The Land-Grant Colleges and the Reshaping of American Higher Education

Roger L. Geiger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351480307
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This work provides a critical reexamination of the origin and development of America's land-grant colleges and universities, created by the most important piece of legislation in higher education. The story is divided into five parts that provide closer examinations of representative developments.Part I describes the connection between agricultural research and American colleges. Part II shows that the responsibility of defining and implementing the land-grant act fell to the states, which produced a variety of institutions in the nineteenth century. Part III details the first phase of the conflict during the latter decades of the nineteenth century about whether land colleges were intended to be agricultural colleges, or full academic institutions. Part IV focuses on the fact that full-fledged universities became dominant institutions of American higher education. The final part shows that the land-grant mission is alive and well in university colleges of agriculture and, in fact, is inherent to their identity.Including some of the best minds the field has to offer, this volume follows in the fine tradition of past books in Transaction's Perspectives on the History of Higher Education series.

PART I

Scientific and Social Foundations

Introduction

Nathan M. Sorber

The Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862 created institutions that were known by various names: People’s Colleges, Agricultural and Mechanical Colleges, and Industrial Colleges. The monikers highlighted the legislation’s aims of expanding higher education access to the so-called industrial classes, and of providing instruction in the “useful subjects” of agriculture and mechanical arts. Historians have depicted the land-grant colleges as a reaction to the elite and aloof classical colleges, and a response to popular demand for expanded opportunity and utility in higher education. Land-grant college histories are often framed within the social milieu of Jacksonian Democracy, and the origins of the movement are represented as an outgrowth of increasing participation and influence of the “common man” on American education, politics, and culture. Most notable and lasting is Earle Ross’ Democracy’s College, which views land-grant colleges as products of a burgeoning industrial education movement that is premised on displacing the old collegiate order with practical education suited to the industrial classes. Major land-grant histories follow Ross’ lead (i.e., Edward Eddy, Allan Nevins, and J. G. Edmonds), but this consensus was due for revision after Eldon Johnson and Roger Williams found little evidence of a popular movement demanding or supporting land-grant colleges in the early years. In the aftermath of the revisionists’ critique, the popular demand thesis was scuttled, but no new consensus emerged. The articles in this first section contribute to a new framework for understanding the origins of the Morrill Act and the land-grant colleges.¹

In the first two articles, Adam Nelson and I explore Morrill Act antecedents besides those premised on the “common man” awakening to the benefits of higher education. In doing so, we highlight how the growth of science, economic development, and international competition served as impetuses of the land-grant movement. Expanding the context beyond the intellectual strictures of Jacksonian Democratic thought, these works consider the influence of Whig and Proto-Republican political and economic philosophies on the development of the land-grant idea. Adam Nelson’s “Institutionalizing Agricultural Research in the Early American Republic” and my “Creating Colleges of Science, Industry, and National Advancement” align the Morrill Act with those reformers who viewed public higher education investment as a means to expand the economic and political influence of the United States. The core political beliefs of Whigs such as Justin Morrill included support for internal improvements: bridges, canals, and turnpikes to aid commerce and communication; tariffs to protect and nurture fledgling industries; and investment in science and higher education to spur growth in technology, develop new industries, and create scientists, engineers, and skilled laborers. Nelson uncovers an embryonic stage of this state-higher-education symbiosis, finding public investment in higher education five decades before the Morrill Act. He argues that legislatures, colleges, and agricultural societies partnered to institutionalize the plant sciences in higher education with the hope of advancing agricultural science and practice. I find similar developments, albeit on a wider scale, surrounding the land-grant activities ofthe 1860s. The Morrill Act was the culmination of a growing state interest to develop the nation’s scientific capabilities, especially in the areas of agricultural and industrial science, and to enhance the productivity and profitability of American agriculture and industry.²

A major theme that pervades these articles, as well as recent scholarship on Morrill Act origins, is that the land-grant colleges joined an eclectic higher education landscape at mid-century. As opposed to being an original event that separates premodern and modern higher education, the land-grant colleges were an institutional expression of a remarkably innovative Zeitgeist. This period witnessed a host of educational ventures that experimented with scientific and applied studies, including scientific schools, agricultural schools and colleges, polytechnic institutes, and multipurpose colleges.³

One of the most fertile areas for new educational departures was agriculture, thanks to the influence and leadership of state and local agricultural societies. As Nelson and I discuss in our articles, agricultural societies were the domain not of farmers who tilled the field for their livelihood, but of scientifically minded professionals, merchants, or public officials, including Justin Morrill. In order to improve agriculture, these gentlemen farmers experimented on their farms and gardens, hosted state and county fairs, and published agriculture journals. In addition, they wanted to introduce science into higher education. Robert Gardiner’s lyceum in Maine (f. 1821), for example, became the nation’s first institution to “teach those branches of natural philosophy and chemistry which are calculated to make scientific farmers and mechanics.” Other private ventures followed, most notably the Farmers College in Cincinnati, Ohio (f. 1846). While ultimately ceasing collegiate-level instruction in 1866, the Farmers’ College initially succeeded by offering a traditional classical program, short courses in practical agriculture, and a scientific course encompassing agriculture, engineering, and surveying. More lasting contributions of the agricultural societies were the founding of state agricultural colleges. In concert with financial support from state governments, society members played a leading role in inaugurating the Michigan State Agricultural College, the Maryland Agricultural College, the New York Agricultural College, and the Pennsylvania Farmers’ High School in the decade before the Morrill Act. With the exception of New York (which would follow a different path after the intersession of Ezra Cornell), each state made these institutions its land-grant college.⁴

As agricultural science gained a foothold in higher education, the mechanical arts and engineering were finding homes in military academies, polytechnics, and some “classical colleges.” Surveying and civil engineering were first, with West Point offering instruction as early as 1817. Most attempts by antebellum colleges at civil engineering were short lived, but the pioneering Union College managed to organize a regular course in the subject in 1845. Engineering penetrated higher education in a much more permanent way by mid-century, as collegiate programs displaced the mechanics institutes where artisans gave manual instruction in “shop-culture.” In 1851, Rensselaer Polytechnic (f. 1824) became the nation’s first, full-fledged engineering college that offered a degree in civil engineering. It was soon followed by polytechnics in Philadelphia in 1853 and Brooklyn in 1854, and William Barton Rogers was perfecting his scheme for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1860. MIT was to provide “systematic training in the applied sciences … [and] to give to the industrial classes sure mastery over the materials and processes over which they are concerned.” When it opened in 1865, it set a new standard for applied science education and research.⁵

Although these higher education enterprises emerged throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, traditional literary colleges remained popular for professional preparation and cultural refinement. Stable enrollments and the specter of the Yale Reports of 1828 kept leading institutions from straying too far from their classical fare. However, as Adam Nelson’s article suggests, there was plenty of room for innovation on the margins of the classical curricula at Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard. Nelson notes that historians tend to view colleges of this era as denominational schools while emphasizing strictly classical education,” but he concludes that “such a characterization obscures not only the role of the state but also the role of science—and scientific research—in these institutions.”⁶

One way in which colleges such as Yale and Harvard could participate (and lead) in this movement for the applied sciences, while preserving their traditional clientele and programs, was by establishing separate scientific schools. As depicted in my article, the earliest incarnation of Yale’s Sheffield Scientific School, the Department of Philosophy and Arts, began instruction to students who had not enrolled in Yale’s academic program in 1846. The curriculum initially included courses in analytical chemistry, agricultural chemistry, botany, and vegetable physiology, and after becoming a scientific school in 1856, it offered courses in engineering, metallurgy, and organic and industrial chemistry. The new institution was to serve as a refuge for those “students of science” who wanted to engage in original inquiries in college laboratories or on model farms, and those with desires to enter the “higher practical occupations.” The latter referred to those who were interested in joining a new middle-class workforce as engineers, scientists, and business managers. Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School (1847) focused on basic science and individual study after having recruited famed Swiss scientist Louis Agassiz, but neglected instruction in applied sciences such as engineering. The Chandler Scientific School at Dartmouth attempted a three-year engineering program, but young and ill-prepared students diminished hopes of creating a scientific outpost in New Hampshire. The Sheffield Scientific School was at the vanguard of applied science education and research when it was named “Connecticut’s land-grant college” in 1863. It was celebrated for its degree programs in chemistry and engineering, graduate study, and faculty who were trained in leading European universities. Justin Morrill and “National Schools of Science” advocate Daniel Coit Gilman regularly praised the Sheffield Scientific School as the ideal land-grant college.⁷

Growing attentiveness to expanding scientific knowledge, developing the American industry, and competing with international economies led to the rise of agricultural colleges, polytechnics, schools of science, and, ultimately, land-grant colleges. The explanation for the introduction of scientific study is manifold. Agricultural societies worked to connect scientific discoveries to farm practices in agricultural colleges; European universities, expatriate scholars, and the rapid expansion in chemical knowledge influenced the development of America’s “schools of science”; multipurpose, denominational colleges experimented with irregular applied science offerings to meet the demands of local constituents; and polytechnics fulfilled the skilled manpower needs of urban industries. Although the expansion of science in higher education was impressive, for some, it was not progressing quickly enough. Educational reformers at the state level, usually led by agricultural society members, called on state legislatures to fund initiatives that would expand scientific research and education. They argued that state partnerships were essential for developing a scientific understanding of agriculture, improving farm practices, and increasing the profitability of the state’s agriculture industry.⁸

Adam Nelson ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• HalfTitle Page
• Editor Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• PART I Scientific and Social Foundations
• PART II The Politics of Launching Land-Grant Colleges, 1862-1890
• PART III Agriculture and Engineering, 1880-1900
• PART IV Land-Grant Universities, 1900-1940
• PART V Universities and the Land-Grant Mission since 1930
• List of Contributors