Columbia University (officially Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private, Ivy League, research university in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It was established in 1754 as King's College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain and is the oldest college in New York State as well as the fifth chartered institution of higher learning in the country, making Columbia one of nine colonial colleges founded before the Declaration of Independence.[6] After the revolutionary war, King's College briefly became a state entity, and was renamed Columbia College in 1784. A 1787 charter placed the institution under a private board of trustees before it was renamed Columbia University in 1896 when the campus was moved from Madison Avenue to its current location in Morningside Heights occupying land of 32 acres (13 ha).[7][8] Columbia is one of the fourteen founding members of the Association of American Universities, and was the first school in the United States to grant the M.D. degree.[7][9]
The university is organized into twenty schools, including Columbia College, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and the School of General Studies. The university also has global research outposts in Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Paris, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, Asunción and Nairobi.[10] It has affiliations with several other institutions nearby, including Teachers College, Barnard College, and Union Theological Seminary, with joint undergraduate programs available through the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Sciences Po Paris,[11] and the Juilliard School.[12]
Columbia annually administers the Pulitzer Prize.[13] Notable alumni and former students (including those from King's College) include five Founding Fathers of the United States; nine Justices of the United States Supreme Court;[14] 20 living billionaires;[15] 29 Academy Award winners;[16] and 29 heads of state, including three United States Presidents.[17] Additionally, to date, 72 Nobel Prize laureates have been affiliated with Columbia as students, faculty, or staff.[18]