Archive for March 4th, 2018
‘Human Ecology’ (Colleges of), Psychology, and Cornell. Why The History of the American University System Still Matters.
Post title with shortlink, started Feb. 17, 2018, published March 4:
‘Human Ecology’ (Colleges of), Psychology, and Cornell. Why The History of the American University System Still Matters. (shortlink ending “-8F5”) Post is short (about 6,100 words — can you believe it?!)
Subtitle: Some Historic Problems and Design Flaws — or Inherent Design Genius, depending on one’s perspective — with The American University System.
Here, I discuss where “Colleges of Human Ecology and the intent to “develop” human beings from the start,” based on theories from high-profile psychologists such as the late Urie Bronfenbrenner (whom Cornell University’s center named in his honor credits for having founded, or inspired the massive “Head Start” programming itself), funded through their faculty positions meets “the imported university models” meets the “current US size and tax system” (university financing).
Tags: I added labels (“tags”) for topics in this post, and included this one — though it’s not discussed below — because the post discussing it is related: “FAF Financial Accounting Foundation (estab. by AICPA ca.1971 Norwalk CT set up GASB+FASB who set the guidelines=acctg rules)(see also “CAFRs”)
Regardless of one’s perspective, the American universities both private and public still have a basic design. That design for each has been historically based on a certain model espoused by their founders, reflecting their values and what kind of economic infrastructure those founders wanted for the country.
MORRILL LAND-GRANT ACTS
(Reference added March 5, 2018): Why the Morrill Act Still Matters, July 16, 2012 by Christopher P. Loss in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Added here because it’s a short narrative and for the 19 comments below arguing pro/con the whole situation. The comments are generally well-written and interesting.
Basics: Please read (for review, or if it’s not review) Wikipedia on the Morrill Land-Grant Acts. These involved federal lands to establish state college right about the time of the Civil War (!) and after the Confederate states had seceded (although they later got theirs, too). On that article, Cornell’s situation is in paragraphs 7 and 10. Paras. 6, 7 and 10 quoted here. Relates to Cornell and MIT.
Under the act, each eligible state received a total of 30,000 acres (120 km2) of federal land, either within or contiguous to its boundaries, for each member of congress the state had as of the census of 1860. This land, or the proceeds from its sale, was to be used toward establishing and funding the educational institutions described above. Under provision six of the Act, “No State while in a condition of rebellion or insurrection against the government of the United States shall be entitled to the benefit of this act,” in reference to the recent secession of several Southern states and the contemporaneously raging American Civil War.
After the war, however, the 1862 Act was extended to the former Confederate states; it was eventually extended to every state and territory, including those created after 1862. If the federal land within a state was insufficient to meet that state’s land grant, the state was issued “scrip” which authorized the state to select federal lands in other states to fund its institution.[7] For example, New York carefully selected valuable timber land in Wisconsin to fund Cornell University.[8]p. 9 The resulting management of this scrip by the university yielded one third of the total grant revenues generated by all the states, even though New York received only one-tenth of the 1862 land grant.[8]p. 10 Overall, the 1862 Morrill Act allocated 17,400,000 acres (70,000 km2) of land, which when sold yielded a collective endowment of $7.55 million.[8]p. 8
…With a few exceptions (including Cornell University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), nearly all of the land-grant colleges are public. (Cornell University, while private, administers several state-supported contract colleges that fulfill its public land-grant mission to the state of New York.)
To maintain their status as land-grant colleges, a number of programs are required to be maintained by the college. These include programs in agriculture and engineering, as well as a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program
This situation, as Wikipedia tells it, also supplanted a more egalitarian (among the states) and earlier “Turner Act,” giving preference for the then more populous eastern states. Overall, the federal lands represent land grabs from Native Americans originally, anyhow, so a case could be made that the entire situation is based on theft and land-grabs. Anyhow….
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