182 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



During the year ending September 30, 1883, the college received, through 

 the State Treasurer, on account of current expenses, $30,331.63. Dividing 

 this amount by 182, the number of students for that year, it would give as 

 the cost per student, about 166 dollars. 



It should be borne in mind, however, that the college is using a good deal of 

 this money in other work besides that of teaching. There are four distinct 

 departments that are doing experimental work ; there is the care of grounds ; 

 meteorological observations, and work connected with Farmers' Institutes. 

 There are various analyses and investigations made in the interests of agri- 

 culture and horticulture, relating to soils, plants, insects, etc. 



It would be fair to allow that nearly one third of the thirty thousand dollars 

 is expended in work outside of teaching students, which would leave us the 

 cost per student $110.66. This amount per student would give as the whole 

 cost for teaching the past year $20,140.12. 



The receipts on account of interest from the congressional laud grant fund 

 for the same years amount to $22,139.13, or nearly two thousand ($1,999.01) 

 dollars in excess of the cost of teaching. 



The actual work of teaching, therefore, at the Agricultural College is paid 

 by the interest accruing from the sale of lands that were a gift from the IJ. S. 

 government for the support of an institution giving instruction relating to 

 agriculture and the mechanic arts. 



The question, therefore, "What does it cost the State to educate a student 

 at the Agricultural College?" properly answered would be, "It costs the State 

 nothing." That expense, every dollar of it, is now paid by the interest 

 accruing from the sale of lands that were a gift from the U. S. government, 

 and have cost the State nothing more than the expenses incidental to the 

 locating, appraising, and selling the land. 



The college is, or ought to be, returning to the State, through its experi- 

 ments, its published reports, its farmers' institutes, its meteorological work. 

 its analyses of soils, grains, grasss, and other foods, and its iufiuence, directly 

 and indirectly, on immigration, full value for all the money that it asks from 

 the State, except for buildings. As the interest from the sale of lands cannot 

 be used for buildings they must be erected and maintained at the expense of 

 the State. Now, in view of the facts which I have stated, it would certainly 

 seem that of all the educational institutions of the State the Agricultural Col- 

 lege is the very last that the people will be likely to feel as being financially a 

 burden. It asks nothing of the State but what it will expend in work directly 

 in the interest of its greatest industry ; not only with regard to the capital 

 invested and the number of persons employed, but also as regards the pros- 

 perity of all the other industries depending upon it. If the State no longer 

 needs that work, or thinks it unprofitable, it can withhold the appropriations 

 for it, and the College will still go on with the proceeds of the money which 

 the State holds in trust for its use, educating the students that you send to it. 

 But the State of Michigan does not believe in a progress that goes backward. 

 It is not asking the College to-day to narrow its sphere of operation, but rather 

 to widen it; not to do less but more and better work for the promotion of agri- 

 culture; and the Board of Management, consisting of practical, wideawake 

 men, most of them farmers, are looking forward, not backward, and have 

 under consideration lines of work that may give the College a larger useful- 

 ness in that direction, and keep it in the most intimate relations with the farm- 

 ers of the State. 



