Land-grant university

From Free net encyclopedia

Land-grant universities (also called land-grant colleges or land grant institutions) are institutions of higher education in the United States which have been designated by Congress 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. The mission of these institutions, as set forth in the 1862 Act, is to teach agriculture, military tactics, and the mechanic arts, not to the exclusion of classical studies, so that members of the working classes might obtain a practical college education.

Iowa was the first state to accept the Morrill Act in 1862, making Iowa State University the first university designated as a land-grant university. 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. The pioneer land-grant university is Michigan State University founded in 1855, from which all land-grant universities were ostensibly modeled.

The mission of the land-grant universities was subsequently 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.

Land-grant universities are not to be confused with Sea Grant Colleges (a program instituted in 1966), Space Grant Colleges (instituted in 1988) or Sun Grant Colleges (instituted in 2003). There are thirteen colleges or universities with land, sea and space designations, and two universities with all four designations (Cornell University and Oregon State University).

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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.

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