The Morrill Land-Grant Acts are the laws that led to the creation of a system of land-grant colleges in the United States. As per Wikipedia, land-grant colleges are universities whose “mission … is to focus on the teaching of practical agriculture, science, military science and engineering … as a response to the industrial revolution and changing social class.”
I have greatly benefited from the Morrill Act,* as have many of my friends and colleagues. In the state of New York, the designated land-grant institution is Cornell, where I went to grad school. In the state of Minnesota, that institution is the University of Minnesota, where I work. I spent most of–and the most fulfilling of–the last 15 years at land-grant institutions.
Is it time for a new Morrill Act? Austan Goolsbee, the University of Chicago economist who chaired President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, thinks so:
The original Morrill Act focused on preparing workers for the practical, high-skill jobs available at the time … Over time, the land-grant colleges grew into some of our greatest institutions of higher learning and research in all sorts of new fields. …
Today, we face another compelling need. The economy has become dependent on an increasingly highly skilled workforce, yet the growth in educational attainment rates of American workers has slowed dramatically. Many other nations have passed us in the breadth of their skilled training—more industrial apprentices as well as more college graduates. The incomes of our ordinary workers have stalled and, by some measures, have not risen in real terms in more than two decades. Even with a record number of job vacancies reported in the country, individual employers repeatedly say they have serious difficulties finding the skilled workers those job vacancies require. Research shows that better-educated, better-trained people have better chances of finding a job, and that the jobs they get pay thousands of dollars more each year. The government should be doing everything it can to get American workers the skills they need to support their families, develop their careers, and succeed in the new economy.
Goolsbee’s suggestion is for the federal government to sell some of the land it owns in order to fund this undertaking. In a day and age where some go so far as to suggest that a college education is not worth it, Goolsbee’s idea comes across as revolutionary.
* Although there are more than one Morrill Act, people usually refer to the singular, i.e., the Morrill Act.