<p>“Land grant status” is a historical designation. The Morrill Land Grant Act was signed into law by Abraham Lincoln. Under the terms of the act, each state was given a grant of land that its legislature could sell; the proceeds were to go to higher education, at the discretion of the legislature. Ezra Cornell, who had made a fortune from a machine that buried telegraph cables, and had become a state legislator in New York, offered to match the proceeds of the land grant with his own money if the legislature allowed him to use the entire proceeds of the land grant with his matching money to start a new university “where anybody could study anything.” A fellow legislator named Andrew White helped him get the plan enacted, and went on to the the first president of what became known as Cornell University. Cornell’s idea for what type of university it would be was formalized into the university motto: “I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study.”</p>
<p>My favorite Andrew White story: when the president of white’s alma mater, the University of Michigan, proposed a football game between the two schools, White replied something like this: “I refuse to permit thirty young men to travel a thousand miles for the purpose of agitating a pig’s bladder.”</p>