The Morrill Act of 1862 provided the funding mechanism for the modern land-grant college system. In the over 160 years since its passage, the tripartite land-grant mission of teaching, research, and service has become the most recognizable legacy of the legislation. Recent scholars of land-grant education caution against viewing the history of…

This article focuses on the first African American students at two southern land-grant universities, North Carolina State University and Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University (Virginia Tech). Although these institutions integrated in the 1950s, most of the current desegregation scholarship focuses on other southern institutions in…

Community colleges have always been strongly tied to their local communities, and arose out of an egalitarian approach to higher education. The Morrill Act of 1862 created the American land grant universities, with an emphasis on practical education in agriculture and technical fields. In addition, a number of private two-year "junior…