ABSTRACT
In setting up the colonial colleges the founding fathers gave them a legal as well as an educational frame. The governmental structure which this frame took from the exigencies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was fraught with a number of potential strains. Two principal ones developed. One occurred within the power structure of the college itself. The other occurred between the college and public authorities, at first the English Crown, then later the colonial, and still later the state legislatures. But before tracing these strains it will be well to sketch the types of administrative organization by which the colleges came to govern themselves.
