"The cuts in state funding that have been applied to Penn State over the past couple of years are basically the same percentage cuts made to all the state-owned and state-related universities in Pennsylvania," he said.

The land grant act allotted land to universities across the nation, including Penn State, to promote research in the fields of agriculture and mechanic arts, Michael Bezilla, author of Penn State: An Illustrated History, said.

Penn State spokesman Tysen Kendig said the three missions of the university are education, research and service.

"The university strives to integrate all three," he said. "One would feed and benefit off of the other two. They are not mutually exclusive."

However, Bob Steele, dean of the College of Agriculture said, as a land grant institution, there is a distinct line drawn between research and education.

The act affects research more than education, he said.

"The Land Grant Act created a stream of money for research in 1887 and extension in 1914 ... to deal with issues of the day in agricultural research and extension," he said.

The act is not intended to issue money to the state for educational purposes, such as teaching, Steele said.

"The Penn State budget from the state as well as tuition are the two sources that fund our undergraduate programs," he said.

The appropriations are only allocated for research in the College of Agriculture and do not extend to other academic colleges, Susan Welch, dean of the College of the Liberal Arts said.

Faculty members in the College of the Liberal Arts must compete for grants to receive funding for research, Welch said.

Decreases in appropriations cause a decrease in funding for agricultural research, Steele said.

Rosa Eberly, associate professor of communications, arts and sciences, and English, said because of the changes in funding, she feels Penn State is no longer interested in its land grant mission.

"If Penn State renounces the land grant mission then it renounces a major part of its heritage," she said.

However, Kendig said the university's mission hasn't changed over the course of time, and he does not see it changing in the future.

"We continue to follow the land grant mission by having a large research and agriculture component," he said.

With innovative curricula at the undergraduate level, the main thing would be not drawing such an absolute distinction between research and undergraduate education, Eberly said.

"The university will say that it doesn't draw that distinction, but the lived experience of faculty and students will say the contrary," she said.