Where ancient medieval masters gathered to teach Law, Medicine, or Theology, historic european universities like Bologna, Oxford, and Paris sprung up. During the industrial revolution new Polytechnics were founded in Europe's rising manufacturing centers to train a new generation of skilled scientists, technicians, and engineers, while the old universities expanded by adding new faculties. In the post-war era, universities were founded even where there had been no historic precedent for one, as governments decided education was a right to be accessed by all.

In the United States, many of the oldest universities were founded in the colonial era by the citizens of prosperous cities and towns, petitioning local government or even the monarch to provide a place of learning local scholars; as did the citizens of Boston to found Harvard University, Virginians to found the William & Mary, and New Yorkers to found Kings College, later renamed Columbia University.

In the 19th century, states and the federal government collaborated to found Teacher's Colleges and Technical Colleges. These institutions were also useful producers of skilled labor, especially in the sparsely populated west. In many respects, they were the American equivalent of the european Polytechnics, and indeed great industrial tycoons also contributed to the foundation of scientific and technically focused universities that still bear their names, like Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, and Carnegie Mellon.

But a second, uniquely american, phenomenon seems to have emerged that I don't fully understand. All across america liberal arts colleges were founded: small, humanities-focused schools, many in rural areas. What led to these liberal arts colleges being founded in the 19th century?