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United States Postal Service commemorative stamp

Land-grant universities (also called land-grant colleges or land grant institutions) are institutions of higher education in the United States that have been designated by the United States Congress to receive the benefits of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890.

The Morrill Acts funded educational institutions by granting federally controlled land to the states. The mission of these institutions, as set forth in the 1862 Act, is to teach agriculture, military tactics, the mechanic arts, and home economics, not to the exclusion of classical studies, so that members of the working classes might obtain a practical college education.

The Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm, the predecessor to Iowa State University which was chartered in 1858, became the nation’s first land-grant institution when the General Assembly awarded it the state’s land-grant charter in 1864. The first land-grant university newly created under the Morrill Act of 1862 was Kansas State University, established on February 16, 1863. The oldest land-grant university is Rutgers University, which was founded in 1766. Michigan State University, founded in 1855, claims the title of pioneer land-grant university, because all land-grant universities were ostensibly modeled on it.

The mission of the land-grant universities was subsequently expanded by the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 to include cooperative extension — the sending of agents into rural areas to help bring the results of agricultural research to the end users.

Land-grant universities are not to be confused with sea grant colleges (a program instituted in 1966), space grant colleges (instituted in 1988), urban-grant universities or sun grant colleges (instituted in 2003). There are thirteen colleges or universities with land, sea and space designations, and at least three universities with four designations (Cornell University (land, sea, space, sun), Oregon State University (land, sea, space, sun) and University of Delaware (land, sea, urban, space)).

The universities were initially known as land-grant colleges. Today, only a small handful of the seventy-some institutions which evolved from the Morrill Acts still have "College" in their official names.

The University of the District of Columbia received land-grant status and a $7.24 million endowment (USD), in lieu of a land grant, in 1967. In a 1972 Special Education Amendment, American Samoa, Guam, Micronesia, Northern Marianas, and the Virgin Islands each received $3 million.

In 1994, the American Indian Higher Education Consortium also received land grant status, and 29 additional land grant colleges were created under the Elementary and Secondary Education Reauthorization Act. Most of these are two-year technical schools. However, three are four-year institutions, and one offers a master's degree.

• The Morrill Act of 1862
• The Hatch Act of 1887
• The second Morrill Act of 1890
• The Adams Act - 1906
• The Nelson Act - 1907
• The Smith-Lever Act of 1914
• Chapter 79 - May 8, 1914
• The Smith-Hughes Act - 1917
• The Parnell Act - 1925
• The Copper-Ketcham Act - 1928
• The Bankhead-Jones Act of 1935
• The Bankhead-Flannegan Act - 1945
• The Research Marketing Act - 1946
• Amendment to Smith-Lever Act - 1953, 1955, 1961, 1962, 1968
• Amended Hatch Act - 1955
• The McIntire-Stennis Act - 1962
• The Research Facilities Act - 1965
• Public Law 89-106 - 1965
• The National Sea Grant College and Program Act - 1966
• The Rural Development Act - 1972
• The Food and Agriculture Act - 1977
• The National Agricultural Research Extension and Teaching Act - Title XIV - 1977
• The Resource Extension Act - 1978
• Amendment to Title XIV - 1981
• The Agriculture and Food Act - 1981
• Amendment to Title XIV of Food Security Act - 1985
• 1994 Native Indian Legislation

• List of land-grant universities
• National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges
• State university