Higher Education – With Especial Reference To Agriculture
The Association of Iowa College Presidents report an enrollment of 84, 085 students in the 51 colleges and universities in Iowa for the fall temr of 1965. This is a 15.3% increase over 1964 and 55% greater than the 54,079 enrolled five years ago. The enrollments were divided among the different institutions as follows:
The three state supported institutions at Ames, Iowa City and Cedar Falls was 36,745
Private Colleges and Universities was 35,316
Public Junior Colleges was 9,165
Private Junior Colleges was 2,523
One private professional college was 336
Number of Students Enrolled in Agriculture
Of the 84,035 students enrolled in the colleges and universities of Iowa 2,145 are taking agricultural undergraduate courses at Iowa State University. Enough more advanced degree graduate students in agriculture are enrolled to make a total of about 3% of Iowa’s college students who are enrolled in agriculture. Iowa State University has over a period of many years had the largest enrollment of undergraduate agricultural students of any state.
I do not have the number of colleges students taking agricultural courses in other states but it is certainly considerably less than 3% of the total number of students enrolled in colleges and universities in the United States.
The Record
Yet in spite of the low enrollment in agricultural courses in colleges and universities, agriculture in the United States has made tremendous advances and is today one of our outstanding show cases of industrial progress. Food production per man in the United States has doubled, tripled and quadrupled. The U.S. Department of Agriculture states that, “one hour of farm labor now produces four times as much food and other crops as it did in 1920-21, about 45 years ago.” The number of people needed in agricultural production has steadily dropped from about 50% one hundred years ago to about 7% now.
The advance in agricultural production and agricultural know how in the United States has been truly remarkable. How has this been brought about? There have been many factors including bigger farm machinery, better transportation, general education, etc. – and experiment research and extension. The principal advance has been made because of the efforts of the Land Grant Colleges in cooperation with the U. S. Department of Agriculture in finding out what to do and then extending such information to the masses of farm people who could make immediate use of it. The great majority of U.S. farmers have been given a practical vocation education in agriculture. It is an interesting story. Let us note briefly how it developed and also the prominent part farmers took in that development.
Farmers Support Education in Agriculture
The National Agricultural Society sponsored national legislation for the support of agricultural colleges in the early 1850’s more than 100 years ago. The National Agricultural Society also worked for a U.S. Department of Agricultural and a seat in the President’s Cabinet. At this same time State Agricultural Societies were urging state support for state agricultural colleges. It was a double team making a two way approach. The Land Grant College Act, providing national support for state agricultural colleges and the Act creating the U.S. Department of Agriculture were both passed during the Lincoln Administration in 1862. These two agencies through research experiment and mass education have been mainly responsible for the remarkable development of agriculture in the United States. They were first sponsored by farmers.
Iowa’s Early Contribution to Agriculture Education
Since this broadcast goes to Iowa people I am sure you will all be interested and proud of Iowa’s part in the early development of agricultural education in the United States.
The first Iowa Territorial Legislature which met in 1838 passed an act providing for the incorporation of agricultural societies. As that time the agricultural society was the best known method of bringing about agricultural improvement. In 1841 the territorial legislature requested the sum of $1200 per annum or such other sum as the Congress of the United States may grant be and is hereby appropriated for the promotion of agriculture and household manufacture in Iowa.
In 1848 the Iowa Legislature made up mostly of farmers petitioned Congress to grant to the state the site and buildings at Ft. Atkinson in Winneshiek County along with two sections of land for the establishment of an agricultural college. Nothing came of this request but it recorded the early thinking of prominent Iowa people.
In 1851 the Iowa Legislature appropriated funds to encourage the educational work of agricultural societies.
In 1854 George C. Dixon speaking at the first State Agricultural Society and fair at Fairfield, Iowa argued “that the time has arrived when the farmer must be educated for his calling . . . . The composition of the soil and atmosphere – the influence of light and heat on vegetation – the structure of plants – the laws of their growth – the elements they absorb and evolve – indeed the entire system of animal and vegetable physiology must be studied and apprehended…..”
In 1855 the Iowa State Agricultural Society recommended “a bureau at the capital of the state with a secretary and other officers attached… Connected with the Bureau as an indispensable adjunct should be one or more state geologists and agricultural chemists (only scientists available at the time) who should be constantly in the field making their experiments and observations …….”
“To this branch of the Bureau might be referred every scientific questions calculated to meet the progressive needs of agriculture……”
“It should be the business of this department of state to supply this information in the most authentic and reliable form; also to gather up the practical experience of the best farmers in the world and to circulate the same quarterly or annually in the form of cheap tracts broadcast over the state.” Companion bills in the house and senate were passed but failure to agree on differences in wording of the two versions preventing the measure from becoming law.
In 1858 the Iowa legislature passed on act establishing Iowa’s Agricultural College. The preamble to the College Act reads as follows: “An Act to provide for a State Agricultural College and Farm that shall be connected with the entire agricultural interests of the State.”
The Bureau idea proposed by the State Agricultural Society of gathering and disseminating agricultural information widely throughout the state; functions now performed jointly by State and U.S.D.A. experimental stations in gathering information and the Extension Service in each state cooperating with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in making much information available to all farmers and incorporated in the Iowa Agricultural College Act. This was the original and creative part of the Iowa Agricultural College Act. It in fact outlined the plan which now through research and experiment in discovering better farming practices and through Extension methods in teaching and demonstrations reaches practically all farmers in the United States. Iowa appears to have been the first state to include the foregoing idea in legislation.
On the Job – Mass Education
Although as shown by the record a comparatively small percentage of farmers have college degrees, they have nevertheless made an outstanding record in agricultural progress. Mass education of farmers has had most to do with this development. Land Grant Colleges almost immediately began gathering information through –
- Experimental and Research Stations – and
- Widely disseminating information directly to farmers who could make use of it.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture cooperated in both of these efforts.
On the local basis farmers have cooperated in a remarkable way. Each county in the United States which has farmers provides funds, organization and farm leadership tot take the results of experimental and research work to farmers, men, women and teenagers who can make use of it. This is accomplished by the Extension Services of colleges working through and with farm organizations, farm cooperatives, commodity groups, such as dairy herd improvement associations, beef producers, hog growers, poultry producers, corn growers, soybean growers, individual farmers etc. On the home side work is conducted in cooperation with various women groups. Then there is the great 4-H club movement and the contact with schools in vocational work such for example as the Future Farmers of America. In addition to this each county has its own special group of farmers and farm women elected or appointed by the county to cooperate in developing the extension educational program. Farmers and farmers wives are full partners in the off the campus educational programs of Land Grant Colleges. Literally hundred of thousands of farmers and their wives cooperate in carrying out the educational program.
Based on the actual record of results the off the campus agricultural and home economics educational program of Land Grant Colleges represents the most significant educational development of the past half century. It has helped greatly in democratizing higher education and thus putting valuable information into the hands of people who cannot for one reason or another stop working in order to get it. We should encourage our young people to go to college but we should also extend the practical and immediately useful benefits of higher education to the great majority of our citizens who for one reason or another cannot or will not go to college. The Land Grant College system of mass off the campus education has accomplished remarkably effective results at low cost.
Source: Transcribed from scripts A-2525
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