<P> Columbia University in New York City, United States, was founded in 1754 as King's College by royal charter of King George II of England . It is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York and the fifth oldest in the United States . The period leading up to the school's founding was marked in controversy, with various groups competing to determine its location and religious affiliation . Advocates of New York City met with success on the first point, while the Church of England prevailed on the latter . However, all constituencies agreed to commit themselves to principles of religious liberty in establishing the policies of the College . </P> <P> Although the City of New York had come under the control of the English in 1674, no serious discussions as to the founding of a university began until the early eighteenth - century . This delay is often attributed to the multitude of languages and religions practiced in the province, which made the founding of a seat of learning difficult . Colleges during the colonial period were regarded as a religious, no less a scientific and literary institution . The large gap between the founding of New York province and the opening of its first college stands in contrast to institutions such as Harvard University, which was created only six years after the founding of Boston, Massachusetts, a colony with a more homogenous Puritan population . Discussions regarding the founding of a college in the Province of New York began as early as 1704, when Colonel Lewis Morris wrote to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the missionary arm of the Church of England, persuading the society that New York City was an ideal community in which to establish a college . The lands on which Morris had initially designed the college to be built, known as "King's Farm, were vested to Trinity Church by Lord Cornburry, and nothing came of the proposition to form a college in the provence until almost fifty years later . The founding of Harvard in 1636 and Yale in 1701 had set no competitive juices flowing among New York's merchants . But the announcement in the summer of 1745 that New Jersey, which had only seven years before secured a government separate from New York's and was still considered by New Yorkers to be within its cultural catch basin, was about to found the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University, demanded an immediate response . </P>

What was the original name of columbia university