What do Cornell University, Kansas State University, and Florida A&M University have in common? They are three of the hundreds of land-grant universities in the United States. You may think you are unfamiliar with land-grant universities, but there is at least one land-grant institution in every American state, plus the District of Columbia. A land-grant university (or a land-grant college or land-grant institution, depending on your preferred verbiage) is a higher education institution that has been designated by either Congress or its state legislature to receive benefits under the Morrill Acts. Keep reading to learn more about the two Morrill Acts, the creation of the land-grant university system, and the unique position these institutions hold in American higher education.

Educating a Nation, One Farm at a Time

Higher education looked very different in 1856 than it does in 2026. Postsecondary education was not common or even expected for the majority of Americans. American colleges and universities almost exclusively followed a European model, offering a classical or professional education, such as in medicine and law. These institutions were usually established with some kind of Christian denominational association and almost exclusively educated white men. As is true in the 21st century, a postsecondary education in the 19th century was expensive, but there was no far-reaching federal or private network of student loan lending to finance the education of anyone who wanted to learn. A college education was a luxury for the elite.

In 1857, Representative Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont introduced a bill that sought to democratize postsecondary education. Morrill was a man with a humble background who never attended college himself. Morrill had a passion for law and self-educated himself in the law since he could not afford to receive a formal college education.

In the House of Representatives, Morrill’s bill proposed a radical idea: have the federal government grant land to the states for the purpose of establishing colleges that would teach agricultural sciences. Morrill wasn’t the first person to conceptualize agricultural colleges. In 1850, Jonathan Baldwin Turner, a professor at Illinois College, proposed creating state colleges for the “industrial classes;” Turner’s proposition articulated many ideas of what would become the land-grant university system. Wanting to educate the “industrial classes” was maybe born from some sense of altruism, but it was likely more motivated by economics. Antebellum America was a predominantly agrarian society that was rapidly industrializing, with the majority of Americans employed in agriculture directly or in agriculture-adjacent businesses. Creating a robust postsecondary educational system that focused on making students better and more productive farmers would, in turn, hopefully make them more profitable farmers.

Morrill’s bill narrowly passed Congress in 1859, just to be killed by veto on President James Buchanan’s desk. He tried again in 1862, one year into the American Civil War, expanding the educational scope of his proposed colleges for the common man to include military strategy in addition to agriculture and “the mechanic arts.” The bill passed again and President Abraham Lincoln signed it into law on July 2, 1862.

Morrill’s First Land-Grant

The Morrill Act granted each state 30,000 acres of public land for each member of the House of Representatives and Senate it had in Congress; for example, New York, with its 33 members of Congress at the time, received 990,000 acres of land scrip, which it sold to endow Cornell University. If there wasn’t enough public land available in a state for the government to dole out, as was the case in New York, then states were issued a land scrip, or a certificate that entitled them to proceeds of the sale of public land beyond their borders. Proceeds from the land sales were invested and placed in trust to endow at least one college whose “leading object” was to teach “agriculture and mechanic arts,” but not at the exclusion of other subjects. Bizarrely, states could not use any money from their land sale proceeds to construct or maintain any buildings that would make up their future college campuses. States had five years to establish a land-grant institution after accepting the act.

Iowa was the first state to accept the Morrill Act’s provisions, doing so on September 11, 1862 during an extraordinary session of the state legislature. It designated the State Agricultural College, now known as Iowa State University, as its land-grant institution on March 29, 1864. The Morrill Act established 57 land-grant institutions upon its passage. Not all of these were brand-new schools. States could designate a preexisting school as their land-grant institution, such as Iowa did with the State Agricultural College. Kansas State University was the first land-grant university to open under the act, opening its doors on September 2, 1863, just seven months after its establishment.

Congress distributed more than 17 million acres of public land to the states under the Morrill Act. While Morrill’s act was written with the noble goal of educating the average citizen, the practical reality of realizing that dream required forcing Indigenous peoples off their land, either by treaty or forcible removal, to create the public land that was doled out to the states.

Morrill’s lofty dream of democratizing higher education hit several speedbumps in its first years of existence. Adequately funding these schools was the unifying theme among these challenges. The land-grant universities received a much-needed monetary boost in 1887 with the passage of the Hatch Act, which gave each land-grant university $15,000 to establish agricultural experiment stations. These experiment stations conducted research into agribusiness improvements, such as crop rotation, soil and water analysis, and the best forage and fodder for livestock. The 1887 Hatch Act experiment stations were the ancestors of cooperative extension services established under the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, which fund and link the work done at land-grant universities to the public through their local county cooperative extension. If you have ever called your local cooperative extension for help testing your garden’s pH level or for information about enrolling your child in your local 4-H group, you have the Smith-Lever Act and a land-grant university to thank.

Morrill’s Second Land-Grant

Justin Morrill never gave up on the land-grant university system he helped create; between 1872 and 1892, now serving in the Senate, Morrill introduced 12 additional bills to strengthen and further fund the land-grant universities. The last of these legislative attempts finally passed into law to become the Morrill Act of 1890. The second Morrill Act provided more funding to the land-grant system and allowed those funds to be used to teach subjects beyond agriculture and the mechanic arts, with particular emphasis on math and the English language. But the second Morrill Act is more remembered today because it prohibited racial discrimination at land-grant institutions, with a very important loophole: states could get around racially integrating their land-grant universities if they established separate but equal universities for Black students.

Six states created new land-grant institutions for Black students under the second Morrill Act, while the majority chose to fund already existing private Black colleges or to designate existing normal schools (teacher training schools) as their land-grant institution. Several of the schools founded or funded through the second Morrill Act make up today’s historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Tuskegee University, which was originally founded as a normal school, is a land-grant university. We previously explored the history and impact of HBCUs in greater detail in their own dedicated HeinOnline blog post.

The land-grant university system was further expanded in 1994 with the enactment of the Equity in Land-Grant Status Act which conferred land-grant status on 29 tribal colleges and universities. No land or land scrip was granted to the tribal colleges and universities; instead, annual appropriations are paid into the 1994 Institutions Endowment Fund, and monies are distributed to eligible tribal colleges and universities on a formulaic basis. These schools are eligible for some, but not all, of the funding allocated to the original 1862 institutions under the first Morrill Act.

Today, land-grant universities are administered by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture under the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The National Institute of Food and Agriculture hosts an interactive map on its website that plots every college and university included in the land-grant system, and specifies whether they are part of the 1862, 1890, or 1994 laws.

Grant Us Your Suggestions

This blog post was inspired by a HeinOnline Support chat from one of our customers interested in researching the statutory history behind the governance of Florida A&M University, a land-grant university. We were so intrigued by what this customer was researching that we decided to do some extracurricular knowledge farming of our own. Our loyal customers help make HeinOnline the powerhouse platform academics around the world rely on, and we are always looking for suggestions on ways to improve your research experience. Need proof of how good our listening skills are? Check out all the features we’ve implemented in HeinOnline based on customer suggestions and be sure to drop us a line if you have an idea on how to make HeinOnline smarter, better, and faster. You might just see your idea featured on the blog.