land-grant colleges and universities

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America's land-grant colleges and universities were brought into being through the Morrill Act of 1862. This unprecedented federal legislation supported a new vision for higher education flowing from a confluence of agricultural, industrial, scientific, political and educational interests in the years before the U.S. Civil War.

By 1873, 26 land-grant colleges and universities were in operation; by 1900, 65; by 1975, 72; and by 2000, 106 (see Table 1). As these institutions developed, they influenced American higher education (and its more than 4,000 postsecondary institutions) well out of proportion to their number. According to the scholar Clark Kerr, the grant movement had a profound effect on the modern American university system and shaped its development throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

By the beginning of the twenty-first century, U.S. land-grant colleges and universities had become a model for developing nations seeking to harness their own institutions of higher learning to promote economic development and higher standards of living. The motives typically attributed to the land-grant college movement include the democratization of higher education to serve the working class; the development of an educational system designed to meet utilitarian and "useful" ends; and a desire to emphasize the emerging applied sciences, particularly agricultural science and engineering.

New scholarship has shown that before the Civil War a number of American colleges had begun to accommodate these emerging needs. But these institutions were local in orientation and lacked the collective ability to call attention to the ways in which they were adapting to the demands of a growing nation. By contrast, the land-grant colleges were the outgrowth of a movement that culminated in conscious, organized action to affect federal and state policy. What made the land-grant colleges unique in American higher education was their exclusive relationship with the federal government and a shared set of obligations to their sponsoring states.

The 1850s saw unrelated efforts by Jonathan B. Turner, a professor at Illinois College, and U.S. Senator Justin S. Morrill of Vermont to champion bills calling for federally sponsored agricultural or industrial colleges, but these initiatives failed. Morrill's penultimate bill passed Congress in 1859, but it was vetoed by President James Buchanan - largely on the grounds that a federal role in education was unconstitutional.

The Morrill Act of 1862, signed by President Abraham Lincoln, granted vast holdings of federal lands to states based on the size of their congressional delegations. The lands were to be sold to provide an endowment for the establishment of "at least one college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as related to agriculture and the mechanic arts…in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life." Most states did a poor job of selling their lands, however. The meager profits used for the endowments were insufficient to sustain these growing educational institutions, which offered free tuition but had yet to receive any state funds.

The first institutions to function as land-grant colleges during the Civil War were two agricultural schools that had been chartered by their respective states in 1855: Michigan Agricultural College (now Michigan State University) and the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania (now The Pennsylvania State University). By 1873, twenty-four land-grant institutions enrolled 2,600 students - about 13 percent of the total U.S. collegiate population. Despite this early success, the quarter-century following the Civil War was a dismal period for land-grant colleges. Their facilities were sparse and primitive, and critics began to marshal their forces. Congress launched an investigation, which vindicated the schools. The farmers' organization, the Grange, launched a similar inquest, condemning the colleges for their failure to attract agricultural students. Well into the twentieth century, engineering - not agriculture - was the most popular course of study at land-grant schools.

Land-grant colleges turned the corner from struggle to stability around 1890, chiefly because of two federal acts. The Hatch Act of 1887 established and annually funded agricultural experiment (research) stations at land-grant colleges. Then came the Morrill Act of 1890, best known for giving states the right to designate "separate-but-equal" land-grant colleges for blacks. Soon after this, seventeen such schools were operating in Southern and border states. But the act's main purpose was to create annual federal appropriations to support general educational programs, from English to engineering. This dependable flow of funds provided the long-sought financial foundation the colleges needed and encouraged state governments to make annual appropriations as well. The pivotal figure in these legislative victories was George W. Atherton, president of The Pennsylvania State College. When his lobbying force of land-grant college presidents and agricultural scientists congealed in 1887 into the Association of American Agricultural Colleges and Experiment

TABLE 1 [CONTINUED]

Stations - the first formal organization of peer higher education institutions in America - Atherton was elected its first president.

Since 1900, land-grant institutions have been strengthened by more than a dozen federal acts. For example, the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 established the Cooperative Extension Service in agriculture and home economics, to be carried out by land-grant in stitutions in connection with U.S. Department of Agriculture. Eighty years later, in 1994, the Elementary and Secondary Education Reauthorization Act conferred land-grant status on twenty-nine Native American colleges.

The major land-grant universities are powerhouses of research and graduate education. Of the top twenty institutions in total research-and-development spending for fiscal 1998, eleven (55%) were land-grant universities, according to the National Science Foundation. Of the top twenty institutions awarding the most earned doctorates in fiscal 1998, twelve (60%) were land-grant institutions. The fruits of these research and graduate programs have profoundly benefited the world. The production of pure uranium, pioneering developments in television and the transistor, advances in meteorology, the field ion microscope and the cyclotron, the isolation of helium, new plant strains resistant to disease and insects - these and much more have come from land-grant institutions.

The land-grant college movement has forged an enduring legacy. Egalitarianism and educational populism, practical or useful education, applied science and research, public service and outreach, and, perhaps most importantly, the idea that the federal government has a key role to play in educational policy - these tenets have become generalized throughout the whole of American higher education.

Bibliography

Anderson, G. Lester, ed. 1976. Land-Grant Universities and Their Continuing Challenge. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

Cross, Coy F., II. 1999. Justin Smith Morrill: Father of the Land-Grant Colleges. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

Eddy, Edward D., Jr. 1957. Colleges for our Land and Time: The Land-Grant Idea in American Education. New York: Harper.

Edmond, Joseph B. 1978. The Magnificent Charter: The Origin and Role of the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges and Universities. Hicksville, NY: Exposition Press.

Geiger, Roger L., ed. 2000. The American College in the Nineteenth Century. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.

Kerr, Clark. 1982. The Uses of the University, 3rd edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Marcus, Alan I. 1985. Agricultural Science and the Quest for Legitimacy: Farmers, Agricultural Colleges, and Experiment Stations, 1870 - 1890. Ames: Iowa State University Press.

Nevins, Allan. 1962. The State Universities and Democracy. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Ross, Earle D. 1942. Democracy's College: The Land-Grant Movement in the Formative Stage. Ames: Iowa State College Press.

Williams, Roger L. 1991. The Origins of Federal Support for Higher Education: George W. Atherton and the Land-Grant College Movement. University Park: Pennsylvania State Press.

— ROGER L. WILLIAMS

Land-grant universities (also called land-grant colleges or land-grant institutions) are institutions of higher education in the United States designated by each state to receive the benefits of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890.

The Morrill Acts funded educational institutions by granting federally controlled land to the states for the states to develop or sell to raise funds to establish and endow "land-grant" colleges. The mission of these institutions as set forth in the 1862 Act is to focus on the teaching of practical agriculture, science and engineering (though "without excluding ... classical studies"), as a response to the industrial revolution and changing social class.^[1][2] This mission was in contrast to the historic practice of higher education to focus on an abstract Liberal Arts curriculum.

Ultimately, most land-grant colleges became large public universities that today offer a full spectrum of educational opportunities. However, some land-grant colleges are private schools, including Cornell University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Contents 1 History 1.1 State law precedents 2 Hatch Act 3 Expansion 4 Nomenclature 5 Relevant legislation 6 See also 7 Notes 8 External links

History

The concept of publicly funded agricultural and technical educational institutions first rose to national attention through the efforts of Jonathan Baldwin Turner in the late 1840s.^[3] The first land-grant bill was introduced in Congress by Representative Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont in 1857.^[3] The bill passed in 1859, but was vetoed by President James Buchanan.^[3] Morrill resubmitted his bill in 1861, and it was ultimately enacted into law in 1862.

Upon passage of the federal land-grant law in 1862, Iowa was the first state legislature to accept the provisions of the Morrill Act, on September 11, 1862.^[4][5] Iowa subsequently designated the State Agricultural College (now Iowa State University) as the land grant college on March 29, 1864.^[5][6] The first land-grant institution actually created under the Act was Kansas State University, which was established on February 16, 1863, and opened on September 2, 1863.^[7] The oldest school to hold land-grant status presently is Rutgers University, founded in 1766 and designated the land-grant college of New Jersey in 1864.

A second Morrill Act was passed in 1890, aimed at the former Confederate states. This act required each state to show that race was not an admissions criterion, or else to designate a separate land-grant institution for persons of color.^[8] Among the seventy colleges and universities which eventually evolved from the Morrill Acts are several of today's historically Black colleges and universities. Though the 1890 Act granted cash instead of land, it granted colleges under that act the same legal standing as the 1862 Act colleges; hence the term "land-grant college" properly applies to both groups.

Later on, other colleges such as the University of the District of Columbia and the "1994 land-grant colleges" for Native Americans were also awarded cash by Congress in lieu of land to achieve "land-grant" status.

In imitation of the land-grant colleges' focus on agricultural and mechanical research, Congress later established programs of sea grant colleges (aquatic research, in 1966), urban grant colleges (urban research, in 1985), space grant colleges (space research, in 1988), and sun grant colleges (sustainable energy research, in 2003).

West Virginia State University is the only current land-grant university to have surrendered its land-grant status, which happened in 1957, and to later regain this status, which happened in 2001; and is also the smallest land-grant university in the country.^{[citation needed]}

State law precedents

United States Postal Service commemorative stamp

Prior to enactment of the Morrill Act in 1862, Michigan State University was chartered under Michigan state law as a state land-grant institution on February 12, 1855, as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, receiving an appropriation of 14,000 acres (57 km²) of state-owned land. The Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania, later to become Pennsylvania State University, followed as a state land-grant school on February 22nd of that year.

Michigan State and Penn State were subsequently designated as the federal land-grant colleges for their states in 1863.

Hatch Act

The mission of the land-grant universities was expanded by the Hatch Act of 1887, which provided federal funds to states to establish a series of agricultural experiment stations under the direction of each state's land-grant college, as well as pass along new information, especially in the areas of soil minerals and plant growth. The outreach mission was further expanded by the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 to include cooperative extension — the sending of agents into rural areas to help bring the results of agricultural research to the end users. Beyond the original land grants, each land-grant college receives annual Federal appropriations for research and extension work on the condition that those funds are matched by state funds.

Expansion

While today's land-grant universities were initially known as land-grant colleges, only a few of the more than 70 institutions that developed from the Morrill Acts retain "College" in their official names; most are universities.

The University of the District of Columbia received land-grant status in 1967 and a $7.24 million endowment (USD) in lieu of a land grant. In a 1972 Special Education Amendment, American Samoa, Guam, Micronesia, Northern Marianas, and the Virgin Islands each received $3 million.

In 1994, 29 tribal colleges and universities became land-grant institutions under the Elementary and Secondary Education Reauthorization Act. As of 2008, 32 tribal colleges and universities have land-grant status. Most of these colleges grant two-year degrees. Six are four-year institutions, and two offer a master's degree.

Nomenclature

Land-grant universities are not to be confused with sea grant colleges (a program instituted in 1966), space grant colleges (instituted in 1988), urban-grant colleges or sun grant colleges (instituted in 2003). In some states, the land-grant missions for agricultural research and extension have been relegated to a statewide agency of the university system rather than the original land-grant campus; an example is the The Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas.

Relevant legislation

• The Morrill Act of 1862
• The Hatch Act of 1887
• The second Morrill Act of 1890
• The Adams Act – 1906
• The Nelson Act – 1907
• The Smith–Lever Act of 1914
• Chapter 79 – May 8, 1914
• The Smith–Hughes Act – 1917
• The Parnell Act – 1925
• The Copper–Ketcham Act – 1928
• The Bankhead–Jones Act of 1935
• The Bankhead–Flannegan Act – 1945
• The Research Marketing Act – 1946
• Amendment to Smith–Lever Act – 1953, 1955, 1961, 1962, 1968
• Amended Hatch Act – 1955
• The McIntire–Stennis Act – 1962
• The Research Facilities Act – 1965
• Public Law 89-106 – 1965
• The National Sea Grant College and Program Act – 1966
• The Rural Development Act – 1972
• The Food and Agriculture Act – 1977
• The National Agricultural Research Extension and Teaching Act – Title XIV – 1977
• The Resource Extension Act – 1978
• Amendment to Title XIV – 1981
• The Agriculture and Food Act – 1981
• Amendment to Title XIV of Food Security Act – 1985
• Elementary and Secondary Education Reauthorization Act – 1994; extended land-grant status to Tribal colleges and universities

See also

• List of land-grant universities
• Morrill Land-Grant Acts
• Association of Public and Land-grant Universities
• Sea Grant Colleges
• Space Grant Colleges
• Sun Grant Colleges
• State university

Notes

1. ^ 7 U.S.C. § 304
2. ^ What Is A Land-Grant College?, Washington State University, http://ext.wsu.edu/documents/landgrant.pdf, retrieved 2011-07-12 
3. ^ ^{a b c} The Land-Grant Tradition, NASULGC, 2008, pp. 3, http://www.aplu.org/NetCommunity/Document.Doc?id=780, retrieved 2010-07-28 
4. ^ "History of Iowa State: Time Line, 1858–1874". Iowa State University. 2006. http://www.lib.iastate.edu/spcl/exhibits/150/template/timeline-1858.html. Retrieved 9 July 2009. 
5. ^ ^{a b} "Sesquicentennial Message from President". Iowa State University. http://www.public.iastate.edu/~isu150/president.shtml. Retrieved 8 July 2011. 
6. ^ "Iowa State: 150 Points of Pride". Iowa State University. http://www.ag.iastate.edu/coa150/pop8_20.php. Retrieved 8 July 2011. 
7. ^ "The National Schools of Science", The Nation: 409, November 21, 1867, http://books.google.com/books?id=Mf0xAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA409&lpg=PA409&dq=land+grant+kansas+february+16,+1863+pennsylvania+April#v=onepage&q=land%20grant%20kansas%20february%2016%2C%201863%20pennsylvania%20April&f=false 
8. ^ 7 U.S.C. § 323

External links

• Map of all land-grant universities by the United States Department of Agriculture

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