NEW YORK 



111)1 



NEW YORK 



great number of Jews. New York City con- 

 tains the greatest cathedral on the American 

 continent, that of Saint John the Divine. 



Education. The educational sy.-tem is under 

 the d '"ii anil strict control of the 



board of regents for the l*im vr>ity of the State 

 and their executive oilicer. the 

 commissioner of education. The board of re- 

 gents consists of twelve members, elected by 

 joint ballot of the legislature for a term of 

 twelve years, one retiring each year. The 

 board appoints the commissioner of education, 

 who exercises general supervision over all com- 

 mon, secondary, high and special schools. He 

 has very wide powers, and is assisted by three 

 assistant commissioners. There are no county 

 superintendents in New York. The local super- 

 \ unit is the supervisory district which is 

 lly a part of a county and which is under a 

 district superintendent elected for five years. 

 The legislature of 1917 enacted a law, which has 

 been approved by the governor, substituting a 

 township system for the old school district sys- 

 tem which has been in operation for more than 

 a century. The local unit of administration is, 

 therefore, no longer the school district but the 

 -hip. 



I'nivirsitics and Colleges. In each section of 

 the state is located some well-known college or 

 university. New York does not maintain a 

 state university, like so many of the states. 

 Cornell University, located at Ithaca, has re- 

 ceived from the state a grant of land for the 

 establishment of a college of agriculture and 

 mechanical arts and has the position of a 

 semistate university. Although founded as 



as 1869, Cornell has become one of the 

 leading in in the United States. The 



oldest, as well as the greatest, of the higher 

 utions of learning in the state is Columbia 

 ersity, located in New York City. Affili- 

 ated with it are Teachers College and Barnard 

 College for women. 



The chief institutions of higher education, 

 arranged in alphabetical order, are as follows: 



Adelphi College, Brooklyn 



Alfred University, A 



Buffalo Univrrsity, Buffalo 



Clarkson Technical School, Potsdam 



Colgate University, Hamilton 



College of the City of New York, New York 



Klmira College, Klmira 



: lhum rnivi-rsity. Xew York 



Hamilton College, Clinton 



Hobart College, Geneva 



Hunter College, New York 



Manhattan ('-.liege, New York 



New York rnivrrsity. Xew York 

 '.ra l"n;\rrsity f Niagara 



Polytrelmie Institute, Brooklyn 



Piatt Institute, Brooklyn 



Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy 



Rochester University, Hot-hester 



Saint Lawrence University, Canton 



Smith College (for women), Geneva 



Syracuse University, Syracuse 



Union University, Schenectady 



Vassar College (for women), Poughkeepsie 



Wells College (for women), Aurora 



The United States Military Academy is at 

 West Point. There are nearly a thousand .sec- 

 ondary schools. 



Normal Institutions. For the training of 

 teachers the state maintains the State College 

 for Teachers at Albany and normal schools 

 located at Brockport, Buffalo, Cortland, Fre- 

 donia, Geneseo, New Paltz, Oneonta, Oswego, 

 Plattsburg and Pottsdam. In New York City 

 are located the New York, Brooklyn and Ja- 

 maica training schools for teachers. Training 

 schools are also maintained at Albany, Buffalo, 

 Cohoes, Jamestown, Rochester, Schenectady, 

 Syracuse, Watertown and Yonkers. These local 

 training schools are required to maintain courses 

 of study approved by the Education Depart- 

 ment of the State, and the requirements for 

 admission to such schools are the same as the 

 requirements for admission to state normals. 



There are also 113 of the high schools which 

 maintain special courses for the training of 

 teachers. These special courses are called 

 "training classes," and the particular object of 

 such classes is to train teachers for the rural 

 schools of the state. 



Illiteracy. On account of the large foreign- 

 born population of the state the percentage of 

 illiteracy is rather higher than the educational 

 facilities would warrant. In 1910 there were 

 406,020 persons of ten years of age or over who 

 could not read or write; this represents 5.5 per 

 cent of the population. But among the native 

 white population alone the percentage of 

 illiteracy was only 0.8 per cent ; it reached 13.7 

 per cent among the foreign-born inhabitants, 

 and was 5 per cent among negroes. 



Physical Features and Resources 



Physical Features. There are great differ- 

 ences in the physical features of the state. 

 Speaking generally, the northern and eastern 



parts are mountainous, while the remainder of 

 the state is a region of low plateaus and rolling 

 plains. Excluding Long Island, the surface of 



