By Paul J. Richards, AFP/Getty ImagesBill Gates will push for better college graduation rates in a speech commemorating the Morrill Act on Tuesday.
By Paul J. Richards, AFP/Getty ImagesBill Gates will push for better college graduation rates in a speech commemorating the Morrill Act on Tuesday.
One of them — the Morrill Act establishing public universities in all states — will be commemorated here Tuesday when Cabinet secretaries, university presidents and other educational leaders gather to hear keynote speaker Bill Gates push for better college graduation rates. The commemoration comes as many cash-strapped states are cutting education funding and students owe more than $900 billion in college debt.Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson says the summer of 1862 was an unprecedented six-week span in which Congress passed the Morrill Act, the foundation for public universities and research; the Homestead Act, which offered free land for westward settlers; the Railroad Act, which led to the first transcontinental transportation and communications systems; and the first national income tax, which Lincoln needed to fight the war."We certainly, in the benefit of hindsight, can say each one of those things was an investment in the future," says Gates, co-founder of Microsoft. "You have to be impressed," Gates adds, saying that despite the "strife" of the times, Congress and Lincoln in 1862 laid "foundations for prosperity."The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities is sponsoring the symposium, a continuation of sesquicentennial observances of the Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865. "I am still in awe" of that Congress, says Richardson, who is writing a book on the history of the Republican Party. "The men in it not only constructed a new nation, … but also a number of them gave their own sons to the cause. … They were trying to create a new kind of government that could build a prosperous nation at the same time an insurrection with a powerful army was literally trying to destroy the country."Today, the nation and its education leaders face more tough choices. Americans "have to make a distinction between what is essentially current consumption of expenditures vs. investments for the next generation," says Peter McPherson, president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. "And a couple of those investments have to be education at all levels."For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.