The First Agricultural College in America
Near Lansing, Michigan
Three miles east of the capitol, on a stretch of cleared forest along the Red Cedar River, stands the campus that changed how every major university in America is built. Michigan State University was not originally Michigan State University. It was the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, and when it was founded in eighteen fifty-five it was the first institution of higher learning in the United States dedicated entirely to scientific agriculture.
The idea was radical for its time. Higher education in the mid-nineteenth century meant Latin, Greek, theology, and law. Teaching farmers how to improve soil chemistry, rotate crops, and breed better livestock was considered beneath the dignity of a real college. Governor Kinsley Bingham signed the founding act on February twelfth, eighteen fifty-five. The site chosen was far east of Lansing, remote enough, some thought, to keep students from being tempted by city life.
Classes began on May thirteenth, eighteen fifty-seven, with three buildings, five faculty members, and sixty-three male students. Within a decade the college's model was attracting national attention. When Congress passed the Morrill Act in eighteen sixty-two, establishing a system of federally funded agricultural and mechanical colleges in every state, Michigan's school was the template. It became a land-grant college in eighteen sixty-three, the first in the country to formally carry that designation.
Coeducation arrived in eighteen seventy. The college became Michigan Agricultural College, then Michigan State College of Agriculture and Applied Science, and finally Michigan State University in nineteen sixty-four. Today it enrolls over fifty thousand students and is among the largest research universities in the nation.
What started in a clearing in the Michigan forest became the prototype for more than one hundred land-grant universities across America. The idea that practical knowledge deserved the same rigor as classical learning turned out to be a pretty good one.
