Land-grant university

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United States Postal Service commemorative stamp

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

The Morrill Acts Acts funded educational institutions by granting federally controlled land to the states. The mission of these institutions, as set forth in the 1862 Act, is to teach agriculture, military tactics, the mechanic arts, and home economics, not to the exclusion of classical studies, so that members of the working classes might obtain a practical college education.

The Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm, the predecessor to Iowa State University which was chartered in 1858, became the nation’s first land-grant institution when the General Assembly awarded it the state’s land-grant charter in 1864. The first land-grant university newly created under the Morrill Act of 1862 was Kansas State University, established on February 16, 1863. The oldest land-grant university is Rutgers University, which was founded in 1766. Michigan State University, founded in 1855, claims the title of pioneer land-grant university, because all land-grant universities were ostensibly modeled on it.

The mission of the land-grant universities was subsequently 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.

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 universities or sun grant colleges (instituted in 2003). There are thirteen colleges or universities with land, sea and space designations, and at least three universities with four designations (Cornell University (land, sea, space, sun), Oregon State University (land, sea, space, sun) and University of Delaware (land, sea, urban, space)).

[edit] History

The universities were initially known as land-grant colleges. Today, only a small handful of the seventy-some institutions which evolved from the Morrill Acts still have "College" in their official names.

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

In 1994, the American Indian Higher Education Consortium also received land grant status, and 29 additional land grant colleges were created under the Elementary and Secondary Education Reauthorization Act. Most of these are two-year technical schools. However, three are four-year institutions, and one offers a master's degree.