Yale University has a system of fourteen residential colleges with which all Yale undergraduate students and many faculty are affiliated. Inaugurated in 1933, the college system is considered the defining feature of undergraduate life at Yale College, and the residential colleges serve as the residence halls and social hubs for most undergraduates. Construction and programming for eight of the original ten colleges were funded by educational philanthropist Edward S. Harkness. Yale was, along with Harvard, one of the first universities in the United States to establish a residential college system.
Though their organizational and architectural features are modeled after the autonomous, constituent colleges of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, they are dependent colleges of the university with limited self-governance. Each college is led by a Head of College (formerly known as a Master) who is usually a tenured professor, and a Dean in charge of student affairs and residential life. University faculty and administrators are affiliated with the colleges as fellows, and some live or keep offices in the college along with the Dean and Head.
All fourteen colleges are built in an enclosing configuration around a central courtyard; all but two employ revivalist architectural styles popularized at Yale by James Gamble Rogers. Each has a dining hall, library, recreational facilities, a Master's House, apartments for resident fellows and Dean, and 250 to 400 student rooms, with most arranged in suites. Most reside in the colleges after their freshman year, which they spend on the university's Old Campus. In addition to sharing common residence and dining facilities, students plan events, lectures, and social activities within their college, and compete against other colleges in a yearlong intramural sports championship.
In the fall of 2017, Yale opened two new residential colleges, Benjamin Franklin College and Pauli Murray College, bringing the total to 14.
History
Origin (1925–1933)
As undergraduate enrollment in Yale College surged in the early 20th century, alumni and administrators began to express concern that the college had lost its social cohesion and lacked residential facilities sufficient for its size. This alienation and overcrowding, along with the growth of off-campus fraternities and society residences and a desire to further integrate the undergraduate populations of the Yale College and the Sheffield Scientific School, prompted the Yale Corporation to solicit funds for new residential buildings from Edward Harkness, a Yale alumnus with major holdings in Standard Oil. Anna Harkness, Edward's mother, gave money for the Memorial Quadrangle and a few other dormitories, but growth in enrollment still outpaced new residential space.
In 1925, Yale President James Rowland Angell proposed a "Quadrangle Plan" to the Yale Corporation, to be modeled after the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. Harkness admired the Oxbridge colleges as models of academic community and in 1926 offered $12 million to fund the plan. When the Yale Corporation deliberated for two further years and eventually suggested a modest housing plan for freshmen alone, Harkness instead seeded the house system at Harvard College.
Yale provost Charles Seymour approached Harkness about the Quadrangle Plan again in 1930, and Harkness agreed to create and endow eight residential colleges for $15.7 million. He requested that James Gamble Rodgers, a classmate of Harkness who had already designed the Memorial Quadrangle and Sterling Memorial Library for Yale, serve as their architect. After appraising Harvard's larger houses, Yale decided to build colleges of 150 to 200 members each. A "Committee on Quadrangles" was convened to name the colleges, appoint masters, select designs, organize faculty fellowships, and determine their degree of autonomy within the university.
New residential buildings required a major reconfiguration of Yale's central campus. Science buildings at the present-day sites of Jonathan Edwards, Branford, and Saybrook Colleges, including Sloane Physical Lab, Kent Chemical Lab, and the original Peabody Museum, were demolished and replaced by laboratories on Science Hill. The Yale Divinity School campus was moved for Calhoun College (renamed Hopper College in 2017), Berkeley College replaced the Berkeley Oval dormitories, and the university gym was displaced by Trumbull College. After three years of construction, the first seven residential colleges were opened on September 25, 1933, followed by Berkeley College in 1934, Timothy Dwight College in 1935, and Silliman College in 1940.