History of Harvard University - 20th Century

20th Century

During the 20th century, Harvard's international reputation for scholarship grew as a burgeoning endowment and prominent professors expanded the university's scope. Explosive growth in the student population continued with the addition of new graduate schools and the expansion of the undergraduate program. It built the largest and finest academic library in the world, and built up the labs and clinics needed to establish the reputation of its science departments and the Medical School. The Law School vied with Yale Law for preeminence, while the Business School combined a large-scale research program with a special appeal to entrepreneurs rather than accountants. The different schools maintain their separate endowments, which are very large in the case of the College/Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and the Business, Law and Medical Schools, but quite modest for the Divinity and Education schools.

Radcliffe College, established in 1879 as sister school of Harvard College, became one of the most prominent schools for women in the United States. In the 1920s Edward Harkness, (1874–1940), a Yale man with oil wealth, was ignored by his alma mater and so gave $12,000,000 to Harvard to establish a house system like that of Oxford University. Yale later took his money and set up a similar system.

In addition to the usual department, specialized research centers proliferated, especially to enable interdisciplinary research projects that could not be handled at the department level. The departments, however, kept jealous control of the awarding of tenure; typically tenured professorships went to outsiders, and not as promotions to assistant professors. Older research centers include the East Asian Research Center, the Center for International Affairs, the Center for Eastern Studies, the Russian Research Center, the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, and the Joint Center for Urban Studies (with MIT). The Centers raised their own money, sometimes from endowments but most often from federal and foundation grants, making them increasingly independent entities.

During World War II, Harvard was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission.