UPenn is the oldest university in the country, thanks to this technicality

Posted Thursday, November 12, 2026 11:02 am

Julia Binswanger (via BillyPenn.com)

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Did you know that the University of Pennsylvania is actually the oldest university in the United States? And did you know that the reasoning behind that status doesn’t actually have to do with the school’s founding date?

“Penn became the first university in America based on the definition of what a university is,” said J.M. Duffin, assistant university archivist at Penn.

Benjamin Franklin founded Penn in 1749. That date is over a century later than Harvard’s founding in 1636.

“We are the first university because in 1765 we created a medical school,” Duffin explained. “By the modern definition of what a university is, it is a school that has two faculties. So there’s a faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences and a faculty of the School of Medicine.”

Because Penn was the first to have “two schools under one roof,” Duffin said, they gained the status of first university. What’s more, in 1779 the state of Pennsylvania rechartered the school and named it the “University of the State of Pennsylvania” — making it the first school to actually be called a university.

“We have it on those two different levels,” Duffin noted.

Artist Anh Ly and Penn’s assistant university archivist J.M. Duffin (Nick Kariuki/Billy Penn)

And that’s not the only time Penn has used semantics to its advantage to say it’s older than another Ivy League.

“Our biggest beef at Penn, at least traditionally, has been with Princeton,” Duffin said.

Apparently, even though Penn was founded in 1749, the school managed to change its birthday on a technicality.

“We, the university and the trustees of the university in the 1890s, changed our founding date from 1749 to 1740 in order to make us older than Princeton,” Duffin said.

Is that allowed? According to Duffin, the answer is yes.

“They came up with a very legalized reasoning behind it,” Duffin said, explaining how the school bought a church on its campus that was built in 1740.

“What the trustees decided in the 1890s is that our school is as old as our oldest part,” Duffin explained. “Because we bought this building that was built in 1740, and there was an intention to have a school with that building, 1740 is our founding date, and that just happens to make us a few years older than Princeton.”

‘Innovation is in the DNA’

To honor Penn’s status as the United States’ first university, the city is throwing a “Firstival” celebration as part of its ongoing 52 Weeks of Firsts on Saturday. When Benjamin Franklin founded Penn, he had a progressive vision.

“He wanted Philadelphia to have a school that taught higher education, but on a more practical side, with a heavy emphasis on English and applied learning and things like mathematics, modern languages, as opposed to just Latin and Greek, and also surveying and history, and also commerce,” Duffin said.

To recognize this vision, local artist Anh Ly has painted a No. 1 sculpture honoring Penn’s history.

“Innovation is in the DNA (at Penn),” Ly explained. “We’re looking at what would communicate innovation from UPenn.”

Her sculpture pays homage to Franklin, with an image of the founder father holding a key and a kite. Books appear as foundational bricks that “build up the education from past to present.” Penn’s motto “leges sine moribus vanae” or “laws without morals are useless” in the school colors wraps around the sides of the sculpture.

Artist Anh Ly’s Firstival sculpture (Anh Ly)

“Unlike all the other colleges that were in America at that time, Penn was not tied to a particular religion,” Duffin said. “What made that very interesting is that from the very start, the school had people from different religious backgrounds teaching at the school and also attending the school. So it had a form of diversity for the 18th century, which was unusual by modern standards.”

People of European, African and indigenous descent were on Penn’s campus, he said.

“A lot of that is thanks to the Quakers who created this as a religiously tolerant colony,” Duffin said. “And as a result, it meant that the school had to work with a lot of different communities.”

Ly is originally from Vietnam. She said that her friends back home have been excited about her Firstival sculpture.

“When I was in Vietnam, a lot of my friends tried to get into UPenn,” she explained. “It’s kind of like the pinnacle of education for us. Now, I’m an immigrant, I live here … I have friends who study and work at UPenn.”

She called the school’s impact “far-reaching,” and said she hopes that anyone who comes to the Firstival party this Saturday will learn more about Penn’s history.

“I think it’s easy to take our education for granted,” she said. “It’s easy to take history for granted. Whatever we have right now, it comes from somewhere … Especially when it comes to education, I think it’s good to look at all of the people before us, the institution before us, (who) put down the bricks and stones so that we can learn, and be who we are today.”

Those interested can attend this week’s Firstival on Saturday, Nov. 14 at the University of Pennsylvania’s Houston Hall from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. You can also see our full list of this year’s Firstivals below, including the upcoming dates and locations.