“The reason we even have colleges is that, at some point, there were politicians who said, ‘You know what? We should start colleges,’” said President Barack Obama in his interview with Youtube star Bethany Mota.
He added: “Dating back to Abraham Lincoln, who started something called land-grant colleges, and he understood that government should invest in people being able to get an education and having the tools to succeed.”
Fact check: Did politicians invent college?
Schools of learning have existed since the beginning of human civilization: ancient Sumerians had scribal schools or É-Dub-ba soon after 3500BC, according to Guiness World Records; the ancient Greeks had schools of philosophy, and there was a school of higher education in Constantinople. (The oldest existing, and continually operating, educational institution in the world is the University of Karueein, founded in 859 AD in Fez, Morocco, according to Guiness World Records.)
None of these schools are the true forebears of colleges and universities as we know them today, however. Our modern colleges and universities grew out of Catholic cathedral schools in Europe, where monks and nuns taught classes beginning around the 6th century A.D. with Sts. Benedict and Scholastica. In 1088, the University of Bologna in Italy grew out of a cathedral school, and soon cathedral schools in Oxford and Paris followed suit.
Over time, universities would be granted charters by Kings, Princes, and cities.
Oneof the oldest colleges in the United States of America, the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., was founded by a charter granted by King William III and Queen Mary II of England in 1618.
It is also worth pointing out that the generally accepted oldest college in the United States is Harvard University, founded in 1636, i.e. a full 225 years before Abraham Lincoln.
Obama’s statement can only be right if he has a different definition for “politician” than most of us - since, when not founded by religious orders, colleges were founded by charters granted by rulers to the ruled.