This case study examines the efforts of the Michigan Agricultural College (Michigan State University, hereafter MAC) to promote agricultural science and agricultural education. It promoted both, simultaneously, by collaborating with farmers' organizations to conduct agricultural education (extension) through, most notably, institutes, bulletins,…

Historians of higher education generally agree on a handful of ideas about the early years of the land-grant colleges that grew out of the Morrill Act of 1862. For their first three decades, the land-grant colleges struggled to survive: lacking students, funding, and public favor. Charged, by the Morrill Act, to promote "the liberal and…