when was the college of william and mary founded
College of William & Mary The College of William & Mary (also known as William & Mary, W&M, and officially the College of William and Mary in Virginia) is a public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia. Founded in 1693 by letters patent issued by King William III and Queen Mary II, it is the second-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, after Harvard University.
First university in the United States Harvard University calls itself "the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States" and this claim is rarely challenged. It is possible to disagree what year should be taken as Harvard's "real" founding date (Harvard uses the earliest possible one, 1636, when the institution was chartered by the Massachusetts Bay Colony). However, Harvard has operated since 1650 under the same corporation, the "President and Fellows of Harvard College"; it thus has an unbroken institutional history dating back to the mid seventeenth century (an official Harvard web page for the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences [10] claims, "Founded in 1636, Harvard is America's oldest university").