Editor’s Note: Dr. Harl is a Distinguished Professor in Agriculture; Professor of Economics, Iowa State University and is the Director of the Center for International Agriculture Finance. He also serves as member of the Research Advisory Committee for the Cattlemen’s Competitive Market Project (CCMP). This is Part I of a three part series.

Not quite a century and a half ago, a new dimension began to take shape on this continent, the concept of the land grant university. Born out of the seemingly boundless expanse of territory yet to be developed in what eventually would become these United States of America, the voice of Justin Morrill and others began to challenge the prevailing notion that education was principally for the wealthy, the privileged and the fortunate. The land grant idea was to open institutions of higher education to the sons and daughters of shopkeepers, artisans and farmers. The history of the land grant idea indicates that the original notion was to provide an opportunity for a "liberal and practical education" for the industrial classes and farmers with an emphasis on an education within the grasp of the non-elite in society. The grant of lands with the enactment of the Morrill Act of 1862 made possible the flowering of the land grant idea.

Later, a public commitment to research directed to the needs of the farmers in the Hatch Act of 1887 added a second dimension to the land grant university.

The three functions, long viewed as co-equal in the land grant university, proved to be a remarkably prescient response of government and of the academic community to the needs of the rapidly developing agricultural and industrial sectors of the new world.

The shift toward emphasis on research
For several decades, the three functions were viewed as equal in importance; in recent time, the pendulum has swung away from an emphasis on teaching and extension and toward research in land grant universities. My plea is to restore a greater degree of balance among the functions. It is my belief that this can be accomplished and must be accomplished if we are to expect the kind of generous public support the land grant university has traditionally enjoyed.

A land grant university has multiple constituencies to please – students, peers in the respective disciplines, users of extension information and taxpayers. If we slight any one of the groups, we will pay a price. In my view, we are paying less attention to students, to users of extension information and to taxpayers and more to worrying about whether we are impressing the disciplinary peers around the world who establish the pecking order of institutions. It is becoming increasingly clear that state support is at risk—the land grant university needs to demonstrate that it cares about and is responsible to the needs and wants of people and their real world problems That is an integral part of the land grant mission.

A good case can be made that, in our rush to impress peers elsewhere, we have created an environment that has not been conducive to excellence in teaching and that has been down right antagonistic to the extension function. I am not putting down research. Far from it. Each land grant university in the country and the world needs a strong research function. But it should not be allowed to crowd out the teaching and extension functions. Unfortunately, in some university academic departments, recruitment of new faculty hires for positions with a substantial teaching or extension component emphasizes the research record and prospects for a strong research program with no more than a passing glance at teaching experience and ability and with even less attention to extension interests and abilities. When teaching or extension is mentioned it is all too often in a setting of characterizing those functions as some sort of pesky, bothersome requirement that should be minimized as soon as possible. I agree that a critical requirement of someone in teaching or extension is to be perennially camped at the leading edge of thought in the discipline. But it is clear that a good researcher is not uniformly and necessarily a good teacher or extension faculty person.

What is to blame?
How did we end up in such a state? Where did we take the wrong turn in the academic road—a wrong turn that was apparent to some nearly two decades ago?NEH

Part II of Dr. Harl's article will appear in the December edition of the OCM Newsletter.