University presidents and members of Congress said universities are still having problems with accessibility and cost at a conference celebrating the law passed 150 years ago meant to make a college education easier to get and less expensive.
The Morrill Act, signed into law in 1862, granted either federal land or proceeds from its sale to states for the creation of colleges that would focus on teaching agriculture and the mechanic arts. Since then, 105 institutions have gained land-grant status.
"It really did set the standard for access and affordability, primarily for public colleges and universities," Elson Floyd, president of Washington State University said. "The biggest challenge we have now is to maintain affordability at a time when we see state appropriations diminishing all across the country. There is even more reliance on tuition, and by definition that will ultimately price some students out of higher education."
Floyd was one of more than a hundred presidents of land-grant institutions at the Library of Congress on Monday for the first of five days of events hosted by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities.
He wasn't the only one to bring up funding cuts during panel discussions and in informal discussions.
"One of the biggest issues we have had historically, say in the last 10 years, is the disinvestment of state appropriations to higher education, particularly land-grant universities," Duane Nellis, president of the University of Idaho, said. "We've had to look into doing business differently. We've had to become more efficient."
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said universities have to find ways to be more efficient, including using facilities in the summer and graduating some students in three years.
A former Tennessee governor, Alexander was president of the University of Tennessee for four years, leaving in 1991 when he became secretary of education in the administration of George H.W. Bush.
He said Congress should cut in half the amount of "waste dollars that could be spent on students and research."
"Repeal the federal Medicaid mandates that force states to spend money on Medicaid that would otherwise be going to higher education," Alexander said. "This has resulted over the years in dramatic decreases in state support for higher education and increases in tuition to try to maintain quality."
He said the country should stop sending home 17,000 of the 50,000 international students each year who graduate with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
"Give them a green card. Let them create jobs in the United States," Alexander said.
The Morrill Act of 1890 prohibited racial discrimination in land-grant institutions, leading to the creation of many of today's historically black universities.
"The strength of the American democratic experience lies in the aspirations of all citizens," Kentucky State University president Mary Evans Sias said. "Nothing has done that better than the Morrill Act."
Sias was a first generation college graduate who attended Tougaloo College, a historically black private college in Mississippi.
David Yarlott Jr., president of Little Big Horn College in Montana, discussed the financial issues faced by tribal colleges, the last to obtain land-grant status under the third Morrill Act in 1994. The law aimed to provide education to American Indian populations in areas without access to colleges.
Yarlott said the 32 tribal colleges combined got significantly less money in 2012 than land-grant institutions under the 1862 act. Money is distributed in several ways: Some is given equally to each state, some is appropriated based on farm population and the rest is based on the state's population.
"If the nation made more commitment to tribal colleges," Yarlott said, "we would have the credentials to become significant contributors to the rest of the nation and the world."
Printed with permission from Scripps Howard Foundation Wire.
