The story
Early days
In May 1896, directors of the Boston Young Men's Christian Association, the first in the U.S., established an Evening Institute for Younger Men to merge, coordinate and improve its classes that had evolved over the past 40 years. A good education for "any young man of moral character" with a YMCA membership was promised. In 1898, the institute held its first classes. In 1903, the first Automobile Engineering School in the country was established, followed by a Polytechnic School and a School of Commerce and Finance.
In 1909, the Polytechnic School began offering cooperative engineering courses to eight students. In 1920, the Cooperative School of Engineering, which later became the College of Engineering, was first authorized to grant degrees in civil, chemical, electrical and mechanical engineering. The cooperative program, the second of its kind in the U.S. after one in Cincinnati, Ohio, was eventually adopted by all departments.
On March 30, 1917, veteran educator Frank Palmer Speare, who had served as director of the institute, was inaugurated as the first president of the newly incorporated Northeastern College. Five years later, the college changed its name to Northeastern University to better reflect its growing academic depth, securing general (A.B. and B.S.) degree-granting power from the Legislature in 1923.
The College of Liberal Arts was added in 1935. Two years later, the Northeastern University Corporation was established, with a board of trustees composed of 31 university members and 8 from the YMCA. Following World War II, Northeastern began admitting women, and completely separated from the YMCA in 1948.
1959–1975
By 1959, when Carl Ell stepped down as president, Northeastern had a local identity as an independent technical university serving a commuter and adult population. That reputation shifted during the presidency of Asa S. Knowles, from 1959 to 1975. Facing a postwar educational boom, the university broadened undergraduate programs, strengthened graduate offerings, modernized administrative and faculty structures, created a Faculty Senate, launched its first-ever capital campaign, reorganized and expanded adult and continuing education, and increased the number of colleges. The university created the College of Education (1953), University College (1960), now called the College of Professional Studies, and the colleges of Pharmacy and Nursing (1964), which both later merged into the Bouvé College of Health Sciences. The creation of the College of Criminal Justice (1967) followed, and then the Khoury College of Computer Sciences (1982), the first dedicated computer science college in the United States.
Between 1959 and 1975, Northeastern's student population grew considerably larger and more diverse. At the beginning of this period, most of the student body was composed of white males from New England, the majority of whom came from the Boston-area public schools and primarily studied business or engineering. By 1974–75, women accounted for 33 percent of nearly 14,000 undergraduates, while 5 percent were black. Over 900 students came from different foreign countries. Of the graduating class of 2,238, 513 were in Liberal Arts, 462 in Engineering, 389 in Business, 227 in Pharmacy and Allied Health, and the remainder were roughly divided among Education, Boston-Bouvé, Nursing and Criminal Justice.
To attract more women, the university refurbished existing facilities, constructed new women's dormitories, and encouraged their participation in all programs. The merger with Boston-Bouvé, a women's college dedicated to physical health, and the creation of the College of Nursing, traditionally a female profession, also contributed to the increase. In the early 1960s, with financial assistance from the Ford Foundation in New York in the form of scholarships and co-ops to black high school students, Northeastern began actively recruiting black students. By 1975, black student-led organizations included the Afro-photo Society, Student Grill, Health Careers Club, The Onyx (a black student newspaper), Muhindi Literary Guild, the Outing Club, Black Engineering Society, and the first recognized black fraternity at the university, the Omicron chapter of Iota Phi Theta. In addition, the number of foreign students increased from 170 in the 1950s and 1960s to 960 by 1974–75.
1975–1996
By the early 1980s, under President Kenneth G. Ryder, Northeastern had grown into one of the largest private universities in the nation with around 55,000 students. In 1990, the first class with more live-on campus rather than commuter students graduated. After Ryder's retirement in 1989, the university adopted a slow and more thoughtful approach to change. In 1991, President John A. Curry formulated a new strategy to transform Northeastern into a "smaller, leaner, better place to work and study," with a renewed focus on student success and academic quality. The university streamlined operations and reduced admissions targets, with applicant numbers rising and attrition rates falling by the end of Curry's tenure.
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1996–2006
When Curry left office in 1996, the university population had been systematically reduced to about 25,000. Incoming president Richard M. Freeland decided to focus on recruiting the type of students who were already graduating as the school's prime demographic. Freeland focused on improving academics and restructuring the administration with a goal of "creating the country's premier program of practice-oriented education". In the early 1990s, the university began a $485 million construction program that included residence halls, academic and research facilities, and athletic centers. During the university's transition, Freeland reorganized the cooperative education system, decentralizing it into a department-based system to allow better integration of classroom learning with workplace experience. Full-time degree programs shifted from a four-quarter system to two traditional semesters and two summer "minimesters," giving students deeper academic focus and longer, more substantive co-op placements, and forcing departments to redesign aging programs. Freeland also created a marketing department, uncommon for universities at the time, and expanded the university advancement office, while setting an ambitious $200 million fundraising target with the goal of reducing dependency on tuition.
Between 1995 and 2007, average SAT exam scores increased by more than 200 points, retention rates rose dramatically, and applications doubled. In 1998, Freeland set an admissions target of 2,800 freshmen per year, allowing for adequate tuition income without compromising on education. Throughout the transformation, his oft-repeated goal was to crack the top 100 of the U.S. News & World Report's rankings of America's best universities. With this accomplished by 2005, the transformation goal from commuter school to nationally recognized research university was complete. Freeland stepped down on August 15, 2006, and was followed by President Joseph E. Aoun, a former dean at the University of Southern California.
2006–present
As part of a five-year, $75 million Academic Investment Plan that ran from 2004 to 2009, the university concentrated on undergraduate education, core graduate professional programs, and centers of research excellence. Faculty was originally to be bolstered by 100 new tenured and tenure-track professors, later expanded to include 300 additional tenure and tenure-track faculty in interdisciplinary fields. Aoun also placed more emphasis on improving community relations by reaching out to leaders of the neighborhoods surrounding the university. In addition, the university created more academic partnerships with other institutions in the Boston area, including Tufts University, Hebrew College, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.
During this period, Northeastern rapidly advanced in national rankings. It placed 39th in the 2016–17 edition of U.S. News & World Report's best colleges and universities rankings, an 8-position jump from 2015–16 and a 30-place gain since 2010–11. This rise created a positive feedback effect, allowing the institution to significantly increase its endowment, achieve R1 research classification, attract stronger students and faculty, and enhance its flagship co-op program.
In 2013, Northeastern launched the Empower Campaign to support students, advance faculty, and drive innovation in education and research, inspired by Richard D'Amore and Alan McKim's $60 million gift to the business school in 2012. Its goal was to raise $1 billion by 2017, split evenly between philanthropic support and government partnerships. The target was raised to $1.25 billion in 2015, and the campaign had surpassed both goals by October 2017 with a final total of $1.4 billion. More than 100,000 individuals and over 3,800 organizations donated to Empower from 110 countries.
The university launched the "Experience Powered by Northeastern" global fundraising initiative in October 2022. Driven by consecutive record-breaking fundraising years, the university raised the target in February 2025 from an original $1.3 billion to $1.75 billion. The capital campaign finances investments in student opportunities, faculty and infrastructure, research breakthroughs, and entrepreneurship. A priority of the campaign is expanding financial accessibility by upholding "The Northeastern Promise", a compact that guarantees the university meets 100% of demonstrated need for undergraduates, a practice upheld for every student enrolled since 2015–16. As of the 2024–25 school year, the average annual net price of enrollment is $28,521 and the average undergraduate debt has dropped by 34% over the past decade. Over 70% of first-year students receive financial aid, including merit scholarships and need-based grants. Northeastern has also hired 250 tenured and tenure-track faculty focused on interdisciplinary collaboration and doubled external research funding in the past five years.
Presidents
Presidents of Northeastern University:
Frank Palmer Speare (1898–1940)
Carl Stephens Ell (1940–1959)
Asa S. Knowles (1959–1975)
Kenneth G. Ryder (1975–1989)
John A. Curry (1989–1996)
Richard M. Freeland (1996–2006)
Joseph E. Aoun (2006–present)
From Wikipedia’s article on Northeastern University, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5