"The Oldest State University Is Visiting the Best": Agricultural Education in the Early 20th Century

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 16
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Shifts in Higher Education

Abstract

Centered on a trip to the University of Wisconsin by a University of Georgia (UGA) delegation, this paper contributes to historiographical reconsiderations of land-grant colleges’ enactment of democratic and service missions. Using historical methods and primary sources, the authors consider how financial motives led UGA to adopt agricultural education and extension programs aimed at shoring up institutional finances as much as at serving the needs of the state. Although much of the literature on Southern higher education in the early 20th century focuses on regional exceptionalism, this case highlights the efforts of a southern institution to borrow from a northern model of agricultural education and in doing so explores what John Thelin (2019) called the “horizontal” history of higher education.

Authors

• Erin Leach, University of Georgia - Athens

• Philip Adams, University of Georgia

• Timothy Reese Cain, University of Georgia - Athens