Land-Grant
Universities and Extension into the 21st Century:
Taking Back the
System
George R. McDowell[1]
The Morrill Act was, “the charter of America’s quietest revolution”(Taylor 1981, 37). The 17,430,000 acres of land in the public domain committed to finance the Land-Grant colleges – 30,000 acres per Senator and Congressman in each state – is not the thing to focus on in reflecting on the establishment of these institutions. Rather, the principle behind their establishment was without historical precedent. That principle asserted that no part of human life and labor is beneath the notice of the university or without its proper dignity. Both by virtue of the character of their scholarship and whom they would serve, the Land-Grant universities were established as people’s universities.
Prior to the 1862 Land-Grant institutions, higher education was reserved for, and helped preserve, the aristocracy of the society. Being a university graduate was an imprimatur of high status in the society. The Land-Grant universities opened classrooms to young people whose previous experiences were primarily on farms, in machine shops, bakeries, or factories. Liberty Hyde Bailey, father of the discipline of horticulture in America, and dean of the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell from 1903-1913, wrote that
Education was once exclusive: it is now in spirit inclusive. The agencies that have brought about this change of attitude are those associated with so-called industrial education, growing chiefly out of the forces set in motion by the Land Grant Act of 1862. This Land Grant is the Magna Charta of education: from it in this country we shall date our liberties (Peters 1998, 53).
As America enters the 21st Century, the national and individual ethic with respect to formal education is dominated by the expectation of access to higher education for all – attending college has become commonplace. Today, we expect all young Americans, who are able, to go to college. Many of them expect to go on to graduate school at least for a Masters degree. Even though other developed nations have emulated the United States investment in higher education, still during the period 1985-1991, the U.S. consistently reported the highest enrollment for 18-21 year-olds in tertiary education of all developed countries with U.S. rates between 33 and 38 percent (Peri, et. al 1997).
An even more revolutionary idea then widespread access to higher education was embedded in the establishment and evolution of the Land-Grant universities. According to Taylor it was “that thought and action were indivorcible, that the place of the academy is in the world not beyond it, that it is the business of the university to demonstrate the connection of knowledge, art, and practice” (Taylor 1981, 37).
Prior to the Land-Grant universities, the aristocrats of the world including America were schooled in theology, the letters, law, and in some few institutions patterned after German universities like Johns Hopkins University, medicine. The Land-Grant view of scholarship directly challenged the prevailing norms of scholarship at the time of their inception by making the work of cow barns, kitchens, coke ovens, and forges the subject matter of their investigation (Eddy 1957). In 1890, the Babcock test for butterfat content of milk was both a scientific advancement and a political/economic act necessary to rationalize markets for fluid milk.
Access to classroom instruction is not, and has not been, the only way in which the Land-Grant universities fulfilled their contract with Americans regarding public access to the knowledge they create, though that was the initial effort. Around 1900, by which time agricultural scientists had demonstrated their ability to solve some of agriculture’s practical problems, farmers clamored for access to the insights of the scientists. The claims on scientists’ time became so great that the outreach function of the university was formalized as the Cooperative Extension Service by the Smith-Lever Act of 1914. “Cooperative” referred to the partnership between the federal, state, and county governments in support of the extension program.
Smith-Lever provided for federal government funding to the universities in support of the extension outreach function, just as the Hatch Act of 1887 had funded agricultural research. Rainsford's (1972) research makes clear that the Smith-Lever Act was passed because the direct benefits to farming sought by agricultural interests in their support of both the Morrill Act and the Hatch Act had not been forthcoming. Most students in the Land-Grant colleges did not study agriculture and go back to the farm, even though they came from farm families; results of research and instruction did not reach farmers because they were not in college but on the farm.
Thus, the Land-Grant system was revolutionary in the history of higher education in three ways:
1. its classrooms and degrees were accessible to the working classes,
2. its agenda of scholarship considered no subject beneath its purview, and
3. it provided access to new knowledge to those who would never qualify, nor want, to be in its classrooms.
And They Were Good!
This system that integrated research and extension has been, and is, hugely successful. Agricultural productivity has grown enormously. American farmers who have survived the economic tests of global markets have prospered and have the most advanced means of production anywhere in the world, though many who failed to keep business and technological pace became obsolete. American society has continued to have an affordable, safe, and secure food system. The agricultural knowledge and information system itself has prospered with substantial support from both public and private sectors. The rate of return on investments in research and development and extension in agriculture are somewhere between 20 and 40 percent per annum (Alston and Pardey 1996). In a society whose long-term cost of government borrowing has seldom if ever been as high as 15 percent, arguably government should borrow at 15 percent and gain returns of 20 percent by investing in agricultural research and extension (Alston and Pardey 1996).
Evidence of the success of the system was made clear by the period from 1920 to the end of World War II, the “Transition to Science” era in American agriculture, according to Huffman and Evenson (1993). It was during this period that hybrid corn, among other science based advances, was developed. However, the period of the 1950’s and 1960’s was the Golden Age for the Land-Grant agricultural research and extension system according to Huffman and Evenson. By that time, the system was enabling U.S. farmers and the agricultural sector to successfully compete with producers anywhere in the world, as well as being judged as one of the most productive sectors of the U.S. economy (Huffman and Evenson, 1993).
I believe a large part of the huge productivity of the agricultural science and information system derived from the engagement of campus-based science with the realities of agricultural problems at the farm level through extension. Busch and Lacy (1983) make clear in their Science, Agriculture and the Politics of Agricultural Research, that most of the choice of research projects by agricultural scientists at that time was based on the personal preferences of the scientist. The only institutionalized link between the agricultural sector and the university then and now, is through the extension function. Notwithstanding the low attention given to that activity by writers on the economics of the system (Huffman and Evenson 1993, and Alston and Pardey 1996), the extension function is certainly a necessary if not sufficient condition to the system success, and extension’s influence on the research agenda may go a long way in explaining the high productivity of the system.
The early 21st Century is a time when research universities, particularly public research universities, are struggling to persuade the people of America of the unique utility of such institutions, primarily in roles other than undergraduate instruction. The public support being sought is for both affirmation and funding. In that context, knowing that there was a time when the Cooperative Extension Services of the several states as arms of the Land-Grant universities were adjudged to be the most trusted source of new knowledge for ordinary Americans is instructive (Feller, Madden, Moore, and Sims 1984). According to Miller, the Land-Grant universities that served to create and transfer science-based technology into use by agricultural producers is arguably ranked first of all the compelling scientific achievements contributing to human development and welfare from the United States in the 20th century (McDowell, 2001).
Many in the Land-Grant system speak of the “Land-Grant Principle” as being somehow special. They usually speak of it in terms of the university doing something to help the society or community that supports it. But as far as I can tell I have never had anyone explain in any detail what the principal actually is. I propose to do that now.
What is Good Science?
There was a long debate during the later half of the 20th century between philosophers of science about how science was advanced. The most notable antagonists in the debate were Sir Karl Popper and Thomas S. Kuhn (Blaug 1980). Both agreed that science did not advance primarily by adding little bits of insight to established theories, but rather by direct challenges to accepted theories (falsification). What they disagreed about was about when was an experiment a test of a theory (or hypothesis) and when was it a test of the skill of the scientist to create an experiment that would indeed be an appropriate test. Popper argued that scientific practice that was less than falsification was “hack science.” Kuhn argued that there was much to be learned and many puzzles to be solved before one would able to put together a test of a theory. This solving of puzzles of measurement, instrumentation, and many other issues were the day-to-day stuff of scientific practice and was not “hack science” according to Kuhn. The solving of these puzzles was a necessary preparation to the direct challenges to accepted theories.
Johnson and Zerby (1973) from MSU examined the issues of scholars being involved in solving real life problems – not unlike Kuhn’s puzzles – and how they deal with their own values in that process. They make the argument asserting that it is impossible to solve practical problems without use of theories. The way they deal with values getting in the way in the use of the theory is to adhere to rules of objectivity. A concept is objective, they argue, if it passes all of the following three tests::
1. it is consistent with other previously accepted concepts and with new concepts based on current experience;
2. it has a clear and specifiable meaning; and
3. it is useful in solving the problems with which one is confronted (Johnson and Zerby 1973, 224).
Each of the three tests – consistency, clarity, and workability – has further dimensions. For example, there are issues of both internal and external consistency. The appeal of mathematical modeling in many subjects is because it assures that there is internal consistency. However, mathematical models may fail the test of external consistency. The test of clarity demands that the concept be clearly comprehended and communicable. The test of workability comes from pragmatism and is primarily interested in the usefulness of the knowledge to solving the problem.
Johnson and Zerby (1973) illustrate the workability test by suggesting that the assumption that light moves in a straight line passes the workability test of objectivity if the problem being solved is the sighting of a rifle. Presumably, if either interstellar travel or molecular behavior is being contemplated than quantum insights to the behavior of light must be considered to pass the test of workability. Similarly, the assumption that the earth is flat is “workable” when contemplating the construction of a building or a bridge, but not when plotting intercontinental air routes. To site a house for the best passive solar heating in the northern hemisphere, pure empirical observation will lead one to choose a southern exposure. To explain the empirical results one will likely have to abandon the flat earth assumption.
By engaging in such problem solving activity, the skill of the scientist is increased and she may, in Kuhn’s terms, be more likely to be able to set up the experiment that actually tests the theoretical hypothesis. The test of objectivity that permits the scientist to work from her discipline on the practical problem is the test of consistency. The test that permits that an actual solution be found to the practical problem at hand is the pragmatic test of workability – light moves in a straight line or is influenced by gravity depending on the application. To restate the point: the exposure of the scientist and her theories to the rigors of application in a practical problem (‘puzzle’ in Kuhn’s terms) not of her choosing provides a clear test of the capacity and knowledge of the scholar, and perhaps also of the theory.
Research and extension scholars within the Land-Grant based agricultural science establishment compelled to provide workable answers to farmers’ practical problems served to force the workability test of scientific objectivity on the whole enterprise. Part of the way that the test of workability was imposed was through the debates and tension between scholars with research appointments and those with extension responsibilities. The institutionalized and funded engagement via the extension function assured the continuing exposure of the science to the rigors of that test of workability. The fact of its solving practical problems of real people elicited political support to continue and grow the appropriated funding.
Is the Science Relevant?
Relevance of the science practiced is different from the quality of scientific practice. Relevance has more to do with the scientific agenda. In general within contemporary universities the professors themselves establish the agenda of science. They do that on the basis of where they can find funding, where they can get the work published, and whether they are interested in the problem. Some argue that peer review is a significant part of setting the scientific agenda – peers review both the proposals for funding and the journal publications from the research that was funded. Others like Chubin and Hackett (1990) in their Peerles Science argue that peer review, involves neither peers nor review. Particularly in the funding process, it is in many ways the old-boys network formalized.
The relationship between scholars and users of the knowledge they produce helps to assure that the scholarly agenda is relevant, in addition to subjecting the scientist and science to the test of workability, which may make the science better.
The principle of scholarly behavior that evolved from the growth and development of the Land-Grant colleges of agriculture into the Land-Grant universities as they struggled to address the problems of American society at the later part of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century can now be discerned. Partly because of the character of the society and partly because agrarian interests acted politically to establish the Land-Grant colleges, the early agenda was directed to agriculture. The principle that emerged is general to all scholarship.
The principle revealed is that synergistic power derives from scholarship practiced where tests of workability and relevance are institutionalized – the power of engagement. Further synergy is generated when access to the knowledge is assured for users who will find it useful in their lives. Some of the power from engagement and access to knowledge is intellectual by virtue of the contribution to both the quality and relevance of the science practiced. Other power is political, resulting from the engagement with users of the knowledge, the access they have to the scholarly product, and the usefulness of the new knowledge to them.
In the agricultural science experience, the power of the Land-Grant principle translated itself into high productivity of the agricultural knowledge and information system and into substantial funding support for that system from federal, state, and local levels of government. Classroom instruction can also be enhanced by engagement through the greater relevance of both the instruction and instructor. The method of instruction may also become a part of the engagement.
The success of the Land-Grant principle as applied to the agricultural problems of the society can be used as a guide to the development of the larger university. The engagement that would emerge would assure that universities, particularly research universities, play a larger, more useful role in the society. Further, notwithstanding the fickleness of the political process, practice of the Land-Grant principle across the entire university should provide for greater support from the people and their representatives. This positive supportive relationship between the society and its universities would seem particularly likely in this period of our history when we call ourselves an “information society.”
It is now appropriate to make explicit the details of the way the Land-Grant Principle operates at the level of extension programming. As discussed in the previous section, the Land-Grant Principle is about the influence of practical problem solving on the practice and relevance of scholarship and the support that beneficiaries of the new knowledge provide. The Land-Grant Principle is clearly the two way street that is more explicit in the language of engagement currently in vogue. The extension function is a significant part of the two-way street. Extension and extension programming is aimed at identifying problems, finding or initiating the necessary scholarship to address the problems, providing the functional education necessary to impart the knowledge created by the scholarship, and collecting the appreciation from the people assisted by the knowledge and instruction in order to support and sustain the system.
In order to formalize thinking about this activity I suggest the following are the necessary conditions to be able to earn and collect credit from clientele for an extension program:
· Positive Net Benefit Condition
The program must generate a positive net benefit--the total benefits of the education or information must be more than what it costs to get it, including time and travel.
· Attribution Condition
Most of the net benefits, regardless of magnitude, must be attributed to extension.
· The Solicitation Condition
The collection of political capital usually involves a separate transaction. The clients must be identifiable and thus susceptible to being solicited for support.
· The Political Action Condition
Acting politically for extension must cost the clients less than their past and anticipated future benefits. As with all agencies in the public sector, extension does a variety of things to reduce the costs of political action including taking constituents to Washington, D.C. to meet with congressman.
Extension works hard to design programs that meet all of the conditions set forth above. To fail to do so would be foolish. One of the most effective ways to design programs to satisfy these conditions is to particularize information so that it is, or appears to be, absolutely specific to an individual client. Efforts so designed have the advantage of most easily meeting the attribution, and solicitation conditions. Soil tests and computer generated information programs, have this advantage, especially when the information is requested by clients. Farm groups meet the solicitation condition relatively easily because you always know where to find them--they have one foot tied to the ground--when you want to collect political support from them, or we organized them into commodity or farm organizations groups and we go there to collect our support.
One of the most common ways of particularizing knowledge to specific members of an audience is in the one-on-one consultation – in agricultural programming it is the farm visit. There are problems with this type of delivery of information and meeting the other conditions. When information is delivered one-on-one the client attributes the information to the agent/specialist – by name – and not necessarily to Extension. Some agents/specialists then use that “political credit” with the organization to extract support for their particular part of the program, rather than to grow the total program.
All of the above four conditions are necessary and none is, in and of itself, sufficient. However, the first of the conditions, the Positive Net Benefit condition, I believe to be most important. It is the one most closely associated with the Land-Grant principle discussed above. The message in it is that our programs really must be built on useful knowledge that audiences value. It also implies that if our programs are not built on sound scholarship there is a limit to the amount of support we can expect from audiences. This, I believe has implications for the relationship between campus departments and field operations. The extension programs without academic department affiliations, notwithstanding all of the battles and angst implied, will go nowhere, or will be less than they should be. That is the experience with 4-H.
Consider Table 1 that shows the character of the campus based support to the respective areas in Wisconsin extension by program areas. Clearly there is not nearly as much in the way of investment in campus specialists and their supporting scholarship for any of the programs by comparison to the agricultural program. If that measure is a proxy or indicator of the scholarly investment in knowledge for that program area, then it should not be surprising that in most states the agricultural program is the dominant program. The agricultural program has more to trade for client support. It is not that farmers are more appreciative – they simply get more as in meeting condition one above.
Table 1. Wisconsin Program Areas and Campus/Field Splits Based on Staffing by FTEs, Fiscal Year 1998.
|
Program Area: |
FTE % of Program |
Campus % of Area FTEs |
Field % of Area FTEs |
|
4-H & Youth Develop |
15 |
24 |
76 |
|
Family Living Ed |
27 |
18 |
82 |
|
CNRED |
20 |
52 |
48 |
|
Agriculture |
28 |
61 |
39 |
|
Program Support |
5 |
|
|
|
Administration |
5 |
|
|
“Taking back the system” is a not-so-subtle reference to my assertion that Extension has been captured and held hostage by agricultural interests. I first made that assertion in 1991 at the National Workshop for Extension Agricultural Program Leaders in Nashville. I had been given the title, “The USDA and the Extension System Revisited.” I gave my paper a second title, “If You Haven’t Visited Extension Recently You Better Do It Soon, Cause It Isn’t Going To Be There Long.”
What I mean by “taking back the system” is not to diminish our role with agriculture but rather to grow the other parts of the Land-Grant extension system so that other parts of present and future programs can also claim the allegiance now enjoyed by agriculture programs, and so that we can serve the American people with more of what the universities have to offer. I think Arlen Leholm here at Michigan State had it about right when he cut a deal with agricultural groups saying that he wanted to grow other parts of extension but not at the expense of the agricultural program. He asked for the agricultural community’s support for his changes in extension based on the commitment that he would not diminish the resources to agriculture. He explained that as the total program grew he would be growing other parts of it more rapidly than would the agricultural part. He also told the farm groups that he would be trying to organize the programs for agriculture differently than in the past in order to make them more effective (Leholm 2002).
But taking back the system requires more than cutting deals with farm groups. It means that we have to have good programs to offer other people. According to Dale Blyth at Minnesota, traditional 4-H programs are the best examples of youth programming that have failed to take account of advances in knowledge of adolescent development, whose science has come into its own since the 1980’s. Notwithstanding the spectacular examples of David Riley and Stephen Small’s work in Wisconsin, most of youth development in extension is not scholarship based, and has been that way for years. We’ve always known more about the calves than the kids.
The agricultural extension program sets a standard that is hard to meet as we attempt to grow other parts of the program. Look again at the investment in scholarship in the Wisconsin program areas in Table 1. In the agricultural program the FTE’s on the campus in support of extension are probably understated because of the number of researchers who collaborate with extension people in solving farm based questions. Further, I suspect that there are more partial extension appointments in support of agricultural programs than in support of youth development or nutrition. That means there are simply more brains engaged in support of extension programming than are represented by the FTEs of specialist’s time.
In thinking through taking extension back, it is useful to use the notion of the Land-Grant Principle in conjunction with the four necessary conditions as a guide to what must be accomplished. The Land-Grant Principle speaks to how the scholarship is practiced. The four necessary conditions speaks to how the information is packaged, delivered, how the audience is organized, or not, and how appreciative they are of extension and the university for the knowledge they have received.
Consider as an example the work of Stephen Small and the Teen Assessment Project in Wisconsin. Listed below are some of the publications that emerged from that program aimed at providing local communities with local research-based knowledge that can help them better support local teens and their families (Lande 1994).
· Teen
Assessment Project – Five Year Impact Report 1989 – 1994. U of
Wisconsin Extension, October 1994.
· Small, S. A. “Action-Oriented Research: Models and Methods.” Journal of Marriage and the Family, 57 (November 1995).
· Small, S.A. and T. Luster. “Adolescent Sexual Activity: An Ecological, Risk-Factor Approach.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 56 (February 1994).
· Child, Parent, Contextual Influences on Perceived Parenting Competence Among Parent of Adolescents.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 59 (May 1997).
· Luster, T. and S. A. Small, “Sexual Abuse History and Number of Sex Partners Among Female Adolescents.” Family Planning Perspectives, Vol. 29, Number 5, September/October 1997.
Between 1989 and 1994 more than 60,000 students completed TAP surveys in 175 school districts in 40 Wisconsin counties
The product of the TAP program is better parenting information, educational programs with or without external community funding to address community specific problems, and local policy changes also to address community specific problems. Five years after its initiation the TAP program had stimulated the preparation of 160 different news letters going to almost 190,000 parents, 94 different fact sheets on parenting with about 30,000 copies distributed, 170 press releases, 465 newspaper articles, 245 radio broadcasts and 36 television programs, and results of the TAP surveys used in eliciting around $800,000 in grant monies from state and federal sources from 112 successful proposals (Lande 1994).
When I asked Steve Small whether his scholarship was influenced by his extension assignment, he sent me the “Action-Oriented Research … “ paper. I saw it, laughed, called him and told him I understood that paper was the way in which he had collected academic credit for his work with extension. It was not really what I was asking. What I really wanted to know was whether his scholarship was made different or better because of his extension work. It was his turn to laugh. He said that prior to his extension TAP work he had no particular interest in pre-teen/teen sexuality and there really was not much in the literature on the subject. “Now I’m considered one of the leading authorities on the subject” (Small 1998). The above list of a sample of Stephen Small’s work suggests that the Land-Grant Principle works in youth development as well as in agronomy. But it will take an awful lot more of that kind of scholarship before youth development really takes off in extension. And the safe programs for safe kids part of youth programming will get in the way before we get it right.
By almost any review of the TAP program, it has been hugely successful as an extension program, both within Wisconsin and in several other states that have used it. It clearly meets the positive net benefit condition and probably through the media coverage, also meets the attribution condition. I do not know whether there is any organized group or advocacy organization for youth development that would be considered comparable to the Farm Bureau to facilitate the solicitation and political action conditions in collecting on the political capital generated by the program. However, there is in Wisconsin a unique circumstance that facilitates achieving the solicitation and political action conditions making extension work there somewhat easier, I suspect.
That unique Wisconsin circumstance is called “County Agricultural and Extension Committees.” In case you do not already know, the Wisconsin County Agricultural and Extension Committees are a subcommittee of the Boards of Supervisors and only County Supervisors are members. These committees are the equivalent to Extension Advisory Committees or Boards in other states, with the exception that in many states the membership of such committee are comprised of extension favorite clients and/or dominated by farming interests. In Wisconsin with the advisory committee to extension being comprised of leaders elected in county-wide elections, with legal term limits, the meeting of the solicitation and political action conditions is accomplished through the local political processes attended to by the county supervisors. That presumably explains why it is that Tom Riese now holds the position of Youth and Family Development Educator in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, where he previously served for 20 years as 4-H and youth agent. County supervisors were explicit that the new position was to be in addition to the existing 4-H agent but would not have any 4-H identification in the job description – they wanted it clear that the new job was much broader than the images conjured up by the 4-H symbols.
The Wisconsin county Agricultural and Extension Committees makes yet another point clear – there are several way to collect support for extension. For most states the bane of efforts to broaden the portfolio of the extension program is the huge power that is welded by the farm organizations, particularly the Farm Bureau. In some places it is not only that they want to protect the size of the agricultural program, they also wish to maintain control of the overall program. There are stories out of North Carolina about farm interest groups opposing the efforts by Family Living agents to get grants that would increase the total resource base because they did not want to lose control of the extension portfolio. Organizing or working with interest groups in support of particular programs is one way to solicit and collect support. Another way is to have a broadly based, politically active advisory board or committee who will provide guidance and generate the necessary support – that’s the Wisconsin model. In some cases and for some programs, the audience is so special or unique that collecting support on the spot with user fees is the most feasible way to go.
One thing is clear! Simply designing and implementing excellent educational programs is insufficient to take back the extension system for all of the people.
Engagement of university scholars with the problems of ordinary people is a part of what has made Land-Grant universities unique in the history of higher education. That engagement formally institutionalized through the Cooperative Extension Service in the several states serves to institutionalize the brand of scholarship described by the “Land-Grant Principle” in the colleges and units of Land-Grant universities with that as a formal obligation. The Land-Grant Principle in practice serves to make the scholarship better and more relevant. It also produces useful knowledge which extension teaches or otherwise makes available to interested citizens. In exchange for that knowledge, clients of the university provide support for the university/extension system provided the knowledge is valued by them, they know it came from the university extension system, they can be identified or contacted to solicit their support, and the cost of acting is less than the value of the information they received.
Taking the system back from domination by agricultural audiences demands access to scholarship that is useful to someone, and that meets the four necessary conditions. Indeed, some existing programs provide good and useful knowledge but fail to collect the support they could or should.
References:
Alston, Julian M. and Philip G. Pardey. 1996. Making Science Pay: The Economics of Agricultural R&D Policy. Washington, DC: The AEI Press.
Blaug, Mark. 1980. The Methodology of Economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Busch, Lawrence, and William B. Lacy. 1983. Science, Agriculture, and the Politics of Research. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.
Chubin, Daryl E. and Edward J.
Hackett. 1990. Peerless Science. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Eddy, Edward Danforth, Jr. 1957. Colleges for Our Land and Time: The Land-Grant Idea in American Education. New York: Harper and Brothers.
Feller, I, L, Kaltreider, P. Madden, D. Moore, and L. Sims. 1984. Overall Study Report: Findings and Recommendations Vol. 5, The Agricultural Technology Delivery System: A Study of Agricultural and Food Related Technologies. Prepared for Science and Education, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. University Park, Pennsylvania, Institute for Policy Research and Evaluation, The Pennsylvania State University.
Huffman, Wallace E. and Robert E. Evenson. 1993. Science for Agriculture. Ames: Iowa State University Press.
Johnson, Glenn L. and Lewis K. Zerby. 1973. What Economists Do About Values. East Lansing: Department of Agricultural Economics, Center for Rural Manpower and Public Affairs, Michigan State University.
Lande, John. 1994. Teen Assessment Project--Five
year Impact Report, 1989-1994. Madison:
University of Wisconsin-Extension, October.
Leholm, Arlen. 2002. Personal Conversation, April.
McDowell, George R. 1991. The USDA and The Extension System Revisited or If You Haven't Visited Extension Recently, You Better Do It Soon, Cause It Isn't Going To Be There Long. Presentation to the National Workshop for Extension Agricultural Program Leaders, Nashville, Tennessee, 3-5 April. Unpublished.
McDowell, George R. 2001, Land-Grant Universities and Extension into the 21st Century: Renegotiating or Abandoning a Social Contract. Iowa State Press, Ames Iowa.
Peters, Scott Joseph, 1998. Extension Work as Public Work: Reconsidering Extension’s Civic Mission. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
Peri, Marianne, et al. 1997. International Education Indicators: A Time Series Perspective. Washington, DC: National Center for Educational Statistics, U.S. Department of Education.
Rainsford, George N. 1972. Congress and Higher Education in the Nineteenth Century, Knoxville, Tennessee: The University of Tennessee Press.
Riese, Thomas. 1999.
Personal written communication, September.
Small, Stephen. 1998.
Personal written communication, November.
Taylor, John F. A. 1966. The Masks of Society. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts: Meredith Publishing Company.
Taylor, John F. A. 1981. The Public Commission of the University. New York, New York: University Press.
[1] Professor, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Virginia Tech. Paper Prepared for 2002 North Central Administrative Leadership Conference, Traditions and Transitions, May 13 – 15, Kellogg Center, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.