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The Ivy League's autonomy has allowed its members to conquer the world. The UK must loosen the reins on its universities and establish an equivalent, Terence Kealey argues.
The Ivy League started with an argument. In the early 19th century, the professor of theology at Dartmouth College also acted as pastor of the local First Congregational Church, but in 1805 the college and the church fell out over who should be appointed to the joint role. A decade later the dispute had still not been resolved, so in 1815 the government of New Hampshire - claiming that as it was largely funding the college it should therefore direct it - threw out the trustees and the college president, installed its own people and nationalised the institution.
But the quarrel did not end there. The original trustees sued, and in 1819 the US Supreme Court found for them, judging that the state could not take over an independent corporation. The college thus retained its autonomy, with a charter (originally a royal charter) that enjoyed the status of a contract, the sanctity of which had to be respected.
The ruling was a landmark because it protected the independence from the State of all private American universities. Not that most people cared at the time: they supposed that without state support Dartmouth would soon go bust.
Nine colonial colleges had been created in North America before the US Declaration of Independence in 1776: Harvard in 1636 (as New College); the College of William & Mary in 1693; Yale in 1701 (renamed as such in 1718); Princeton in 1746 (then known as the College of New Jersey); Pennsylvania in 1751 (the College of Philadelphia); Columbia in 1754 (King's College); Brown in 1764 (Rhode Island College); Rutgers in 1766 (Queen's College); and Dartmouth in 1769.
The institutions were founded by clergymen as theological academies, with governance structures modelled on the colleges of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. So the governing body, or "corporation", at Harvard, for example, comprised the president and fellows, they being either academics at the college or local clergymen who helped the institution. To this day, in recapitulation of its Oxbridge roots, the president of Harvard University chairs the corporation, and although the other trustees...