Land Grant College

Today, many land grant colleges have grown into land grant universities. The Morrill Act of 1862 is officially the first government act that created what is known as the land grant college. When first instituted, land grant colleges were colleges that were established by the states through money given in grants from the federal government for the purpose of educating the working classes in agriculture, military tactics, and the mechanic arts. The original Morrill Act afforded the working classes the chance to obtain a college education; however, it did not rule out the classical arts education.

The first land grant university was the University of Iowa, as Iowa was the first state to accept the Morrill Act of 1862. Since that time, some of the best-known universities of our day were created under the Morrill Act of 1862 as land grant universities. The oldest land grant university is Rutgers, founded in 1766, Kansas State University, founded in 1863, and Michigan State University, founded in 1855, which acts as the land grant university model upon which all land grant universities were modeled. The Smith-Lever Act of 1914 further expanded land grant universities.

Today, out of the 70-something land grant colleges that have been formed by the Morrill Act of 1862, most were originally known as land grant colleges; although, today, few have retained "college" within their names. In 1994, the American Indian Higher Education Consortium was established under land grant status, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Reauthorization Act established 29 additional land grant colleges, most of them two-year technical schools, with three four-year institutions, and one college offers a master's degree.

For more information on land grant colleges and/or land grant universities, check out Wikipedia online.