So the 1st college in the US was built in 1636, and I'd assume at that same time, a type of credit system was put in place to determine who was qualified to graduate? But searching through the web for old documents/articles, I can't find any specific metric used. Not even age or enrollment requirements.
So does this mean you just went there, got told "ok" by the college dean, and then sent off to start operating on people? If so, is this because medicine wasn't as advanced during the time, and hence, required fewer years of formal teaching? Or did we have some type of system like we have now: Associate's, Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctorate, each one earned with every additional 2 years of learning? And were these earlier campuses liveable for the medical students (as in, provided dormitories and on-campus housing)?
Also, not what I asked in the title, but just some info I'm also curious about while I'm at, aside from Physician (Medical Doctor), Mathematician, or Theologist, what courses could you take when higher education was just starting to become a thing. If you could possibly list the 1st appearances of certain fields/studies throughout the 1700s and 1900s, that would be very much appreciated. For instance, the title "psychologist" didn't become a thing you could pursue for a career until 1880.
Thank you in advance for help!
So the 1st college in the US was built in 1636, and I'd assume at that same time, a type of credit system was put in place to determine who was qualified to graduate? But searching through the web for old documents/articles, I can't find any specific metric used. Not even age or enrollment requirements. So does this mean you just went there, got told "ok" by the college dean, and then sent off to start operating on people?
There are those who study the history of medicine and credentialing in the United States can speak to the rest of your question. I can speak to this first part and assure you that it wasn't your searching that was lacking, it was any structure for age and enrollment requirements in the Colonial Colleges.
It's worth stating explicitly that the modern college structure of 4 years between high school and career for (mostly) young people of all genders, races, classes, and disability status is a fairly new construct - like 1960s new. For most of their history, they were an educational structure that primarily focused on the sons of men with access to power, or those young men who wished to gain access to power. The rise of women's colleges, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and tribal colleges emerged from the very effective gatekeeping that happened at Colonial Colleges. To matriculate at a Colonial College one had to be:
I get into more details about those four criteria here.
The nature of what it meant to graduate was just as idiosyncratic. Students did typically enroll for four years (more on that nomenclature here) but there wasn't the social pressure associated with not finishing that there is now. A great deal of stems from the cultural shift in the purpose of college. Up until the modern era, college was less about preparing for a job and more about networking and social connections. So, a young man wasn't going to school to be a politician per se, he was going to become a learned man and become fluent in the language of power, including the cultural touchstones that men in power knew.