Columbia University is a private university in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of the Borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is a member of the Ivy League.

The institution was established in 1754 as King's College and is one of the oldest institutions of higher education in the United States. During the early years of its history, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Gouverneur Morris, and Robert Livingston studied at Columbia.

In 1784, following the American Revolution, the original name King's College was changed to Columbia College in the spirit of the patriotic fervor of the time. In 1896, the name of the institution was changed to Columbia University in the City of New York in order to distinguish between the original undergraduate institution Columbia College from the university as a whole, which by this time was comprised of an undergraduate engineering school and graduate faculties in engineering, science, medicine, law, teaching, political science, and philosophy, in addition to the original undergraduate Columbia College.