A Century of the Land-Grant Colleges

Abstract

T HE Morrill Act of I862 was responsible for launching most of the colleges and universities commonly called land-grant colleges or state colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts. It is often forgotten that long before the Morrill Act was adopted, the federal government had made land grants to the new states to aid the common schools and to endow state universities. In part, the failure of the state university to satisfy the unformed aspirations of many farmers, politicians, and reformers gave force and direction to the movement that culminated in the Morrill Act. In 1785, in its first land legislation, the Continental Congress sought to encourage establishment of public education by reserving one section of land in each surveyed township of the public domain for the use of the common schools. Two years later, in I787, the same Congress granted land to the Ohio Company for the endowment of a literary institution. This and additional land was subsequently turned over to the state of Ohio for higher education. Other states carved from the Old Northwest asked for and obtained similar grants, and Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa were prompt in creating and opening institutions they called state universities. Subsequently, the states organized west of the Mississippi obtained such grants, and even some territories sought to establish universities in this way. In mid-twentieth century no one gave a thought to the fact that both Alaska and Hawaii had established universities long before they became states. Congress provided for common schools and state universities in the new states of the West before those areas had very much population, and the writers of the state constitutions and the members of the legislatures in the several new states made legal provision for common schools and universities as a conscious act of policy. The constitutions and the laws usually outlined the functions of the public institutions of higher learning and provided for a governing board with power to bring the institutions into existence. The boards thus created were generally responsible for obtaining land, planning and erecting buildings, establishing a course of study, hiring a president and a faculty, and attracting students-sometimes in the order given. Before the middle of the century, Horace Mann and others had popularized the notion of an American state system of education that