{"id":11596,"date":"2016-01-14T05:00:42","date_gmt":"2016-01-14T11:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/?p=11596"},"modified":"2016-01-14T05:58:01","modified_gmt":"2016-01-14T11:58:01","slug":"time-for-a-new-morrill-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/11596","title":{"rendered":"Is It Time for a New Morrill Act?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Morrill Land-Grant Acts<\/a>\u00a0are the laws that led to the creation of a system of land-grant colleges\u00a0in the United States. As per Wikipedia<\/a>, land-grant colleges are universities whose “mission …\u00a0is to focus on the teaching of practical agriculture, science, military science and engineering …\u00a0as a response to the industrial revolution and changing social class.”<\/p>\n

I have greatly\u00a0benefited from the Morrill Act,* as have many of my friends and colleagues. In the state of New York, the designated land-grant institution is\u00a0Cornell, where I went to grad school. In the state of Minnesota, that institution is\u00a0the University of Minnesota, where I work. I spent most\u00a0of–and the most fulfilling\u00a0of–the last 15\u00a0years at land-grant institutions.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The University of Minnesota’s Morrill Hall.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Is it time for a new Morrill Act? Austan Goolsbee<\/a>, the\u00a0University of Chicago economist\u00a0who chaired President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, thinks so<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The original Morrill Act focused on preparing workers for the practical, high-skill jobs available at the time\u00a0…\u00a0Over time, the land-grant colleges grew into some of our greatest institutions of higher learning and research in all sorts of new fields.\u00a0…<\/p>\n

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\u2014more 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Goolsbee’s suggestion is\u00a0for the federal government to sell some of the land it owns in order to fund this undertaking. In a\u00a0day and age where some go so far as to suggest\u00a0that a college education is not worth it<\/a>, Goolsbee’s idea comes across as revolutionary.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* Although there are more than one Morrill Act, people usually refer to the\u00a0singular, i.e., the Morrill Act.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Morrill Land-Grant Acts\u00a0are the laws that led to the creation of a system of land-grant colleges\u00a0in the United States. As per Wikipedia, land-grant colleges<\/p>\n

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