Address by President James H. Hilton, Iowa State University,
Centennial Lecture Series, Graduate School, USDA,
in Thomas Jefferson Auditorium, Washington, D.C.
Wednesday, October 18, 1961

Purposes of Land-Grant Colleges | America's Need for Food and Fiber | Need for Science and Technology | Achieved Purposes in First 100 Years | World-wide Impact of Land-Grant Colleges | What is the Future of Land-Grant Colleges? | Forces Creating New Educational Needs | Single Most Important Curriculum Challenge | The Role of Research | The Role of Extension Education | Challenges for the Next 100 Years

Note: Headings have been added for ease of reading

For almost 100 years, the educational role which the Land-Grant college should play in American society has been the subject of discussion, debate, and at times, even controversy. Born out of Congressional compromise, which tried to incorporate into the colleges' educational program at least two different philosophies on educational needs, the Land-Grant colleges were given no single, well-defined function. The new colleges, according to the Morrill Act, were to be scientific, technical, vocational and practical in their educational program. But they were also to give their students that broad, liberal education which would equip them for responsible democratic citizenship.

Two General Purposes of Land-Grant Colleges:

1. Serve the people's needs (applied education)

2. Provide equal access to education for Americans

Despite the somewhat general wording of the Morrill Act, however, the new public colleges were indisputably charged with two central purposes. These purposes are more basic to the nature of the Land-Grant college than is any particular type of educational program. The first of the purposes was to serve the people's needs. The Land-Grant colleges were charged with the responsibility of providing young men and women with the kind of an education which would make them most useful to an ever-growing and ever-expanding, dynamic society, and would also equip them as individuals to make more satisfactory lives for themselves. The second purpose with which the colleges were charged was to provide the American people with equal access to educational opportunity. The new colleges were commonly called "people's" colleges. They were to belong to all the people. Their doors were to be open to all.

·            The general multi-purpose educational program authorized in the Morrill Act has been a positive good.

·            It has meant that the Land-Grant colleges have been free to achieve their basic educational purpose of serving the people's needs.

·            The Land-Grant colleges have not been restricted to any one particular kind of educational program.

·            They have been able to experiment and innovate. They have been able to develop the kind of educational service programs which could best serve society's needs.

·            They have been free to modify and adjust their programs to fit men's ever-changing environment.

America's Need for Food and Fiber

At any one point in history, the kind of an educational program through which the Land-Grant college or university can effectively accomplish its central purpose of serving people's needs depends upon the kind of environment in which people live. The America into which the land-Grant college was born was a world of scarcity. Although 65 per cent of the population was engaged in farming, the young republic's subsistence-type of agriculture could not adequately meet the food and fiber needs of a population which was increasing by one-fourth to one-third every 10 years. A large portion of that 19th century population was actually underfed from a nutritional standpoint. Most Americans' diet was meager and monotonous.

Therefore, even modest increases in family incomes caused a fairly large rise in the demand for food. As a developing industrialism brought about an increase in per capita income, the demand for food generally kept rising during the 19th century. Moreover, such technological advances in transportation as the railroad and the steamship were bringing American agricultural products into international demand. The need was for more and more agricultural products. This great need during the last half of the 19th century, and the early years of this century, was to develop an agricultural science and technology which could keep pace with the technological advances of our rising industrialism. For the ways of agricultural production in the 1860's were much the same as they had been for centuries before. Therefore, probably the most socially and economically useful functions which the agricultural divisions of the new Land-Grant colleges could perform was to develop programs in teaching, research, and later extension, which taught farmers how to produce more abundantly. Because of the work of the Land-Grant colleges and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, our agricultural plant has been revolutionized in the past 100 years. No other nation can produce so much food and fiber with so little labor. In the brief span of a century, our ability to produce has been multiplied by at least five times.

Need for Scientific and Technical Knowledge

Not only did the young republic's subsistence-type of agriculture fail to meet the nation's food and fiber needs, but manufactured goods were barely trickling out from America's young and undeveloped industrial plant. The need was not only for the "consumer saving" which supplies the resources for building a great capital plant. The need was also for the growth of a body of scientific and technical knowledge, out of which could come the great scientific discoveries and inventions, which have made our factories truly productive and have given Americans, as consumers, an amazing variety of mechanical conveniences and comforts. Therefore, one of the great responsibilities of the Land-Grant colleges has been to further the growth of scientific and technological knowledge.

In the fields of science and engineering, the achievements of the Land-Grant colleges have been notable. The Land-Grant college pioneered in the movement to bring science into educational curricula. Within the research and teaching programs of the Land-Grant colleges, large bodies of scientific facts have been discovered and accumulated. Basic principles and experimental methods have been developed and tested. Complicated laboratory equipment has been invented. The young science graduates who have been pouring out of our Land-Grant colleges since the turn of the century are now manning the great research undertakings of both industry and government. Our Land-Grant colleges today must share a large part of the credit and responsibility for the scientific and technological progress America has made in the past 60 to 75 years.

We all know that the America of the latter half of the 19th century and early 20th century had its social, economic and political inequities and injustices which cried out for remedy. But from the long historical perspective probably the first need of American society during that period was to develop an industrial and agricultural plant which could produce that material abundance which makes real social and economic justice possible.

Achieved Purposes in First 100 Years

The role which the Land-Grant college has played in increasing America's capacity to produce can hardly be over-estimated. Today, given the time and money we can master almost any production problem. The work of the Land-Grant institutions has contributed mightily to this level of America's educational and scientific achievement. The job which it has accomplished has made it one of the most important social institutions. Today the Land-Grant institutions enroll more than 20 percent of the college students, grant 40 percent of the country's doctoral degrees in all subjects including approximately half of those in the sciences, engineering and health professions, and 25 percent in the arts, languages, business, and educational training. They have been instrumental in extending the teaching of the humanities throughout the country. Objectively appraised, at the close of its first century, the Land-Grant college has generally fulfilled its central purpose of serving men's needs as they existed in that century. It has operated efficiently and effectively in terms of the problems with which it has dealt.

World-wide Impact of Land-Grant Colleges

But the contributions of the Land-Grant colleges and universities to the progress and well-being of mankind does not end at our shores. It extends to most countries of the world. The foreign students educated in our Land-Grant institutions, the various technical assistance programs in the underprivileged countries together with the cooperative programs between American Land-Grant universities and universities of foreign lands have made the contributions of Land-Grant colleges world-wide in scope. This is perhaps America's greatest contribution to world-wide education.

What is the Future of Land-Grant Colleges?

This, then, is our past record. And we, who are here today, are all proud of it. But I often wonder if we in the Land-Grant colleges are giving enough thought to what our future should be. Are we thinking broadly, yet precisely, on the new problems and coercions which our rapidly changing world is placing upon the Land-Grant colleges and universities today? What will the educational needs of this new world? Are we adequately planning for the adjustments which we will have to make in teaching curricula and methods, in research programs, and in extension activities, if the Land-Grant colleges are to continue to serve their historic purposes of meeting people's educational needs?

As we all know, the Land-Grant colleges today like all institutions are operating in a world vastly different from the one in which they were established and lived their first half century. I am not going to catalog these changes which we all recognize, but shall only refer to them briefly to point up the new educational needs which our changing environment is creating.

The world into which Americans have moved during the past 50 years might be variously described. It is a world of material abundance; a world of revolutionary technological advance; an industrialized world in which economic power is held in great blocs; an urbanized world of vast metropolitan clusters, whose standards and values are being rapidly adopted by our shrinking rural population; a complex, interdependent world whose global size is fast shrinking; a world of hydrogen bombs, intercontinental ballistic missiles and rockets to the moon. It is a world whose inhabitants are experiencing coercions, insecurities, and dangers undreamed of by the inhabitants of the world of 1862.

In such a world as this, we must ask the questions: Are our traditional curricula and teaching methods adequately equipping today's college students for dealing with the problems they will be facing in the latter half of the 20th century society? What are our new educational needs?

Forces Creating New Educational Needs

Two forces in the modern world have, it seems to me, been more powerful than all others in creating new educational needs. The first of these is the interdependency of our society. The inhabitant of the world today--whether he be a farmer or a city dweller, a laborer in a factory or a member of management, a stockholder or a merchant in a small town--has lost the old independence which his ancestors enjoyed in our earlier agrarian-village economy. His livelihood, the satisfaction he gets out of life, and even his life itself are dependent upon the harmonious workings of a complex network of economic, social and political inter-relationships which are national and international in their scope.

Therefore, one of men's greatest needs today is to learn how to live and work together harmoniously and justly in a world which has grown frighteningly small. Our growth in social intelligence is lagging dangerously behind our technological advance. We have a hydrogen bomb and an intercontinental ballistic missile before we have the social know-how to control these technological wonders for the benefit of men.

Our colleges and universities today have a responsibility for meeting this growing need for social intelligence. They have a responsibility for providing the kind of an educational program which will give young men and women the social understanding which enables them to perceive their economic, social and political interdependence; to appreciate the needs and problems of other groups and other nations; to realize that the causes of social and economic ills and political dangers are seldom single-headed and one-sided; to foresee the probable effects of actions proposed for their group or their nation.

The second force in the modern world which is transforming educational needs today is the accelerated tempo at which change is taking place. The students we are training in our classrooms must go out into a society in which change is almost revolutionary. In such a society, the skills and technical competence acquired today may be outmoded in a few years.

Therefore, one of the most useful mental abilities we can give our students today is the ability to make intelligent adjustments to change. This is the capacity, first, to understand change--to understand that, historically, change is inevitable--and to view change with an open mind and with a desire to understand the new relationships and inter-dependencies which change creates. Secondly, it is the capacity to work intelligently to shape and to control change in the interest of achieving a more abundant and satisfying life for everyone.

Equipping young men and women with such mental abilities might be the most useful and practical education we could give them for facing the world today. Our modern world, however, also demands specialization in its producers. The sheer breadth and depth of our modern scientific knowledge, combines with the specialized complexity of our economic and social system to make specialization in training and in occupation almost a necessity. Seemingly, the young men and women who have specialized are best equipped to make a living. Moreover, our need for making further scientific and technological progress requires that specialization in disciplines which gives the scientist the competence to add to the sum total of human knowledge.

Single Most Important Curriculum Challenge

Here, then, is perhaps the single most important over-all curriculum problem facing the Land-Grant colleges and universities today. It is the need for finding a fruitful balance between specialized training in the professions and sciences on the one hand, and broad education in the social sciences and humanities on the other.

The Land-Grant universities, despite their rich offerings in the liberal arts and social sciences, have not yet solved the problem of broadly educating students who are majoring in the specialized scientific disciplines. Nevertheless, the first step that the Land-Grant colleges must take is to insure that such broad course offerings are adequately available in their curricula. The more difficult task, however, will still be that of working in an adequate number of these broader courses into each individual student's four-year program of study.

I have been speaking in terms of achieving a "balance" in curriculum between the specialty courses and courses in the basic sciences and liberal arts. But perhaps such course "balance" in the years to come will prove too negative a concept to be useful. Perhaps the time is not too far off when we will be obliged to think more creatively of building curricula around new types of course integration; of developing new syntheses of academic disciplines. It may well be that the traditional scientific disciplines, which are the product of the meager knowledge of an earlier time, will themselves have to be broken up and replaced by new structures for organizing knowledge. Of course, a lot of these needs are only future probabilities; but certainly we should organize our knowledge in terms of curricula so as best to equip our students for life in a world of unprecedented change.

So much for the need for re-appraising and re-adjusting the formal educational programs which the Land-Grant colleges offers to young men and women who come to its campus in search of higher education. There is also a need for re-appraising, adjusting and even reshaping some of the research programs of the Land-Grant colleges.

The Role of Research

The research record of the Land-Grant colleges has been truly notable. We all know the contributions which the colleges have made to mankind's welfare through their research discoveries in the physical and biological sciences. We all know the part which their research programs have played in transforming the American economy from one of scarcity into one of near abundance.

In a world in which great masses of men are still lacking the bare necessities for existence itself, in a world in which a growing population is pressing ever harder on existing resources, the Land-Grant college must continue to carry on research which will increase the world's capacity to produce more food, more clothing, more shelter, more of the things which make life comfortable.

But our research task can no longer end there. The Land-Grant colleges can no longer see their major research function as solely that of discovering the means for more abundant production of either manufactured or agricultural goods. Nor can we assume that our only research task today is to make the scientific and technological discoveries which will "put us ahead" in the nuclear and space fields as vital as these needs may be in the times in which we live.

Today, the Land-Grant colleges, in their programs of research, must also deal with the complex problems of economic and social adjustments, which are so important to men's welfare and survival. Increasingly, the orientation of our research must be more around people and their welfare. Sometimes we have concentrated too much on how to adapt the conditions of nature, without regard for their impact upon people. In our concern for people, we must consider men not only as producers, but as total men. We must consider the family in all of its community and social relationships. We must seek to discover the economic and social arrangements through which individuals and groups of individuals can accommodate themselves to each other's needs and interests.

One of the first needs in organizing a research program which deals with economic and social problems will be--as it has been in the physical and biological sciences--to find a fruitful balance between basic and applied research. In all of our research areas--both old and new--we must withstand the pressures to put too large a share of our resources into applied research. We all know that our applied research projects which have produced immediate, concrete rewards, have drawn their information from the well of basic research. We all know that if our applied research is to continue to be productive and rewarding, we cannot allow the well of basic research to run dry. Fortunately, so many of the recent great "useful" and "practical" scientific discoveries, such as atomic energy, have been so directly the result of the basic research of so-called impractical "theorists," that today the value of basic research is being more widely recognized and materially supported.

Second, we must recognize the restrictions which limitations in budget, trained personnel, and research facilities place upon the scope and types of research project undertaken. Although we must work toward building research organizations which will fill all of our new research needs, such a retooling process takes time. In the meantime, we should carefully confine our efforts to only those projects which can be adequately carried through. Our limited research energies should not be dissipated and wasted in diverse and scattered undertakings.

Third, many of the new problems which are troubling Americans today are a combination of socio-political and economic factors. The complex which in real life does not break down neatly into problems which are either scientific, economic, sociological, or political. The difficulties which confront farm and urban families are no respecters of academic disciplines. And their solution will often require the special knowledge and competence of a variety of disciplines. For example, the problem of revitalizing a local community institution in a new setting may require the combined knowledge of the biological and physical scientist and conservationist, the economist, the social psychologist, the sociologist, the home economist, and the political scientist.

Fourth, we must recognize that we cannot stop at the state line in our investigations of economic and social problems. Such problems do not recognize state boundaries.

The fact that people's economic and social problems transcend state barriers means that the Land-Grant college system must think and work collectively to solve the large aggregate of over-all problems which confront us. It means that new arrangements and procedures for cooperative research among the states and Federal agencies must be developed. We must somehow pool our research efforts.

The Role of Extension Education

The problems which the Land-Grant colleges must solve in building cooperative extension programs which fit the changing needs of people are probably some of the most difficult ones with which the colleges must deal in making their adjustments to the modern times. A variety of conflicting pressures upon cooperative extension are making its task of adjustment extremely difficult.

In the first place, the concept of Extension education has vastly changed since Extension's beginnings in the first 20 years of this century. The educational problems with which extension services now deal have spread out from such demonstration services as dehorning cattle, culling chickens, or pruning fruit trees into a bewildering array of farm and home management problems, problems in family living, community problems, and the economic problems of agriculture and public farm policy. Our cooperative extension services now see the farmer not only as a producer and his wife not only as a homemaker, but recognize them as total persons with broad social, civic and aesthetic interests.

The philosophy of Extension education, which is concerned with the total human personality, is the most meaningful concept which could have been adopted. Nevertheless--particularly as the farmer's economic and social problems multiply--such a concept places upon our country extension men and women the frustrating responsibility of providing people with a conglomerate of educational services. Moreover, our growing scientific knowledge in all of the disciplines makes the county extension worker's task even more difficult. For in this day of highly specialized knowledge, they simply cannot be sufficiently grounded in all educational areas, no matter haw capable they may be.

Finally our Extension Service's work load is growing even heavier because of the rapidly increasing number of people who are seeking its educational services. The lines between town and country are becoming blurred. Increasingly, rural people are supplementing their farm income with city employment. City people are making their homes in the country. Our suburbias are billowing out into the country-side. Moreover, city people are becoming conscious that, as taxpayers, they, too, have a right to share in extension's educational services. Particularly are the services of our home economists in demand by city homemakers. Finally, extension has the democratic obligation of striving to bring its services to those underprivileged rural groups who, although they do not seek its services, probably need them most.

In the face of these accumulating demands upon them, I believe that our cooperative extension services--if they are to continue adequately to serve the needs of people of their state--must think in a disciplined fashion upon the following questions: (1) What educational problems and services can Extension deal with effectively? (2) Whom can Extension adequately serve? And (3) How can Extension maximize its efforts so that it can serve greater numbers of persons in an effective fashion.

I hope that I am not being inconsistent in believing that somehow we must adjust the number of problems with whom Extension deals to the size of competency of our county and state Extension staffs. Since our democratic conscience will not permit us, as public educational institutions, arbitrarily to limit the clientele we serve, I think we must find the answer to Extension’s work load in developing more devices such as radio and television through which the Extension workers’ personality and knowledge can be projected out to hundreds of people whom he or she could not reach in person. We must bring into the services we offer more trained minds in many more fields than has been the case in the past. Moreover, in planning and carrying out our Extension programs, we must use the new knowledge which sociology and social-psychology are providing us. We must more effectively utilize group action techniques, neighborhood and community groupings, and local leadership patterns.

Challenges for the Next 100 Years

As we near the close of the first century of our great Land-Grant college movement, we, in the colleges, have a positive responsibility and obligation to think and plan constructively and creatively for our future.