7 U.S.C. § 304 — Investment of proceeds of sale of land or scrip

This section has no lettered subsections. It requires States to invest and protect the money they get from selling certain federal land, and to dedicate the earnings to funding a college. All the money a State gets from selling land as provided in section 302 of this title, or from selling the land scrip described there, must be invested in bonds of the United States, of the States, or in other similarly safe bonds. States that have no State bonds of their own may invest the money another way, but only if their legislature has assented to it and has engaged that the funds will yield a fair and reasonable rate of return — set by the State legislature — and that the principal will forever remain unimpaired. The invested or loaned money forms a perpetual fund, whose capital must remain forever undiminished, except as allowed under section 305 of this title. Each State that takes and claims the benefit of this subchapter must inviolably use the interest from this fund to endow, support, and maintain at least one college. That college's leading object must be to teach branches of learning related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, including military tactics, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, taught however each State's legislature respectively prescribes. The stated goal is to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of life.