DavidSt
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RE: Impact of the Morrill Act (1862 version only)
(04-10-2023 10:36 AM)CrazyPaco Wrote: (04-06-2023 09:48 PM)TUowl06 Wrote: (04-06-2023 08:56 PM)Todor Wrote: (04-06-2023 02:26 PM)e-parade Wrote: I was confused by the map at first when I saw the northeast, because I've always seen UVM as being founded in 1791. Turns out it was a private college (known as the University of Vermont) founded in 1791, that then later merged with a land grant institution, Vermont Agricultural, and became the university we know today. It is very confusingly described as a "quasi-public land-grant research university."
Are there any other weird ones like that? I know Cornell and MIT are both land grants from the original batch as well.
There are a number that at various points have been some sort of private/public hybrid. I couldn’t name all of them. While it does persist in some instances, more schools began that way than remain that way since time has helped clarify their standing somewhat.
And some schools didn’t begin as hybrids, but some were founded on the heels of a private college closing down or the state taking over either just the campus, or sometimes a sort of merger.
Kansas State began that way in fact. It took over a small college that was sort of donated to the a state when the state decided to fund it as a state college. Many of the earlier private colleges were founded before states had well established public universities. Some were specifically to be religious in nature, but others (even those founded under the auspices of a church) simply wanted to help lead frontier towns to being more “civilized” and educated.
The later a state was established after 1862, the more likely it is that state universities there were originally founded as such. The further east you go, the more muddled the origins of many schools IMO. Many aspects of higher ed became more standardized but were fairly chaotic in the early years.
K-State: That is correct regarding the funds from the Morrill Act appropriation being used to absorb another institution, Blue Mont Central College, and then repurpose it to abide but the land-grant parameters.
Penn State evolved from the Farmer's High School of Pennsylvania. Such a name provides plenty of ammo for banter among rival alums in the region. My father is a Lehigh guy, he and other older alums of his private alma mater ilk, always referred for PSU as a "Cow College"; not for "real" engineers/industrialists. That has obviously changed....
Pitt and Temple were private institutions until the mid 20th century. Pitt was considered the "vastly" superior institution to PSU prior to the formation of the Commonwealth System in PA. Temple's strength was, and still is, its graduate/professional programs when the three banded together.
There's symmetry between Pitt and Carnegie Mellon/Temple and Penn in terms of mission relative to local/regional needs over the last 100 years.
Penn was founded as an academy, really in the 1750s, with the goal to be the nation's first secular college with the intent to teach what would be considered a liberal arts curriculum today. It obviously remains fully private, although it receives state funds for its veterinary school.
Pitt was similarly founded as a secular academy with the intent of it being a "western" version of the University of Pennsylvania (hence one of its prior names, "Western University of Pennsylvania") with an emphasis on teaching the sacred six of Scottish Universities: Natural, Civil, and Ecclesiastical History, Astronomy, Natural Philosophy, Logic, Moral Philosophy, and Chronology. It became state-related in 1966, meaning it receives non-preferred state subsidies in exchange for PA residents receiving tuition discounts, and can act as an instrumentality of the state, but retains control of its board, leadership, and assets.
As noted, Penn State was founded in 1855 as Farmer's High School, became a land grant college in 1863, and remains an agricultural school. Because of its historical land grant status, it has long been considered a public or state school for much of its history despite quasi-independent governance: it remains quite different in board make up and other statuses than other state-related institutions and its employees are eligible for state retirement programs and the state employee credit union. It is much more like a public than Pitt and Temple. However, when the state sought to increase public education, specifically urban research universities, during the post-war baby boom, it turned to existing private urban universities, Pitt and Temple, to create the state-related system as opposed to building research universities from scratch because the state only operated smallish Normal schools. Penn State, with its not-quite-like-any-others status, was still rolled into this state-related system for the purposes of annually non-preferred budgeting of these schools together.
Temple was founded in 1884 by a Baptist church as a night school for Philadelphia's working class and gained university status in 1907. Temple became state-related in 1965, a year prior to Pitt, and is currently similarly construed to Pitt in its public subsidies and independent operations. It really doesn't have much parallel history with Penn.
Carnegie Tech wasn't founded until 1900 and was intended as a vocational training school primarily for the workers and sons of Andrew Carnegie's mills, with the model intended to be the Pratt Institute. It had no liberal arts curriculum (Carnegie Tech students had to take humanities classes at Pitt) because Andrew Carnegie, who sat on the board of both schools, thought "non-practical" education was a waste of time, and he scuttled efforts to merge Pitt and Carnegie Tech in the early 20th Century. The Mellon Institute of Industrial Research was founded by the Mellon family, Pitt alumni and major Pitt benefactors, as a department of Pitt in 1913, and remained there until 1967, when it merged with Carnegie Tech to form Carnegie Mellon University. On the flip side, Carnegie Tech library sciences school moved to Pitt (now part of the School of Computing and Information Sciences). The campuses overlap and share multiple centers and programs, including the ability for students to cross-register for classes. Carnegie Mellon remains fully private.
IMO, there isn't much symmetry between Temple/Penn and Pitt/Carnegie Mellon historically.
Boise State was founded as a private college in 1932 by the Episcopal Church. The schools was first created in 1892 as St. Margaret's School in Christ Chapel in Boise. In 1932, it became a private JC called Boise Junior College. In 1934, they ended affiliations with the church. In 1940, they moved the campus to the present site. 1965, baccalaureate degrees were introduced and became Boise College. In 1969, the state of Idaho took control of the school and became Boise State. In 1974, got granted to become a University. So, Boise State was a private school up until 1969. They are on their way to becoming like a Pittsburgh, Penn. State, Delaware, Temple, etc.
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Impact of the Morrill Act (1862 version only)
![[Image: Land_Grant_Colleges_Map.svg]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/Land_Grant_Colleges_Map.svg)
