A land-grant university is an institution of higher education in the United States that has been designated by a state legislature or Congress to receive the benefits of the Morrill Acts of 1862, 1890, and 1994. The Morrill Acts were a series of federal laws that provided grants of land to states to establish colleges that would teach agriculture, engineering, and military tactics, as well as classical studies. The land-grant system is a key component of the agricultural experiment station program created by the Hatch Act of 1887, which authorized direct payment of federal grant funds to each state to establish an agricultural experiment station in connection with the land-grant institution there. The land-grant system has expanded over time to encompass programs of on-campus instruction, research, and off-campus Extension work in many areas beyond the initial educational needs of the agricultural and industrial classes. Today, there is at least one land-grant institution in every state and territory of the United States, as well as the District of Columbia, and certain states have more than one land-grant institution. Some land-grant colleges are private, including Cornell University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Tuskegee University.