What is a land-grant?
A land-grant college or university is an institution that has been designated by its state legislature or the U.S. Congress to receive federal support detailed in the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 . The original mission of these institutions was to teach agriculture and the mechanic arts. They sought to practically educate the children of people of ordinary means and emphasized pragmatic studies over the classics.
Justin Smith Morrill, a representative and later Senator fromVermont, sponsored the legislation. It was introduced in 1857 and passed in 1859 (only to be vetoed by President Buchanan on the basis that the federal government did not have any right to get involved in education). In 1861 Morrill introduced another bill which passed and that President Lincoln signed into law in 1862.
Federal support first came in the form of federal lands granted to each state for the establishment of a college (thus land-grant). The Morrill Act provided 30,000 acres for each senator and representative of the state. Direct monetary appropriations were also provided to these schools several times (e.g. through the second Morrill Act, which was responsible for the establishment of the traditionally black land-grants set up in the South at this time, and the Bankhead-Jones Act). Today the Nelson Amendment to the Morrill Act provides a permanent annual appropriation of $50K per state.
Land-grants are not just colleges and universities; rather they have evolved into a system. Important components of the land-grant system are the agricultural experiment stations. These were created by the Hatch Act in 1887 which authorized direct payment of federal grant funds to each state to establish and operate an agricultural experiment station in connection with the land-grant institution. The amount of the appropriation varies each year, is determined by formula keyed to the number of small farmers, and requires state matching money.
Another component of the land-grant system is the Cooperative Extension Service which was created by the Smith-Lever Act of 1914. The purpose of the Cooperative Extension Service was to disseminate information learned from the research at each of the agricultural experiment stations (read: technology transfer). This act authorized ongoing federal support (with state matching money) on a formula basis similar to the Hatch Act.
Today there are 105 land-grants -- at least one in each state and territory of the US and including 29 Native American tribal colleges set up in 1994. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) plays a large role in the administration of the land-grant system. USDAs Cooperative State Research Service (CSRS) administers both the Hatch Act and the Morrill-Nelson funds. The Extension Service of USDA administers Smith-Lever funding and cooperates with states (which provide matching moneys) to set priorities and to facilitate the sharing of information within the Cooperative Extension System.
The land-grant mission
What is interesting about land-grant colleges and universities is not the exact implementation details but rather the land-grant model itself. The mission of the land-grant as Morrill conceived it was three-fold: research, teaching, and extension (or service). The practical focus and outreach or extension were key elements. Extension was designed to link the land-grants academic and research programs to societal needs. Fiduciary responsibility and a public service ethos were part of the mission. In an age when almost 50% of the US population lived on farms, agriculture was the main business of the day and became a prime focus of the land-grants. This is quite understandable but really an implementation detail. What is truly significant is that the land-grant system created a government-university-private sector partnership for the advancement of research and technology transfer.
Since the 1860s, there have been many changes within the agricultural sector, not the least of which is the decline in the percentage of the US population living on farms and deriving their income from farming. The private sector has become more divergent shifting from a focus on farming to industry. The successful model of the land-grant remains though, with its prime features of practicality, research associated with national needs, and government-university-private sector partnerships.
The evolution of the mission and the rise of the commercial model
Two points in time need to be considered as we continue this discussion of the land-grant mission. These events are World War II and the crisis of economic competitiveness that emerges in the 1970s. Both of these milestones drove universities in the direction of forging wider linkages with both the government and the private sector. It is important to note that land-grants are not the only institutions to emphasize practical and applied research nor are they the only ones to accept the role of partnership with the private sector, and federal and state governments. Indeed, private universities as a result of these historical events tended to adopt the land-grant model themselves and in so doing adapted to a changing world.
As the nation emerged from the Second World War, universities became intimately linked to the rapidly growing military industrial complex. The creation of the national laboratory system further strengthened the link of the universities to the federal government. Perhaps more importantly, universities grew increasingly dependent on the federal government for funding through such departments and agencies as the Department of Defense, especially the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA, now called ARPA), the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, NASA, and the National Science Foundation. Perhaps for the universities one of the key changes that emerged in the post-war era was the bipartisan acceptance of the appropriate role of the federal government in funding university research. A consensus developed that the country would reap a great social benefit from university research and therefore it should be funded. While the rationalization for the appropriateness of the government funding university research was generally restricted to basic research, the reality of the situation was that a vast amount of money was directed toward applied research and development efforts as well. Universities became heavily dependent on the federal government to fund their research.
By the mid 1970s a shift in public policy occurred due to a fear of the diminution of U.S. economic competitiveness. There was a growing recognition of the decline in the growth rate of American product-ivity. Comparisons with Japan and Germany raised the issue of whether or not the U.S. ought to be putting so much R&D funding into military (versus civilian) programs. Questions arose about the nature of the link between basic research and commercialization of new and improved products and processes. Many policy analysts and political figures began to advocate a change in national policy. They pushed for a move away from federal funding for basic research toward applied research associated with national needs and they called for an emphasis on civilian as opposed to military R&D.
The desire to link universities to industry, and thus improve the national economic well-being becomes public policy in the 1980s through the passage of a series of national Acts including: the Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation Act of 1980, Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, Small Business Innovation Development Act of 1982, National Cooperative Research Act of 1984, Trademark Clarification Act of 1984, Federal Technology Transfer Act of 1986, Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988, and the National Competitiveness Technology Transfer Act of 1989. While each piece of legislation has unique features, the general legislative intent is to involve the universities in applied research directly applicable to business needs and to move technologies developed on university campuses to the private sector for commercialization. The desired outcome is improvement in the nation's economic competitiveness as the fruits of science and technology rapidly diffuse into the society.
While the nation's policy-makers drew on the success of the land grant model to design this new wave of legislation, they fundamentally altered the traditional implementation mechanism. The original land grant model rested on the idea of direct government funding for universities. The public policy that created the land-grant agricultural support mission was based on the notion of not-for-profit public service and the transfer of research results to better society. The fundamental incentive was the fiduciary responsibility of the university. The competitiveness legislation that emerges in the 1980s is vastly different in that it attempts to get universities interested in transferring the results of R&D to society by creating financial incentives. The 1980s legislation sets a new direction by allowing universities to make a profit from patenting and licensing technologies developed by their professors on their campuses.
Land grant universities engage now in the transfer of technology just as they did when they were first established. That has not changed. What has shifted, though, is the motivation for doing technology transfer and the types of science and technology being diffused. While agriculture maintains part of the center stage at land-grant universities, a much wider array of science and technology is passing from the university to the community. Activities undertaken by universities today may be better explained by a commercial rather than a fiduciary model.