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Oklahoma | I don't know what will happen to them but they have done most of it to theirself. They want to compete with all the other big school and just like everyone else the greed got to them. At least here in OK it appears that they have jacked the requirement up for admittance and they have jacked tuition up all in an effort to make more money and draw the "smart kids" and in return they are leaving out lots of the kids that might not be the top 5% of their class but they have a work ethic and other traits from a rural background. The university answer is "they go to a ju-co and then come here". I know too many of them that just say forget it and go on to the real world. Then you hear some of the higher ups in the univeristy wondering why they don't have kids graduating that they can't place due to work ethic or the kid has so much debt from never holding down a job that they think they need 6 figures to pay for it all.
As far as extension, they could have done stuff different as well. I have worked with farmers that will support almost anything a land grant university tells them and then I have worked with ones that would bash every statement that came out of a ext persons mouth. It is just like politicians and the PC crowd, they say something wrong and their credibility is gone over one statement because Joe farmer doesn't agree with it and they tell the whole coffee shop about it. I think it is funny that most of the time, Joe Farmer that bashes them is the first one trying every snake oil out there that doesn't offer any kind of replicated trials just his companies research. Isn't ironic that Company X always beats the "competition" and that is the only graph they show. I know both studies may be biased in one way or another but the university study usually has more useful information in it if people will look.
I really hate to see extension go because I do feel like there is some valuable information and new technology that comes from their research. I know when I was in grad school, our research projects all started by talking to farmers and finding out what questions they had then coming up with how we could answer those questions. The crop consultants and some of the different companies in the corn belt may be doing that stuff now. I know I don't go in the extension office with questions unless it is specific to something they are doing.
Besides, if the land grant schools go away, who will teach and train the future generations ANYTHING about ag? So then it becomes those who grew up on a farm stay on a farm and forget anyone else that might want to be in ag. No ag engineers, no agronomists, no ag econ, etc and in the long run no ag in the US.
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What will become of land-grant universities?
