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The University of Kentucky (abbrev. UK) is a public co-educational university in Lexington, Kentucky. Founded in 1865 by Isaiah Giles as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky, the university is one of the state's two land-grant universities (the other being Kentucky State University), the largest college or university in the state, with 29,385 students as of Fall 2013, and the highest ranked research university in the state according to U.S. News and World Report.
The institution comprises 16 colleges, a graduate school, 93 undergraduate programs, 99 master programs, 66 doctoral programs, and four professional programs. The University of Kentucky has fifteen libraries on campus. The largest is William T. Young Library, a federal depository, hosting subjects related to social sciences, humanities, and life sciences collections. In recent years, the university has focused expenditures increasingly on research, following a compact formed by the Kentucky General Assembly in 1997. The directive mandated that the university become a Top 20 public research institution, in terms of an overall ranking to be determined by the university itself, by the year 2020.
In the early commonwealth of Kentucky, higher education was limited to a number of children from prominent families, disciplined apprentices, and those young men seeking entry into clerical, legal, and medical professions. As the first university in the territory that would become Kentucky, Transylvania University was the primary center for education, and became the mother of what would become the University of Kentucky.
John Bryan Bowman founded the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky (A&M), a publicly chartered department of Kentucky University, after receiving federal support through the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act in 1865. Courses were offered at Ashland, The Henry Clay Estate. Three years later, James Kennedy Patterson became the first president of the land-grant university, and the first degree was awarded. In 1876, the university began to offer Master's degree programs. Two years later, A&M separated from Kentucky University, which is now Transylvania University. For the new school, Lexington donated a 52-acre park and fair ground, which became the core of UK's present campus. A&M was initially a male-only institution, but began to admit women in 1880.
In 1892, the official colors of the university, royal blue and white, were adopted. An earlier color set, blue and light yellow, was adopted earlier at a Kentucky-Centre College football game on December 19, 1891. The particular hue of blue was determined from a necktie, which was used to demonstrate the color of royal blue.
On February 15, 1882, Administration Building was the first building of three completed on the present campus. Three years later, the college formed the Agricultural Experiment Station, which research issues relating to agribusiness, food processing, nutrition, water and soil resources and the environment. This was followed up by the creation of the university's Agricultural Extension service in 1910, which was one of the first in the United States. The extension service became a model of the federally mandated programs that were required beginning in 1914.