Land-grant university

A land-grant university (also called land-grant college or land-grant institution) is an institution of higher education in the United States designated by a U.S. state to receive the benefits of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890, or a beneficiary under the Equity in Educational Land-Grant Status Act of 1994. There are 106 institutions in all: 57 that fall under the 1862 act, 19 under the 1890 act, and 35 under the 1994 act.

With Southerners absent during the Civil War, Republicans in Congress set up a funding system that would allow states to modernize their weak higher educational systems. The Morrill Act of 1862 provided land in the western parts of North America that states sold to fund new or existing colleges and universities. The law specified the mission of these institutions: to focus on the teaching of practical agriculture, science, military science, and engineering—although "without excluding other scientific and classical studies". This mission was in contrast to the historic practice of existing colleges which offered a narrow Classical curriculum based heavily on Latin, Greek and mathematics.

The Morrill Act quickly stimulated the creation of new state colleges and the expansion of existing institutions to include these new mandates. By 1914, land-grant colleges and universities in every state gained political support and expanded the definition and scope of university curricula to include advanced research and outreach across the state. The federal Hatch Act of 1887 established an agricultural experiment station at each school to conduct research related to the needs of improving agriculture as well as a system to disseminate information to the farmers eager to innovate. By 1917, Congress funded the teaching of agricultural subjects in the new public high schools that were opening.