over four years. Public universities operate autonomously, without intervention from the state. Public universities are prestigious due to their free or low-cost nature, which removes financial incentives to pass and retain students. United States In the United States, most public universities are operated by state governments and rely on subsidies from their respective states. However, support for public universities has declined in recent decades, forcing many public universities to seek private donations or raise tuition. The percentage of state appropriations per student at public universities has fallen from 78% in 1974 to 43% in 2000. States generally charge higher tuition to out-of-state students because in-state students or their parents have previously subsidized the university by paying state taxes. The oldest public universities in the United States are the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, founded in 1789, and the University of Georgia, founded in 1795. The College of William & Mary, founded in 1693, and Rutgers University, founded in 1766, were two of the nine colonial colleges. Both were private universities until the 20th century, with William & Mary becoming public in 1908 and Rutgers in 1945. Every state has at least one public university, and the largest states have more than thirty. This is partly a result of 1862 Morrill Land-Grant Acts, which gave eligible states of federal land to sell to finance public universities that emphasized studies in agriculture and mechanical arts. The University of Wisconsin, Iowa State University, and the University of Missouri were early land-grand colleges. Targeted at the Southern states, the Agricultural College Act of 1890 required states to establish land-grant universities for African Americans if they were excluded from the state's existing land-grant institutions. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Higher Education Act of 1965, and the Education Amendments of 1972, made public universities even more accessible for women, minorities, and lower-income applicants. Many U.S. public universities began as teacher training institutions, often named normal schools or teachers colleges, and eventually expanded into comprehensive universities. Examples include the University of California, Los Angeles; Arizona State University; the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; and Missouri State University. There are also public tribal colleges and universities operated by Native American , and some colleges where a municipal government is an owner or part of governance such as the City University of New York and Quincy College. The only federally chartered public universities are the United States