ABSTRACT
In the development of the American colleges, freedom of thought as a consciously formulated goal appeared first as religious freedom for students. At best this was a sorry milieu for a college, and it was Yale's misfortune to be under the leadership of an able but contentious man hardly capable of picking his way through the tangled briars of sectarianism. The most significant trend in collegiate education during the eighteenth century was the secularization of the colleges. Secularization was evident in several ways: in the more commercial and less religious tone of newly founded colleges; in the rapidly rising number of college graduates who went into occupations other than the ministry; and in vital changes in the curriculum, notably the rise of scientific studies. By the beginning of the Revolution six of the eight colonial colleges that were actually open had professorships of mathematics and natural philosophy; and by 1788 all eight were so staffed.
