Part 10: Reunion and Regret

The reunion of the College of Philadlephia and University of the State of Pennsylvnaia brought very mixed results. The medical school flourished because of its unique position as one of the few medical schools in the country and its ability to able to pay for itself. In 1796 it had 150 students, and over 400 by the 1820s. Many were from southern slaveholding states. The College, however, did not prosper, with only 10 to 30 students into the 1810s. Most of the teaching occurred in the academy and charity school, with between 200 and 300 students during the post-Revolutionary decades. Only in the 1820s would the Trustees and faculty began to transform the college into a four-year program in line with the New England colleges.

Both Benjamin Franklin, who died in 1790, and Rev. John Ewing, the Provost in the 1780s and 1790s, expressed regrets about the reinvented school’s direction. Franklin wrote a long tract condemning the direction the school had taken over four decades. Ewing protested the active and strict control maintained by the Trustees over the curriculum and argued that it was unresponsive to the needs of students (and their parents) for a more practical education suited to the demands of a new republic. Tensions and challenges over authority, inclusion, and participation would continue to buffet the University of Pennsylvania, just as they did the nation.