Education
Minneapolis Public Schools enroll 36,370 students in public primary and secondary schools. The district administers about one hundred public schools including forty-five elementary schools, seven middle schools, seven high schools, eigth special education schools, eight alternative schools, nineteen contract alternative schools and five charter schools. With authority granted by the state legislature, the school board makes policy, selects the superintendent, and oversees the district's budget, curriculum, personnel, and facilities. Students speak ninety different languages at home and most school communications are printed in English, Hmong, Spanish, and Somali. Besides public schools, the city is home to more than twenty private schools and academies and about twenty additional charter schools.
Minneapolis' collegiate scene is dominated by the main campus of the University of Minnesota where more than 50,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students attend twenty colleges, schools, and institutes. Created in 1851 as a preparatory school, the university is noted for engineering, applied mathematics, management, health, and economics and administers more than 140 research facilities. A Big Ten school and home of the Golden Gophers, the U of M is the fourth largest campus in the U.S. in terms of enrollment.
Minneapolis Community and Technical College, the private Dunwoody College of Technology, and Art Institutes International Minnesota provide career training. Augsburg College, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, North Central University, and University of St. Thomas are private four-year colleges. Capella University, Minnesota School of Professional Psychology, and Walden University are headquartered in Minneapolis and some others including the public four-year Metropolitan State University have campuses there.
The Minneapolis Public Library system operates the city's public libraries. It faced a severe budget shortfall for 2007, and has been forced to close three of its neighborhood libraries. A merger with Hennepin County Library is proposed but not funded. The new downtown Central Library designed by César Pelli opened in 2006. Ten special collections hold over 25,000 books and resources for researchers, including the Minneapolis Collection and the Minneapolis Photo Collection. At recent count 1,696,453 items in the system are used annually and the library answers over 500,000 research and fact-finding questions each year.
(Source: Wikipedia.org)
