as follows:
"Resolved, that it is expedient
to remove Williams College to some more central part of the State whenever
sufficient funds can be obtained to defray the necessary expenses incurred and
the losses sustained by removal, and to secure the prosperity of the college,
and when a fair prospect shall be presented of obtaining for the institution
the united support and patronage of the friends of literature and religion in
the western part of the Commonwealth, and when the General Court shall give
their assent to the measure."
In November, 1819, the trustees of
Williams College voted to petition the Legislature for permission to remove the
college to Northampton. To this application, Mr. Webster says, "the
trustees of Amherst Academy made no opposition and took no measures to defeat
it." In February, 1820, the petition was laid before the Legislature. The
committee from both houses, to whom it was referred, after a careful
examination of the whole subject, reported that it was neither lawful nor expedient
to remove the college, and the Legislature, taking the same view, rejected the
petition. ... Thus the long and exciting discussion touching the removal of
Williams College and the location of a college in some more central town of old
Hampshire County at length came to an end, and the contending parties now
directed all their energies to building up the institutions of their choice.
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