The Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education is the agency of the government of Oklahoma that serves as the governing body of the Oklahoma State System of Higher Education, which is the largest provider of higher education in the state of Oklahoma. The State System consists of all institutions of higher education in Oklahoma that are supported (wholly or in part) by direct legislative appropriations from the Oklahoma Legislature.
The State Regents are the statewide coordinating board of control for the state's twenty-five colleges and universities, ten constituent agencies, and two higher education programs. The State Regents is a nine-member board, with the members are appointed by the Governor of Oklahoma with approval of the Oklahoma Senate. Each member serves a nine-year term, with one member's term expiring each year, and can be reappointed to continue in service.
The current Chancellor of the Higher Education System is Allison D. Garrett.
Together with the Oklahoma State Department of Education and the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education, the State System forms the core of Oklahoma's public education system.
History
Pre-statehood
The history of higher education in the State of Oklahoma begins before the days of the Oklahoma Territory (which existed from 1890 to 1907) in Indian Territory, and were started either by Indian tribes or by religious organizations for the benefit of Indian tribes.
the agency's total FY 2017 appropriation of $2.427 billion, 77.1 percent ($1.870 billion) takes the form of state aid funding that goes directly to local school districts through a complex ... State appropriations (36 percent) and tuition and fees (48 percent) funded most spending for Oklahoma higher education in FY 2016. The first higher education institution in the territory is what is now Northeastern State University, which was founded on May 7, 1851 as the Cherokee National Female Seminary. On March 6, 1909, the State Legislature of Oklahoma passed an act providing for the creation and location of Northeastern State Normal School at Tahlequah, Oklahoma (Capital of the Cherokee Nation), and for the purchase form the Cherokee Tribal Government of the Cherokee Female Seminary.
St. Gregory's University was founded in 1875 as Sacred Heart Mission, founded in Atoka, Oklahoma (the oldest Catholic parish in Indian Territory) by the Benedictine monks. In 1876, the mission relocated near Konawa, Oklahoma and became an abbey. Sacred Heart College was founded with the permission of the Vatican in 1877 and later gained approval from the territorial government in 1883. The institution was moved to Shawnee, Oklahoma (near the capital of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation as well as the Seminole Nation) as the Catholic University of Oklahoma in 1910, and in 1922, the name was changed to St. Gregory's College.
Bacone College was founded in 1880 as the Indian University in Muskogee, Oklahoma (Capital of the Creek Nation) by Almon C. Bacone, and is the oldest continuously operated institution of higher education in Oklahoma. The college has strong historic ties to various tribal nations, including the Cherokee Nation and the Muscogee Creek Nation, as well as the American Baptist Churches of America.
What is now the University of Tulsa was founded in Muskogee as the Presbyterian School for Indian Girls in 1882. The institution was rechartered as the Henry Kendall College in 1894 under the auspices of the Presbyterian Women's Board of Home Missions. In 1907 the college moved to its current site in Tulsa, Oklahoma and became the University of Tulsa in 1920.
The first public universities in Oklahoma date back before Oklahoma's statehood in 1907. The first territorial legislature of Oklahoma Territory, in accordance with the Oklahoma Territory Organic Act, enacted laws creating three institutions of higher education in 1890. The United States Congress mandated that the Territory have access to three different types of colleges: a liberal arts and professional education college, an agriculture and mechanical arts college to meet the provisions of the Morrill Act of 1862, and a normal school college