 The earliest institutions of education in Indiana were missions, established by French Jesuit priests to convert local Native American nations.The Jefferson Academy was founded in 1801 as a public university for the Indiana Territory, and was reincorporated as Vincennes University in 1806, the first in the state.The 1816 constitution required that Indiana's state legislature create a "general system of education, ascending in a regular gradation, from township schools to a state university, wherein tuition shall be gratis, and equally open to all".