Yale University has a system of fourteen residential colleges with which all Yale undergraduate students and many faculty are affiliated. Inaugurated in 1933, the college system is considered the defining feature of undergraduate life at Yale College, and the residential colleges serve as the residence halls and social hubs for most undergraduates.[1][2] Construction and programming for eight of the original ten colleges were funded by educational philanthropist Edward S. Harkness. Yale was, along with Harvard, one of the first universities in the United States to establish a residential college system.[3][4][5]
Though their organizational and architectural features are modeled after the autonomous, constituent colleges of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, they are dependent colleges of the university with limited self-governance. Each college is led by a Head of College (formerly known as a Master) who is usually a tenured professor, and a Dean in charge of student affairs and residential life. University faculty and administrators are affiliated with the colleges as fellows, and some live or keep offices in the college along with the Dean and Head.
All fourteen colleges are built in an enclosing configuration around a central courtyard; all but two employ revivalist architectural styles popularized at Yale by James Gamble Rogers. Each has a dining hall, library, recreational facilities, a Master's House, apartments for resident fellows and Dean, and 250 to 400 student rooms, with most arranged in suites. Most reside in the colleges after their freshman year, which they spend on the university's Old Campus. In addition to sharing common residence and dining facilities, students plan events, lectures, and social activities within their college, and compete against other colleges in a yearlong intramural sports championship.
In the fall of 2017, Yale opened two new residential colleges, Benjamin Franklin College and Pauli Murray College, bringing the total to 14.[6]
- ^ "Residential Colleges". Yale College. Archived from the original on 28 March 2014. Retrieved 26 March 2014.
- ^ Ryan 2001, pp. 19.
- ^ Alex Duke (1996). Importing Oxbridge: English Residential Colleges and American Universities. Yale University Press. pp. 91–124.
- ^ Kyle Farley (2016). Martyn Evans; Tîm Burt (eds.). The Collegiate Way: University Education in a Collegiate Context. Springer. pp. 52, 55.
- ^ Ted Tapper; David Palfreyman (2010). The Collegial Tradition in the Age of Mass Higher Education. Springer. p. 119.
- ^ "Yale retains Calhoun College's name, selects names for two new residential colleges, and changes title of 'master' in the residential colleges". Yale University. 27 April 2016. Archived from the original on 25 July 2016. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
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