Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in an education class. The professor will talk about the history of the college and university system in the United States.

In 1857, Justin Smith Morrill introduced a bill in Congress to provide the states with public lands for the purpose of establishing colleges to train students in agriculture and mechanical arts. Twenty thousand acres were to be proportioned for each Senator and Representative that the state had in Congress. Proceeds from the sale of the land were to be used in the state as a perpetual fund, the interest on which was to be used to support the state college. Within a period of five years, a college had to be established. Although the bill passed both houses by narrow margins, President Buchanan vetoed it, and the vote in the House was insufficient to override the veto. Four years later, Morrill introduced a similar bill, increasing the acreage to thirty thousand for each Representative and Senator, and President Abraham Lincoln signed it into law.
From their inception, land grant institutions have played an important role in the development of agriculture, veterinary medicine, home economics, and engineering. Seventy-five percent of all bachelor's degrees conferred in the United States and two-fifths of all engineering degrees are awarded by land grant colleges. Earle Ross has called these institutions democracy's colleges because the tuition and other fees paid by students have traditionally been kept low, with forty-one percent of the funding appropriated by the state government, and another thirty percent by the federal government. For this reason, the children of many middle class families in the United States have found their opportunity for higher education at the land grant schools in their states.

Narrator: Now get ready to answer the questions.