Schurman was born at Freetown, Prince Edward Island on May 2, 1854 the son of Robert and Lydia Schurman. Schurman lived on his parents' farm as a child, then in 1867 took a job at a store near his home, which he held for two years. At the age of fifteen, Schurman entered the Summerside Grammar School on Prince Edward Island, and in 1870 he won a scholarship to study at Prince of Wales College for two years. After Prince of Wales College, he studied for a year and a half at Acadia College in Nova Scotia. In 1874 while a student at Acadia College in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, he won the Canadian Gilchrist scholarship to study at the University of London, from which he received a BA degree in 1877 and an MA in 1878. Schurman also studied in Paris, Edinburgh, Heidelberg, Berlin, Göttingen and Italy. He was professor of English literature, political economy and psychology at Acadia College in 1880–1882, of metaphysics and English literature at Dalhousie College, Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1882–86, and of philosophy at Cornell University in 1886–92, being Dean of the Sage School of Philosophy in 1891-92 where he edited The Philosophical Review. In 1892 he became the third president of Cornell University, a position he held until 1920. He received an LL.D from the University of Edinburgh in March 1902.
Cornell president
As Cornell's president, Schurman helped invent the modern state-supported research university. Under the Morrill Act, states were obligated to fund the maintenance of land grant college facilities, but were not obligated to fund operations. Subsequent laws required states to match federal funds for agricultural research stations and cooperative extension. In his inaugural address as Cornell's third president on November 11, 1892, Schurman announced his intention to enlist the financial support of the state. Cornell, which had been offering a four-year scholarship to one student in each New York assembly district every year and was the state's land-grant university, was determined to convince the state to become a benefactor of the university. In 1894, the state legislature voted to give financial support for the establishment of the New York State College of Veterinary Medicine and to make annual appropriations for the college. This set the precedents of privately controlled, state-supported statutory colleges and cooperation between Cornell and the state. The annual state appropriations were later extended to agriculture, home economics, and following World War II, industrial and labor relations. In 1898, Schurman persuaded the State Legislature to found the first forestry college in North America, the New York State College of Forestry. The College undertook to establish a demonstration forest in the Adirondacks, funded by New York State. However, the plans of the school's director Bernhard Fernow for the land drew criticism from neighbors, and Governor Benjamin B. Odell vetoed the 1903 appropriation for the school. In response, Cornell closed the school. Subsequently, in 1911, the State Legislature established a New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University, and the remains of Cornell's program became the Department of Natural Resources in its Agriculture College in 1910. The State later followed the same model to establish a state college of ceramics at Alfred University. In 1911, Schurman ruled in favour of admitting two Black female students to Sage Hall despite 269 of their white female peers petitioning to deny them residency.
