Colleges of New Spain

The Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Santiago Tlatelolco, founded by the Franciscans in 1536, was the first institution of higher education in the Americas intended for Indigenous people. Young Nahua nobles studied Latin, rhetoric and philosophy there, and its students worked with Friar Bernardino de Sahagún to record Nahua culture.

At the end of the colonial era came the College (Royal Seminary) of Mining, the first institution devoted to science: it was founded in 1792 to train mining engineers, and in 1811 it began to operate in the Palacio de Minería, designed by Manuel Tolsá.