Agent of Democracy - Society for College and University Planning

Agent of Democracy
to be obscured by the prevailing view of the land-grant mission as
responsive, narrowly instrumental, and apolitical public service.
Also, it has been and continues to be marginalized by technocratic
tendencies and forces, and by the research university norm of civic
detachment. Additionally, the story I tell illuminates the conflicting
and conflicted nature of scholars’ views about their political roles and
stances, including how they should understand and work through
what historian Thomas Bender has referred to as “the dilemma of
the relation of expertise and democracy.” 1
History
The national land-grant system was established through the
Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 and the Equity in Education Land-
Grant Status Act of 1994. It consists of 105 institutions located in
all 50 states and several U.S. territories. A unique structural feature
of this system is its institutionalization in colleges of agriculture and
human ecology of permanent mechanisms for engaging faculty,
staff, and students as active participants in the world beyond the
campus. These mechanisms are the national Agricultural Experiment
Station System, which was established by the Hatch Act in
1887, and the national Cooperative Extension System, which was
established by the Smith-Lever Act in 1914. Most of the annually
recurring funding for these systems is provided by government
sources. In the FY 2006 budget, the U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA) provided more than $1 billion of funding, and an additional
$1 billion or so was provided by state and county governments. 2
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1 T. Bender, Intellect and Public Life (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1993), 128.
2 For the history of the land-grant system, see F. B. Mumford, The Land Grant
College Movement (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Agricultural Experiment
Station, 1940); E. D. Ross, Democracy’s College: The Land-Grant Movement in
the Formative Stage (Ames, IA: The Iowa State College Press, 1942); E. D. Eddy, Jr.,
Colleges for Our Land and Time: The Land-Grant Idea in American Education (New
York: Harper & Brothers, 1957); and National Association of State Universities
and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC), The Land-Grant Tradition (Washington, DC:
NASULGC, 1995.) Budget figures are taken from http://www.csrees.usda.gov/
about/offices/budget.html. (Accessed October 16, 2007.)