The Modern Land-Grant University

Robert J. Sternberg

• Publisher: Purdue University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781612493367
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

In an increasingly competitive higher education environment, Americas public universities are seeking ways to differentiate themselves. This book suggests that a hopeful vision of what a university should be lies in a reexamination of the land-grant mission, the common system of values originally set forth in the Morrill Land Grant Acts of 1862 and 1890, which established a new system of practically oriented higher learning across the United States. While hard to define, these values are often expressed by the one hundred or so institutions that currently define themselves as land grants under the three pillars of research, teaching, and engagement/extension.

In order to understand the unique character of a modern land-grant institution, this book focuses especially but not exclusively on the multiple components of a single organization, Oklahoma State University, founded in 1890 and currently enrolling 35, 000 students across five campuses. Contributors from across the university focus on what the land-grant mission means to them in their daily endeavors, whether that be crafting the undergraduate academic experience, stimulating research, or engaging with the community through extension activities. The twenty contributions are divided into four parts, exploring in turn the core mission of the modern land-grant university, the university environment, the universitys public value, and its accountability. The volume ends with an epilogue by the editor, which summarizes the values underlying the activities of land-grant institutions.

In a time of uncertainty in higher education, this volume provides a helpful overview of the many different types of value public universities bring to American society. It also offers a powerful vision of a future founded on land-grant ideas that will be inspiring to university administrators and trustees, other educational policymakers, and faculty and staff, especially those fortunate enough to be part of land-grant institutions.

PART I

The Core Mission
of the
Modern
Land-Grant University

1

History and Mission

Charles I. Abramson, W. Stephen Damron,
Michael Dicks, Peter M. A. Sherwood

History of Modern Land-Grant Institutions

University education began in the American Colonies with the founding of a university in Massachusetts in 1636. The Massachusetts Bay Colony established this first university and called it New College. The rationale for the founding of this first university was expressed in the book New England’s First Fruits, published in 1643:

After God had carried us safe to New England, and we had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God’s worship, and settled the civil government: One of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust.

Most of the colonists who had graduated from a university were graduates of the University of Cambridge in England (founded in 1209), and so the instruction model used by New College was based upon the Cambridge model, with a focus on the training of Puritan ministers. The first major donor of an American university, John Harvard, who died of tuberculosis in a suburb of Boston in 1638, gave half of his estate (780 British pounds) to New College, which in 1639 was renamed Harvard University. Harvard was born in England in 1607 and attended Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, graduating in 1632. Emmanuel College had become a center of Puritan thought, and Harvard became a Puritan. He moved to Massachusetts in 1637. Later colonial universities were also renamed to recognize a major donor: Yale (renamed in 1718), named after the donor Elihu Yale; Brown (renamed in 1804), named after the donor Nicholas Brown Jr.; Rutgers (renamed in 1825), named after the donor Colonel Henry Rutgers.

Over the course of the colonial period (1607–1776) another eight universities¹ were established in the American Colonies, and all had a focus on the training of clergy as well as the training of lawyers and doctors. In a major change from the British university practice, these colonial universities established doctorates that were based upon a period of training rather than an extended record of scholarship. Thus, the DD degree became a training degree for ministers, the MD degree became a training degree for physicians, and the DCL degree a training degree for lawyers.

After its independence from Britain, as the new United States experienced increasing numbers of immigrants and a steady expansion to the west, two issues became apparent. First, the skills required to meet the challenges of expanded agriculture and the growth of the Industrial Revolution meant that new courses and degrees were needed in the growing number of higher education institutions. Second, all existing higher education institutions were essentially private institutions,² and this meant that people of ability who lacked the financial means were excluded from a university education. It was clear that there needed to be more institutions accessible to the growing population to ensure that people’s talents were developed.

In 1792 Samuel L. Mitchell was appointed professor of natural history, chemistry, agriculture, and other arts at Columbia College in New York. Mitchell has been credited with initiating the plan for the establishment of state agricultural colleges. His ideas, communicated in the New York Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts, and Manufactures, led to President Washington’s message to the second session of the Fourth Congress: “It will not be doubted that, with reference to individual or national welfare, agriculture is of primary importance…. I have heretofore proposed to this consideration of Congress the expediency of establishing a national university, and also a military academy” (Lowrie & St. Clair Clarke, 1832, p. 31).

The idea of an agricultural college was brought before Congress again in 1817 by Elkanah Watson of the Berkshire Agricultural Society of Massachusetts, who sought to establish a national board of agriculture in accordance with Washington. The bill was defeated overwhelmingly by the House.

The great crop failures of 1837–38 that led to millions of dollars of food imports, coupled with the widespread knowledge of the rapid loss of soil in the Atlantic Seaboard states, put renewed vigor in the state agricultural societies’ call for state schools of agriculture. Maine, Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts established private schools of agriculture and manual labor schools where students could perform agricultural work to pay for their education.

By 1850, the free male population of the United States was just under 5.4 million, with roughly 2.4 million of these individuals engaged in agricultural production. For the previous 200 years agricultural practices had been based on land mining, and many of the soil resources were severely depleted. During the expansionary period (1776–1900), new lands were plentiful and soil depletion was not seen as a barrier to growth in food production. In Congress, concern was expressed that continued mining of the soil resources would bring the nation to bankruptcy. To avoid this result would require that farmers have access to the best available education to become knowledgeable in the care of the nation’s most precious resource.

During this period the U.S. Commissioner of Patents urged Congress to give national aid to agricultural education, and the new state of Michigan adopted a constitution that required legislation to establish a state school of agriculture. The People’s College of the State of New York was started in 1853 and led by President Amos Brown, who was a strong advocate of state colleges of agriculture.

In the 35th Congress (1857–59), House Bill Number 2 sought the movement of a portion of federal lands to the states for the sole purpose of establishing agricultural and mechanical colleges. These colleges would focus on providing farmers in each state with an education appropriate for the management of farm resources. A report from the Committee on Public Lands (H.R. 261, April 1858) discussed the need for better educated farmers and the establishment of public institutions for higher learning to accomplish this goal:

Statesmen and sages of all countries, and of all times, have constantly proclaimed the great truth that the cultivation of the soil is the source and the products of agricultural industry, the foundation stone of all national prosperity; that the earth is the very storehouse from which is drawn the prosperity, wealth, and even the existence of every nation.

The increased and constantly increasing benefits resulting from the intelligent application of science to art in the dissemination of knowledge by means of the printing press, in the increased facilities and speed of traveling since the application of steam as a propelling power, and in the lightning speed with which we hold communication with our friends through the telegraph, all tend to demand of this age more attention and encouragement to this great interest, this very musing mother of all other interests and pursuits.

About one-half of the entire free male population of the United States over the age of fifteen years of age are directly engaged in the cultivation of the earth, and a large proportion of the balance are indirectly so employed: yet this large part of our population are notoriously less instructed in those branches of scientific knowledge directly connected with the proper and economical management of their own pursuits than any other class of citizens in their peculiar occupations.

In the professions of law, medicine and divinity 94,515 are employed. To educate these men for the learned professions, 234 colleges are established, endowed by millions of dollars, and two millions of dollars are actually expended every year in the education of 27,000 students.

[We] do not underrate the value of education as acquired in our schools and colleges, nor the value and importance of such institutions to the well-being of society and the country, but submit that while millions are being expended for literary education of the few, something should be spared for the practical education of the many. If the intelligence of the people is the safeguard of our liberties and attachment to the soil of our birth, the guarantee of our continued independence, surely the more extended the education of the people and the more intelligently that soil is cultivated, the safer are our liberties and the stronger the guarantees of our independence. (U.S. House of Representatives, 1858, p. 2)

Jonathan B. Turner, a faculty member in one of the new colleges founded as the nation spread to the west, became a leader in the thinking that led to the formation of land-grant universities. Turner was forced to leave his faculty position because of his abolitionist ideas, and he became a powerful advocate for the idea of a public system of nonsectarian higher education. As more people became involved in the discussion of public higher education, Turner was joined by the more diplomatic Senator Justin Morrill as the discussion continued. Senator Morrill, a Republican from Vermont, introduced a bill in 1857 that would establish a system of public higher education that would be funded by the provision of federal lands to each state.

The Republican Party was the minority party at this time (1857–59) and was in favor of establishing public educational institutions in each state with the primary goal of educating the common rural American. The use of federal resources in this pursuit was thought to be justified, as it would result in a benefit to all of the states.

The majority party viewed the action from a different perspective, arguing that the federal government could not be all things to all people and the use of federal resources to establish state educational institutions would open the door to requests for the use of federal resources to develop other public facilities, such as libraries and hospitals.

If the general government possessed the power to make grants for local purposes, without a consideration, within the States, its action, in that respect, would have no limitation but such as policy or necessity might impose. Every meritorious object would have a right to demand it and to such a refusal could only be justified by inability. Every local object for which local provision is now made, would press for support upon the general government, and would create demands upon it beyond its power to meet, and of necessity it would be driven into the policy which would increase its means. As its expenditures are increased the revenue must be enlarged, and the general government, by adoption of the policy, would levy taxes upon the people of the Union for the support of the local interests of the States. If their expenditures should be unequally apportioned, the injustice of taxing a part for the benefit of others would soon cause the system to be overthrown. If they were equally distributed, it would be but usurpation of the function of the States, unsustained even by the plea of economy. The patronage would be fatal to the independence of the States; with patronage comes the power to control, as consequence follows upon cause. If the policy is embarked in, what shall be its limits? Shall the merit of the object and the ability of the government be the boundaries of its action? To feed the hungry and clothe the naked, if within its competency, would in a moral point of view, be quite as meritorious as any other act which the government could perform; but, if the Constitution had granted power for such purpose, would it be politic for Congress to make provision for the suffering of the poor throughout the Union. If either lands or money could be granted for the purpose designated in this bill, could they not, and ought they not, to be granted to the building of churches, erecting school-houses and keeping up the common schools in States and Territories. If no one meritorious object, why not to another? Or shall the action of Congress in this regard be extended to every useful public and private purpose within the States? If not, where shall the line be drawn? (U.S. House of Representatives, 1858)

The debate ended on April 15, 1858, with a vote against the establishment of the agriculture and mechanical colleges by the Committee on Public Lands. The bill was reintroduced in 1859 to the new Congress and passed both houses of Congress in 1860, but it was vetoed by President James Buchanan. There is some speculation that the movement of this bill through Congress occurred as the growing rift between the North and South and the succession of 11 states from the Union between December 20, 1860, and June 8, 1861, enabled the northern states to move their agriculture agenda forward.

In 1861 the northern Republicans took charge with Abraham Lincoln as president and a Republican Congress. During Lincoln’s term as president, numerous legislative initiatives in support of agriculture were passed. On May 15, 1862, an act to create the Department of Agriculture was signed; on May 20 the Homestead Act; and on July 1 the Pacific Railway Act.

Senator Morrill reintroduced his bill to establish the agriculture and mechanical colleges. The reintroduced bill increased the amount of land to be given by the federal government to the states to 30,000 acres for each member of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate who represented the state at the time of the 1860 census, and it included a provision that the new universities would provide training in military tactics. President Lincoln signed this bill on July 2, 1862, and the Morrill Act of 1862 established the land-grant college system in the United States, providing federal lands to establish an agricultural and mechanical college in every state. The purpose of the colleges was to educate the populace in each state in the proper care and management of the agricultural resources and to assist in developing proper agricultural practices for the many different ecological environments found throughout the United States.

Two states, Michigan and Pennsylvania, embraced the idea of public higher education by using state funds to establish public institutions. The state of Michigan gave 676 (and subsequently 14,000) acres of land to establish, on February 12, 1855, the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, which became federally funded in 1863 via the Morrill Act and is now Michigan State University. The state of Pennsylvania gave initially 200 (and subsequently 10,101) acres of land to establish, on February 22, 1855, the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, which also became federally funded in 1863 via the Morrill Act and is now The Pennsylvania State University.

The Morrill Act of 1862 stated the purpose of the land-grant university as follows:

Provided, That all moneys derived from the sale of the lands aforesaid by the States to which the lands are apportioned, and from the sales of land script hereinbefore provided for, shall be invested in stocks of the United States, or of the States, or some other safe stocks, yielding not less than five per centum upon the par value of said stocks; and that the moneys so invested shall constitute a perpetual fund, the capital of which ...