Brooklyn - Education

Education

Education in Brooklyn is provided by a vast number of public and private institutions. Public schools in the borough are managed by the New York City Department of Education, the largest public school system.

Brooklyn Technical High School (commonly called Brooklyn Tech), a New York City public high school, is the largest specialized high school for science, mathematics, and technology in the United States. Brooklyn Tech opened in 1922. The location of Brooklyn Tech (as of 2010) is across the street from Fort Greene Park. This high school was built from 1930 to 1933 at a cost of about $6,000,000, and it is 12 stories high. It covers about half of a city block. Brooklyn Tech is noted for its famous alumni (including two Nobel Laureates), its academics, and the large number of graduates attending prestigious universities.

Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, and was the first public coeducational liberal arts college in New York City. The College ranked in the top 10 nationally for the second consecutive year in Princeton Review’s 2006 guidebook, America’s Best Value Colleges. Many of its students are first and second generation immigrants.

Brooklyn Law School was founded in 1901 and is notable for its diverse student body. Women and African Americans were enrolled in 1909. According to the Leiter Report, a compendium of law school rankings published by Brian Leiter, Brooklyn Law School places 31st nationally for quality of students.

Kingsborough Community College is a junior college in the City University of New York system, located in Manhattan Beach.

Long Island University is a private university in Downtown Brooklyn with 6,417 undergraduate students. The Brooklyn campus has strong science and medical technology programs, at the graduate and undergraduate levels.

Founded in 1970, Medgar Evers College is a senior college of the City University of New York, with a mission to develop and maintain high quality, professional, career-oriented undergraduate degree programs in the context of a liberal arts education. The College offers programs both at the baccalaureate and associate degree levels, as well as Adult and Continuing Education classes for Central Brooklyn residents, corporations, government agencies, and community organizations. Medgar Evers College is a few blocks east of Prospect Park in Crown Heights.

Pratt Institute, in Clinton Hill, is one of the leading art, design, and architecture schools in the US. Pratt is a private college with undergraduate and graduate programs ranked among the top ten in the country. Its graduate interior design program is ranked number one by US News and World Reports and by DesignIntelligence. Pratt was ranked among the top design schools by Newsweek and was named the top New York art school by Global Language Monitor. Pratt has over 4700 students, with most at its Brooklyn campus. Graduate programs include library and information science, architecture, and urban planning, as well as numerous art and design programs. Undergraduate programs include virtually all art and design disciplines, architecture, writing, and critical and visual studies, over 25 programs in all. Pratt's contemporary sculpture park was ranked among the top campus art collections by Public Art Review.

The Polytechnic Institute of NYU (NYU-Poly), formerly Polytechnic University, the United States' second oldest private institute of technology, founded in 1854, has its main campus in Downtown's MetroTech Center, a commercial, civic and educational redevelopment project of which it was a key sponsor. In July 2008, it became affiliated with the much larger and wealthier NYU, and is making fast progress to fully become a consolidated school of engineering and technology within NYU. NYU is also planning to build a graduate school focusing on urban science at 370 Jay St, across the street from NYU-Poly's MetroTech campus. This school will be called the Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) and it will call upon researchers and students from NYU-Poly, all of NYU, and other partner universities, to help solve the world's urban challenges.

CUNY's New York City College of Technology (City Tech) of The City University of New York (CUNY) (Downtown Brooklyn/Brooklyn Heights) is the largest public college of technology in New York State and a national model for technological education. Established in 1946, City Tech can trace its roots to 1881 when the Technical Schools of the Metropolitan Museum of Art were renamed the New York Trade School. That institution – which became the Voorhees Technical Institute many decades later – was soon a model for the development of technical and vocational schools worldwide. In 1971, Voorhees was incorporated into City Tech.

St. Francis College is located in Brooklyn Heights and was founded in 1859 by Franciscan friars. Today, there are over 2,400 students attending the small liberal arts college. St. Francis is considered by the New York Times as one of the more diverse colleges, and it has recently been ranked one of the best baccalaureate colleges by both Forbes Magazine and U.S. News and World Report.

SUNY Downstate Medical Center, originally founded as the Long Island College Hospital in 1860, is the oldest hospital-based medical school in the United States. The Medical Center comprises the College of Medicine, College of Health Related Professions, College of Nursing, School of Public Health, School of Graduate Studies, and University Hospital of Brooklyn. The Nobel Prize winner Robert F. Furchgott is a member of its faculty. Half of the Medical Center's students are minorities or immigrants. The College of Medicine has the highest percentage of minority students of any medical school in New York State.

Brooklyn also has smaller liberal arts institutions, such as Saint Joseph's College, New York in Clinton Hill and Boricua College in Williamsburg.