List of colleges and universities in Massachusetts
There are one hundred and fourteen colleges and universities in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that are listed under the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. These institutions include nine research universities, twenty-one master's universities, and thirty-four special-focus institutions. This number excludes the newly reopened Atlantic Union College, which has yet to receive accreditation. Eighty-five of Massachusetts' post-secondary institutions are private, of which five are for-profit. Thirty of the state's post-secondary institutions are public, a number which excludes the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which was founded by the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act, but later became a private institution.
Massachusetts
In 2018, Massachusetts's overall educational system was ranked the top among all fifty U.S. states by "U.S. News & World Report". Massachusetts was the first state in North America to require municipalities to appoint a teacher or establish a grammar school with the passage of the Massachusetts Education Law of 1647, and 19th century reforms pushed by Horace Mann laid much of the groundwork for contemporary universal public education which was established in 1852. Massachusetts is home to the oldest school in continuous existence in North America (The Roxbury Latin School, founded in 1645), as well as the country's oldest public elementary school (The Mather School, founded in 1639), its oldest high school (Boston Latin School, founded in 1635), its oldest continuously operating boarding school (The Governor's Academy, founded in 1763), its oldest college (Harvard University, founded in 1636), and its oldest women's college (Mount Holyoke College, founded in 1837).