Morrill Act

Impact

Since the founding of the nation, colleges and universities have been important institutions of higher learning, and their curricula have always been at the center of significant debate. In the late eighteenth century, such debates focused on whether the university curriculum should be based on the study of classics or should include more practical subjects. On the one hand, the advocates of a classical curriculum suggested the inclusion of Latin and Greek and courses in the natural sciences, English literature, and European history. These subjects were thought to be the best preparation to provide the political and cultural leadership for the future of American democracy. On the other hand, opponents of a classical focus claimed that higher education should become more practical and directly related to the pupils' vocational aspirations. The Morrill Act was a victory by this latter faction, for it provided funding for state institutions of higher education that included agriculture and mechanical arts in their curricula. As a result, the impact of the act on American education was twofold: It favored a more practical focus in higher education and opened academic institutions to the working classes. Many states transformed their agricultural colleges into universities, and prestigious institutions such as New York's Cornell University were founded thanks to the Morrill Act.

The Morrill Act, together with the Civil War, also had an impact on the education of women and African Americans. Until the 1860s and 1870s few institutions of higher education had admitted women and African Americans. American educational leaders began to think that colleges should form a class of African American professionals and that they should prepare women for suitable jobs or for marriage. The Morrill Act and the Civil War encouraged the admission of women to colleges such as Wisconsin (since 1867) and Minnesota (1869). The act also favored the founding of women's colleges such as Wellesley and Smith. By the 1880s women constituted a third of all college and university students in the United States. Several historically black colleges and universities, such as Alabama A&M University, Atlanta University, Howard University, Lincoln University, Tuskegee University, Delaware State University, Virginia State University, Tennessee State University, and South Carolina State University, to mention but a few, were established thanks to the Morrill Acts. Their curricula conformed to the racial and gender conventions of the nineteenth century. Thus, women were expected to become nurturers, and most women graduates followed a teaching career. Women and African Americans still encountered many obstacles in higher education, which were not removed until the 1960s. For example, campus rules restricted women's access to libraries, and even African American institutions mainly employed whites for academic and administrative jobs.

Many scholars have continued to praise the Morrill Act into the twenty-first century. It is usually credited for setting a revolutionary precedent that laid the foundation for state universities, for more democratic higher-education institutions, and for the establishment of a more practical college curriculum. Yet some voices have risen in dissent. For example, Terry S. Reynolds has challenged the idea that antebellum colleges were hostile to practical subjects and that they made little attempt to develop programs of a concrete nature that could aid the economic growth of the country.