Amherst College

Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,795 students in the fall of 2015. Students choose courses from 38 major programsin an unusually open curriculum. Amherst was ranked as the second best liberal arts college in the country by U.S. News & World Report,and ninth out of all U.S. colleges and universities by Forbes in their 2015 rankings.

Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its president, Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher education in Massachusetts.Amherst was established as a men's college and became coeducational in 1975.

Amherst has historically had close relationships and rivalries with Williams College and Wesleyan University which form the Little Three colleges. It is also a member of the Five College Consortium

In 1812, funds were raised in Amherst for a secondary school, Amherst Academy; it opened December 1814. The institution was named after the town, which in turn had been named after Jeffery, Lord Amherst, a veteran from the Seven Years' War and later commanding general of the British forces in North America. On November 18, 1817, a project was adopted at the Academy to raise funds for the free instruction of "indigent young men of promising talents and hopeful piety, who shall manifest a desire to obtain a liberal education with a sole view to the Christian ministry." This required a substantial investment from benefactors.

During the fundraising for the project, it became clear that without larger designs, it would be impossible to raise sufficient funds. This led the committee overseeing the project to conclude that a new institution should be created. On August 18, 1818, the Amherst Academy board of trustees accepted this conclusion and began building a new college

As early as 1815, six years before the opening of Amherst College, the question of relocating Williams College to some more central part of Massachusetts was agitated among its friends and in its board of trustees. At that time Williams College had two buildings and fifty-eight students, with two professors and two tutors. The library contained fourteen hundred volumes. The funds were reduced and the income fell short of the expenditures. Many of the friends and supporters of the college were fully persuaded that it could not be sustained in its present location. The chief ground of this persuasion was the extreme difficulty of the access to it.

At the same meeting of the board of trustees at which Professor Moore was elected president of Williams College, May 2, 1815, Dr. Packard of Shelburne introduced the following motion: "That a committee of six persons be appointed to take into consideration the removal of the college to some other part of the Commonwealth, to make all necessary inquiries which have a bearing on the subject, and report at the next meeting." The motion was adopted, and at the next meeting of the board in September, the committee reported that "a removal of Williams College from Williamstown is inexpedient at the present time, and under existing circumstances."

But the question of removal thus raised in the board of trustees and thus negatived only "at the present time and under existing circumstances," continued to be agitated. And at a meeting on November 10, 1818, influenced more or less doubtless by the action of the Franklin County Association of Congregational Ministers, and the Convention of Congregational and Presbyterian Ministers in Amherst, the board of trustees resolved that it was expedient to remove the college on certain conditions. President Moore advocated the removal, and even expressed his purpose to resign the office of president unless it could be effected, inasmuch as when he accepted the presidency he had no idea that the college was to remain at Williamstown, but was authorized to expect that it would be removed to Hampshire County. Nine out of twelve of the trustees voted for the resolutions, which were as follows:

"Resolved, that it is expedient to remove Williams College to some more central part of the State whenever sufficient funds can be obtained to defray the necessary expenses incurred and the losses sustained by removal, and to secure the prosperity of the college, and when a fair prospect shall be presented of obtaining for the institution the united support and patronage of the friends of literature and religion in the western part of the Commonwealth, and when the General Court shall give their assent to the measure."

In November, 1819, the trustees of Williams College voted to petition the Legislature for permission to remove the college to Northampton. To this application, Mr. Webster says, "the trustees of Amherst Academy made no opposition and took no measures to defeat it." In February, 1820, the petition was laid before the Legislature. The committee from both houses, to whom it was referred, after a careful examination of the whole subject, reported that it was neither lawful nor expedient to remove the college, and the Legislature, taking the same view, rejected the petition. ... Thus the long and exciting discussion touching the removal of Williams College and the location of a college in some more central town of old Hampshire County at length came to an end, and the contending parties now directed all their energies to building up the institutions of their choice.

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