Yale University has a system of fourteen residential colleges with which all Yale undergraduate students and many faculty are affiliated. Inaugurated in 1933, the college system is considered the defining feature of undergraduate life at Yale College, and the residential colleges serve as the residence halls and social hubs for most undergraduates. Construction and programming for eight of the original ten colleges were funded by educational philanthropist Edward S. Harkness. Yale was, along with Harvard, one of the first universities in the United States to establish a residential college system.
Though their organizational and architectural features are modeled after the autonomous, constituent colleges of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, they are dependent colleges of the university with limited self-governance, similar to most colleges of Durham. Each college is led by a Head of College (formerly known as a Master) who is usually a tenured professor, and a Dean in charge of student affairs and residential life. University faculty and administrators are affiliated with the colleges as fellows, and some live or keep offices in the college along with the Dean and Head.
All fourteen colleges are built in an enclosing configuration around a central courtyard; all but two employ revivalist architectural styles popularized at Yale by James Gamble Rogers. Each has a dining hall, library, recreational facilities, a head of college house, apartments for resident fellows and the college dean, and 250 to 400 student rooms, with most arranged in suites. Most reside in the colleges after their first year, which they spend on the university's Old Campus. In addition to sharing common residence and dining facilities, students plan events, lectures, and social activities within their college, and compete against other colleges in a yearlong intramural sports championship.
In the fall of 2017, Yale opened two new residential colleges, Benjamin Franklin College and Pauli Murray College, bringing the total to 14.
History
Origin (1925–1933)
As undergraduate enrollment in Yale College surged in the early 20th century, alumni and administrators began to express concern that the college had lost its social cohesion and lacked residential facilities sufficient for its size. This alienation and overcrowding, along with the growth of off-campus fraternities and society residences and a desire to further integrate the undergraduate populations of the Yale College and the Sheffield Scientific School, prompted the Yale Corporation to solicit funds for new residential buildings from Edward Harkness, a Yale alumnus with major holdings in Standard Oil. Anna Harkness, Edward's mother, gave money for the Memorial Quadrangle and a few other dormitories, but growth in enrollment still outpaced new residential space.
In 1925, Yale President James Rowland Angell proposed a "Quadrangle Plan" to the Yale Corporation, to be modeled after the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. Harkness admired the Oxbridge colleges as models of academic community and in 1926 offered $12 million to fund the plan. When the Yale Corporation deliberated for two further years and eventually suggested a modest housing plan for freshmen alone, Harkness instead seeded the house system at Harvard College.
Yale provost Charles Seymour approached Harkness about the Quadrangle Plan again in 1930, and Harkness agreed to create and endow eight residential colleges for $15.7 million. He requested that James Gamble Rodgers, a classmate of Harkness who had already designed the Memorial Quadrangle and Sterling Memorial Library for Yale, serve as their architect. After appraising Harvard's larger houses, Yale decided to build colleges of 150 to 200 members each. A "Committee on Quadrangles" was convened to name the colleges, appoint masters, select designs, organize faculty fellowships, and determine their degree of autonomy within the university.
New residential buildings required a major reconfiguration of Yale's central campus. Science buildings at the present-day sites of Jonathan Edwards, Branford, and Saybrook Colleges, including Sloane Physical Lab, Kent Chemical Lab, and the original Peabody Museum, were demolished and replaced by laboratories on Science Hill. The Yale Divinity School campus was moved for Calhoun College (renamed Hopper College in 2017), Berkeley College replaced the Berkeley Oval dormitories, and the university gym was displaced by Trumbull College. After three years of construction, the first seven residential colleges were opened on September 25, 1933, followed by Berkeley College in 1934, Timothy Dwight College in 1935, and Silliman College in 1940.
Early years (1933–1945) Originally, students applied to join a college after their freshman year, and under this practice the colleges acquired specific social and class positions. Davenport, Branford and Pierson Colleges gained reputations as residences for the wealthy, while Saybrook and Trumbull were known as "scholarship" colleges. While these stratifications were balanced by the college masters, inequalities persisted until sophomore selection was abolished in 1962 and freshmen were randomly assigned to colleges before their matriculation. Thereafter, only students with legacy status or siblings at Yale were allowed to choose their college.
Post-war years (1945–1998) In the early 1960s, two significant changes occurred in college admission and administration. Until 1962, freshmen had applied to residential colleges for admission in their sophomore year, leading to social distinctions between the colleges. After 1962, students were randomly assigned to a college before matriculation, though legacy students could choose to be in their father's (later, parent's) college. (Harvard students are randomly placed into houses during their freshman year.) Second, a gift from Paul Mellon allowed the colleges to endow deanships, giving students dedicated academic counsel and ending an era of college life solely administered by masters and their spouses.
Due to the abolition of the Freshman Year and growing enrollment, the university sought to expand the college system. In 1962, another gift from Mellon allowed Yale to build Morse College and Ezra Stiles College on the former site of James Hillhouse High School. Yale attempted to build two more residential colleges in 1972 on Whitney Avenue designed by Mitchell/Giurgola, but aborted the plan after the New Haven municipal government rejected an increase in Yale's non-taxable property. To accommodate increased enrollment, some of the colleges were given annex residences, primarily former fraternity buildings or previously unaffiliated residence halls.
In 1969, Yale College admitted its first class of women. Although President Kingman Brewster suggested housing all of the women in Trumbull College, student protest prompted the university to integrate them into all the colleges. In 1971, Katharine Lustman, a child educator, became the first woman Master at Yale after her husband died shortly before becoming Master of Davenport College; she served for two years.
Renovation and expansion (1998–present)
Between 1998 and 2012, Yale undertook yearlong renovations of all twelve colleges, beginning with Berkeley College. Since their opening, most had seen only routine maintenance and incremental improvements to plumbing, heating, and electrical and network wiring. Among other improvements, the renovated colleges received new basement facilities, including restaurants, game rooms, theaters, athletic facilities and music practice rooms. Dormitory buildings were added to Pierson and Davenport, and the finished underground space of many of the colleges was expanded. To allow renovations to be done during the academic year, Yale built a residence hall between Payne Whitney Gymnasium and the power plant, commonly called "Swing Space."
As these renovations began, administrators began considering an expansion of the college system. In June 2008, President Rick Levin announced plans to build two new colleges in the northern part of the campus between Grove Street Cemetery and Science Hill. The new colleges were expected to increase enrollment by 15%, to about 6,000 undergraduates, while reducing crowding in the existing colleges. Yale School of Architecture Dean Robert Stern, known for his contextual and traditionalist approach to architecture, was selected to design the colleges in a neo-Gothic style. Originally scheduled to be completed by 2013, construction was delayed by the 2008 economic recession. In September 2013, Yale announced a gift of $250 million from Charles B. Johnson for the two new colleges. Construction begun in January 2015 and was completed in summer 2017. The colleges were named after Pauli Murray and Benjamin Franklin.
Organization
Administration
Yale's residential colleges are dependent colleges of Yale University: separately administered but not autonomous or independently funded. Although following the residential and social model of the Oxbridge colleges, they do not similarly possess directly affiliated faculty and are similar in structure to the other collegiate universities of England such as Durham University. Each college is headed by a Head of College, a faculty member who is appointed by the university's president to serve as chief administrator of the college, and a Dean, who is appointed by the Dean of Yale College to oversee academic affairs for the students of the college. Each college has a house for the Head of College and their family, and private apartments for the Dean's family and resident fellows of the college. The Head of College is assisted by a group of student employees known as college aides who staff the Head of College office as well as events and receptions in the Head of College's House.
Undergraduates All enrolled students in Yale College are members of a residential college. Although students once selected their choice college before sophomore year, entrenched social exclusion and economic inequality between the colleges prompted Yale to switch to a system of pre-matriculation sorting in 1962. Students are now randomly assigned to a residential college in the summer before their matriculation, with the provision that legacy students are allowed to choose whether to live in the same college as their alumnus parent or sibling.
Most first-year students live in dormitories on the Old Campus, the historical center of Yale College. Members of Timothy Dwight, Silliman, Benjamin Franklin, and Pauli Murray are the only students to live in their college as first years. Thereafter, students take rooms within the residential college by a lottery system. Due to overcrowding, many of the colleges have annex residences where upperclass members live, and some upperclass students live off campus while remaining members of their college.
Fellows Yale faculty affiliate with the colleges as fellows by appointment of the Council of Masters, the governing body of the residential system. Fellows advise students, attend ceremonial functions of the college, and participate in its social and academic life. A small number keep offices in the college by invitation of the Head of College, and a few live in the colleges' faculty apartments as Resident Fellows along with the Dean and Head of College. Each college fellowship hosts weekly dinners for its members. Nearly all university academic functions exist outside the college, with the exception of a few undergraduate seminars hosted by the colleges and selected by their fellows.
Graduate affiliates