'America's Oldest University': Why Penn Can Make Claim (1/2)

We continue our Foreign Student Series this week with questions from three listeners.

Thu Ya Naing from Burma wants to know how many colleges and universities are in the United States. Alexander Romashchenko in Russia wonders which university in the United States is the oldest. And Mohamad Firouzi in Iran would like to know more about Harvard University.

The National Center for Education Statistics says more than 4200 colleges and universities award degrees. These include 2-year schools as well as 4-year schools.

The oldest institution of higher learning in the country is Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was established in 1636 as Harvard College. Massachusetts was an English colony at the time. The school was named for a Puritan religious leader. John Harvard gave the college all his books and half his property when he died. At first, Harvard had 1 teacher and 9 students. Today it has almost 20000 students. Nearly 4000 of them this past year were from outside the United States.