Purpose of Comprehensive Community College

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Background Evolving Priorities and Expectations

of the Community College

The American community college dates from the early yearsof the twentieth century. Among the social forces that con- tributed to its rise, most prominent were the need for workers trained to operate the nation’s expanding industries; the length- ened period of adolescence, which mandated custodial care of the young for a longer time; and the drive for social equality and greater access to higher education. Community colleges seemed also to reflect the growing power of external authority over everyone’s life, the peculiarly American belief that people cannot be legitimately educated, employed, religiously observant, ill, or healthy unless some institution sanctions that aspect of their being.

The ideas permeating higher education early in the twentieth century fostered the development of these new colleges across the country. Science was seen as contributing to progress; the more people who would learn its principles, the more rapid the develop- ment of the society would be. New technologies demanded skilled operators, and training them could be done by the schools. Indi- vidual mobility was held in the highest esteem, and the notion was widespread that those people who applied themselves most diligently would advance most rapidly. Social institutions of prac- tical value to society were being formed. This was the era of the Chautauqua, the settlement house, the Populists. And in the col- leges, the question, “What knowledge is of most worth?” was rarely asked; the more likely question was, “What knowledge yields the

Cohen, Arthur M., et al. The American Community College, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/capella/detail.action?docID=1366278. Created from capella on 2020-04-18 10:16:04.

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2 THE AMERICAN COMMUNITY COLLEGE

greatest tangible benefit to individuals or to society?” The public perceived schooling as an avenue of upward mobility and a contrib- utor to the community’s wealth. The diatribes of Veblen (1918) and Sinclair ([1923] 1976) against domination of the universities by industrialists were ineffectual outcries against what had become a reality.

Publicly supported universities, given impetus by the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890, had been established in every state. Although many were agricultural institutes or teacher-training colleges little resembling modern universities, they did provide a lower-cost alternative to private colleges. The universities were also pioneering the idea of service to the broader community through their agricultural and general extension divisions. Access for a wider range of the population was expanding as programs to teach an ever- increasing number of subjects and occupations were introduced. Schools of business, forestry, journalism, and social work became widespread. People with more diverse goals demanded more diverse programs; the newer programs attracted greater varieties of people.

Probably the simplest overarching reason for the growth of community colleges was that an increasing number of demands were being placed on schools at every level. Whatever the social or personal problem, schools were supposed to solve it. As a society, we have looked to the schools for racial integration. The courts and legislatures have insisted that schools mitigate discrimination by merging students across ethnic lines in their various programs. The schools are expected to solve problems of unemployment by preparing students for jobs. Subsidies awarded to businesses that train their own workers might be a more direct approach, but we have preferred paying public funds to support occupational education in the schools. The list could be extended to show that the responsibility for doing something about drug abuse, alcoholism, teenage pregnancy, inequitable incomes, and other individual and societal ills has been assigned to schools soon after the problems have been identified. Schools were even supposed to ameliorate

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Background 3

the long-standing problem of highway deaths. Instead of reducing speed limits and requiring seat belts in the 1960s, many states enacted laws requiring schools to provide driver education courses. And recently, instead of imposing automobile mileage standards similar to those that have been in place in Europe for decades, we are installing “green” curriculums in an effort to teach young people to conserve energy.

Despite periodic disillusionment with the schools, the pervasive belief has been that education, defined as more years of schooling, is beneficial. It was not always that way. In earlier centuries and in other societies, people did not ascribe such power to or make such demands on their schools. Instead the family, the workplace, and various social institutions acculturated and trained the young. But the easily accessible, publicly supported school became an article of American faith, first in the nineteenth century, when responsibility for educating the individual began shifting to the school, and then in the twentieth, when the schools were unwarrantedly expected to relieve society’s ills. The community colleges thrived on the new responsibilities because they had no traditions to defend, no alumni to question their role, no autonomous professional staff to be moved aside, no statements of philosophy that would militate against their taking on responsibility for everything.

Institutional Definitions

Two generic names have been applied to two-year colleges. From their beginnings until the 1940s, they were known most commonly as junior colleges. Eells’s (1931) definition of the junior college included university branch campuses offering lower-division work either on the parent campus or in separate facilities; state junior colleges supported by state funds and controlled by state boards; college-level courses offered by secondary schools; and local col- leges formed by groups acting without legal authority. At the second annual meeting of the American Association of Junior

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Colleges, in 1922, a junior college was defined as “an institu- tion offering two years of instruction of strictly collegiate grade” (Bogue, 1950, p. xvii). In 1925, the definition was modified slightly to include this statement: “The junior college may, and is likely to, develop a different type of curriculum suited to the larger and ever-changing civic, social, religious, and vocational needs of the entire community in which the college is located. It is understood that in this case, also, the work offered shall be on a level appro- priate for high-school graduates” (p. xvii). But the instruction was still expected to be “of strictly collegiate grade”; that is, if such a college had courses usually offered in the first two years by a senior institution, “these courses must be identical, in scope and thoroughness, with corresponding courses of the standard four-year college” (p. xvii). Skill training alone was not considered suffi- cient to qualify an institution for the appellation junior college. A general education component must be included in the occupa- tional programs: “General-education and vocation training make the soundest and most stable progress toward personal competence when they are thoroughly integrated” (p. 22).

During the 1950s and 1960s, the term junior college was applied more often to the lower-division branches of private universities and to two-year colleges supported by churches or organized inde- pendently, while community college came gradually to be used for the comprehensive, publicly supported institutions. By the 1970s, community college was usually applied to both types.

Several names in addition to community college and junior college have been used. Sometimes these names refer to the college’s sponsor: city college, county college, and branch campus are still in use. Other appellations signify the institutions’ emphases: technical institute and vocational, technical, and adult education center have had some currency. The colleges have also been nicknamed people’s college, democracy’s college, contradictory college, opportunity college, and anti-university college—the last by Jencks and Riesman

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Background 5

(1968), who saw them as negating the principles of scholarship on which the universities had been founded.

Sometimes deliberate attempts have been made to blur the def- inition. For example, during the 1970s, the American Association of Community and Junior Colleges (AACJC) sought to identify the institutions as community education centers standing entirely outside the mainstream of graded education. In 1980, the AACJC began listing regionally accredited proprietary institutions in addition to the nonprofit colleges in its annual Community, Junior, and Technical College Directory. Since the 1990s, several states have authorized their community colleges to offer bachelor’s degrees, thus further blurring the definition.

We define the community college as any not-for-profit institution regionally accredited to award the associate in arts or the associate in science as its highest degree. That definition includes the compre- hensive two-year college as well as many technical institutes, both public and private. It excludes many of the publicly supported area vocational schools and adult education centers and all of the pro- prietary colleges. The definition includes community colleges that collaborate with universities to offer baccalaureate degrees, but it excludes those that confer their own, as both the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and most of the regional accredit- ing agencies have moved these institutions to their four-year public categories. Unless otherwise noted, figures reported in this book generally refer to institutions in the public two-year college sector. Information related to proprietary institutions, the fastest growing sector of postsecondary education since the 1980s, is presented in the Appendix.

Development of Community Colleges

The development of community colleges should be placed in the context of the growth of all higher education in the twentieth century. As secondary school enrollments expanded rapidly in

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the early 1900s, the demand for access to college grew apace. The percentage of those graduating from high school grew from 30 percent in 1924 to 75 percent by 1960, and 60 percent of the high school graduates entered college in the latter year. Put another way, 45 percent of eighteen-year-olds entered college in 1960, up from 5 percent in 1910. Rubinson contended that the growth of schooling in the United States can be predicted by a “model in which the proportional change in enrollments at any given level of schooling is a simple function of the numbers of people in the relevant age group and in the previous level of schooling” (1986, p. 521). Green (1980) put it more simply, saying that one of the major benefits of a year of schooling is a ticket to advance to the next level. As high school graduation rates stabilized at 72 to 75 percent in the 1970s, the rate of college going leveled off as well but turned up again in the 1990s. Today, close to 70 percent of high school graduates enroll directly in a postsecondary institution; 40 percent of these attend a two-year college.

The states could have accommodated most of the people seeking college attendance simply by expanding their universities’ capacity, as indeed was the practice in a few states. Why community colleges? A major reason is that several prominent nineteenth- and early twentieth-century educators wanted the universities to abandon their freshman and sophomore classes and relegate the function of teaching adolescents to a new set of institutions, to be called junior colleges. Proposals that the junior college should relieve the university of the burden of providing general education for young people were made in 1851 by Henry Tappan, president of the University of Michigan; in 1859 by William Mitchell, a Univer- sity of Georgia trustee; and in 1869 by William Folwell, president of the University of Minnesota. All insisted that the universities would not become true research and professional development centers until they relinquished their lower-division preparatory work. Other educators—such as William Rainey Harper, of the

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Background 7

University of Chicago; Edmund J. James, of the University of Illi- nois; Stanford’s president, David Starr Jordan; and University of California professor and member of the State Board of Education Alexis Lange—suggested emulating the system followed in Euro- pean universities and secondary schools. That is, the universities would be responsible for the higher-order scholarship, while the lower schools would provide general and vocational education to students through age nineteen or twenty. Folwell argued for a strong system of secondary schools with “upward extension to include the first two college years,” because “a few feeble colleges, an isolated university, cannot educate the people” (cited in Koos, 1947, p. 138). Harper also contended that the weaker four-year colleges might better become junior colleges rather than wasting money by doing superficial work. In fact, by 1940, of 203 colleges with enrollments in 1900 of 150 or fewer students, 40 percent had perished, but 15 percent had become junior colleges (Eells, 1941a).

In California, it probably would have been feasible to limit Stanford and the University of California to upper-division and graduate and professional studies because of the early, widespread development of junior colleges in that state (nearly two opening every year between 1910 and 1960). Such proposals were made several times, especially by Stanford’s President Jordan, but were never successfully implemented. Grades 13 and 14 were not given over exclusively to community colleges in any state. Instead, the colleges developed outside the channel of graded education that reaches from kindergarten to graduate school. The organization of formal education in America had been undertaken originally from both ends of the continuum. Dating from the eighteenth century, four-year colleges and elementary schools were established; during the nineteenth century, the middle years were accommodated as colleges organized their own preparatory schools and as public secondary schools were built. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the gap had been filled. If the universities had shut down

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8 THE AMERICAN COMMUNITY COLLEGE

their lower divisions and surrendered their freshmen and sopho- mores to the two-year colleges, these newly formed institutions would have been part of the mainstream. But they did not, and the community colleges remained adjunctive well into the middle of the century.

Their standing outside the tradition of higher education—first with its exclusivity of students, then with its scholarship and aca- demic freedom for professors—was both good and bad for the community colleges. Initially, it gained support for them from influential university leaders who welcomed a buffer institution that would cull the poorly prepared students and send only the best on to the upper division. Later, it enabled them to capitalize on the sizable amounts of money available for programs in occu- pational education, to accept the less-well-prepared students who nonetheless sought further education, and to organize continuing education activities for people of all ages. But it also doomed community colleges to the status of alternative institutions. In some states—notably Florida, Texas, and Illinois—upper-division universities were built so that the community colleges could feed students through at the junior level, but few of those innovative structures survived.

Organizationally, most of the early public community col- leges developed as upward extensions of secondary schools. Diener compiled several nineteenth- and early twentieth-century papers promoting that idea. Included are statements by Henry Barnard, the first U.S. commissioner of education; John W. Burgess, a pro- fessor at Columbia College; William Rainey Harper; and Alexis Lange. In 1871, Barnard proposed that the schools in the District of Columbia be divided into five sectors, one of which would be “Superior and Special Schools, embracing a continuation of the studies of the Secondary School, and while giving the facilities of general literacy and scientific culture as far as is now reached in the second year of our best colleges” (Diener, 1986, p. 37). In 1884, Burgess recommended that high schools add two or three

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Background 9

years to their curriculum to prepare students for the work of the university. Harper also proposed that high schools extend their programs to the collegiate level: “Today only 10 percent of those who finish high school continue the work in college. If the high schools were to provide work for two additional years, at least 40 percent of those finishing the first four years would continue until the end of the sophomore year” (Diener, 1986, pp. 57–58). Lange regarded the junior college as the culmination of schooling for most students, with the high school and junior college together forming the domain of secondary education. But in his view, the junior college would do more than prepare young people for college; it would also train for “the vocations occupying the middle ground between those of the artisan type and the professions” (Diener, 1986, p. 71). Increasing access to postsecondary education was also an important aspect of Lange’s plans.

Rationalizing the New Form

Numerous commentators have attempted to explain the growth of community colleges in their early years, each with an argument that has some appeal. The idea that rapid growth in the high school population in the early years of the twentieth century led to student demand for additional years of schooling could be rationalized, but so can many others. The claim that businesspeople supported the institutions so that they would have a ready supply of workers trained at public expense has some adherents; this seems more valid in the light of contemporary events as states put forth low-cost funding and education projects in attempts to attract industry, with the community colleges as central elements in their presentations. And the literature certainly supports the idea that community leaders saw the formation of a college as an avenue to community prestige. Even the notion of a grand scheme to keep poor people in their place by diverting them to programs leading to low-pay occupational positions has found some acceptance,

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particularly among those who perceive a capitalist conspiracy behind all societal events.

Which belief has the most credibility? Each has its adherents. But why can’t they all be true? There certainly does not need to be one reason above others for any major shift in institutional forms. Each year of schooling does give rise to a desire for an additional year. School superintendents may want to be college presidents, and teachers may want to be college professors. Communities erect signs pointing to their local college and announce its presence in all their displays. Industries and professions need skilled practitioners. All these reasons can be justified as contributing to the opening of one thousand public community colleges in not much more than fifty years. Why must one argument be more valid than the others?

Harder to reconcile is the fact that other developed nations, especially those of Western Europe from which most of the Ameri- can ideas of education were imported, did not develop community colleges of their own. They all faced the same phenomena of ris- ing populations, changing technologies, different expectations for child rearing, and a shifting pattern of preparation for the work- force. However, they built adult education centers and vocational schools separate from each other and rarely founded institutions that would enable people to transfer credit to baccalaureate pro- grams. Were their school superintendents less eager to become college presidents? Were their high school populations more docile in accepting the decision that they would never have a chance for a baccalaureate? Were their communities less eager to enjoy the prestige that goes with a local college? Were they more subject to conspiracies to keep the lower classes in their place and hence to keep poor people out of school entirely?

The best answer might be that since its founding the United States has been more dedicated to the belief that all individuals should have the opportunity to rise to their greatest potential. Accordingly, all barriers to individual development should be broken down. Institutions that enhance human growth should

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Background 11

be created and supported. Talent is potentially to be found in every social stratum and at any age. People who fail to achieve in their youth should be given successive chances. And perhaps most crucial—absent a national ministry of education or even, until recently, much state control or oversight—the local school districts could act on their own.

Much scholarship (Dougherty, 1994; Frye, 1992; Gallagher, 1994; Pedersen, 1987, 1988, 2000) has documented the influ- ence of local officials in forming the colleges. Pedersen especially challenged community college historiographies that emphasize the emergence of junior colleges as a reflection of a “national movement intent on fundamentally transforming an elitist higher education into a democratic and socially efficient system of advanced learning” (2000, p. 124). Through an examination of primary sources such as local school records, newspaper reports, community histories, state surveys, and dissertations, he attributed the development of the early public community colleges to local community conditions and interests. Frequently operating in high school facilities, the colleges were local institutions, and much civic pride surrounded their development. As they were formed, schoolteachers became college professors and school superintendents became college pres- idents, a significant force for building an institution that would accord prestige to its staff and its township.

Prior to midcentury, the notion of statewide systems or a national agenda hardly existed. But by then, according to Meier (2008), the American Association of Junior Colleges had become a major presence, promoting “an educational social movement com- bining evangelism, moderate liberalism, and civic nationalism” (p. 8) to accelerate college growth in every state. The associa- tion’s leaders from the 1950s through the 1970s did not hesitate to conflate Christianity, education, and democracy in furthering the spiritual dimensions and social purposes of the movement, including reference to Scripture—“Behold, I have set before thee

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an open door”—and in employing “the rhetoric and organizing techniques of evangelical religion” to further their agenda (p. 10).

Historical Development of the New Form

The thesis attributing the rise of two-year colleges to the efforts of local, civic, and professional leaders has merit. For one, it provides an explanation for the two-year colleges as a twentieth- century phenomenon, although university leaders had called for their development decades earlier. The need for trained manpower had been apparent too, but apprenticeships were the dominant way into the workforce. Until the 1900s, two essential components were not yet in place: sizable numbers of students graduating from high school; and public school districts managing secondary schools to which they could readily append two more years of curriculum, with or without special legal sanction.

Much of the discussion about junior colleges in the 1920s and 1930s had to do with whether they were expanded secondary schools or truncated colleges. The school district with three types of institutions (elementary schools with grades 1–6, junior highs with grades 7–10, and combined high schools and junior colleges with grades 11–14) was set forth as one model. This 6–4–4 plan had much appeal: curriculum articulation between grades 12 and 13 would be smoothed; the need for a separate physical plant would be mitigated; instructors could teach in both high school and junior college under the same contract; superior students could go through the program rapidly; vocational education could be extended from secondary school into the higher grades; and small communities that could not support self-standing junior colleges would be helped by appending the college to their secondary schools. The 6–4–4 plan also allowed students to change schools or leave the system just when they reached the age limit of compulsory school attendance. Most students did (and do) complete the tenth grade at age sixteen. A high school that continues through grade 12 suggests that students would stay beyond the compulsory age.

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Would a four-year junior college beginning at grade 11 enhance schooling for most students? Those who completed the tenth grade and chose to go beyond the compulsory age would enter a school in their home area that could take them through the senior year and on to grades 13 and 14 or through a vocational program. But hardly any public school districts organized themselves into a 6–4–4 system, possibly because, as Eells (1931) suggested, this system did not seem to lead to a true undergraduate college, complete with school spirit. He also mentioned the ambition of junior college organizers to have their institutions elevated to the status of senior institutions. And as Kisker (2006) argued, the 6–4–4 plan was antithetical to most community college laws enacted by state legislators who were intent on governing and funding two-year colleges as institutions of higher education, separate from the high schools from which they emerged.

However, the idea did not die. In 1974, educators at LaGuardia Community College in New York established Middle College High School, a secondary school within a community college (described by Cullen and Moed, 1988) and eventually facilitated over thirty middle college replications across the country. The idea of integrat- ing high school and community college also gained some traction in recent years. Funded by over $120 million in grants primarily from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, over 240 Early College High Schools (small, autonomous institutions that combine high school and the first two years of college into a coherent education program) serving 75,000 students were established in twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia between 2002 and 2012.

Arguments in favor of a new institution to accommodate students through their freshman and sophomore years were fueled by the belief that the transition from adolescence to adulthood typically occurred at the end of a person’s teens. William Folwell contended that youths should be permitted to reside in their homes until they had “reached a point, say, somewhere near the end of the sophomore year” (quoted in Koos, 1924, p. 343). Eells posited

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that the junior colleges allowed students who were not capable of taking the higher work to stop “naturally and honorably at the end of the sophomore year” (1931, p. 91). “As a matter of record, the end of the second year of college marks the completion of formal education for the majority of students who continue post–high school studies” (p. 84). They would be better off remaining in their home communities until greater maturity enabled a few of them to go to the university in a distant region; the pretense of higher learning for all could be set aside. Harvard president James Bryant Conant viewed the community college as a terminal education institution: “By and large, the educational road should fork at the end of the high school, though an occasional transfer of a student from a two-year college to a university should not be barred” (quoted in Bogue, 1950, p. 32).

The federal government provided impetus in 1947 when the President’s Commission on Higher Education articulated the value of a populace with free access to two years of study more than the secondary schools could provide. As the commission put it, because around half of the young people can benefit from formal studies through grade 14, the community colleges have an important role. That idea had lasting appeal; fifty years later President Clinton (1998) underscored the importance of making education through grades 13 and 14 as universal as a high school diploma. And more recently President Obama (2009) cited the need for an additional 5 million community college degrees and certificates over the ensuing decade and encouraged every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training.

Expansion of Two-Year Colleges

Junior colleges were widespread in their early years. Koos (1924) reported only 20 in 1909 but 170 ten years later. By 1922, 37 of the 48 states contained junior colleges, this within two decades of their founding. Of the 207 institutions operating in that year, 137 were privately supported. Private colleges were most likely to be in

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Background 15

the southern states, publicly supported institutions in the West and Midwest. Most of the colleges were quite small, although even in that era public colleges tended to be larger than private colleges. In 1922, the total enrollment for all institutions was around 20,000; the average was around 150 students in the public colleges and 60 in the private. California had 20 private junior colleges in 1936. But those institutions together enrolled fewer than 2,000 students, and by 1964 all but three of them had disappeared (Winter, 1964).

By 1930, there were 440 junior colleges, found in all but five states. Total enrollment was around 70,000, an average of about 160 students per institution. California had one-fifth of the public institutions and one-third of the students, and although the percentages have dropped, California has never relinquished this early lead; in 2010, its full-time student equivalent enrollment was well over double that of the next largest state. Other states with a large number of public junior colleges were Illinois, Texas, and Missouri; the latter two also had sizable numbers of private junior colleges. By 1940, there were 610 colleges, still small, averaging about 400 students each. One-third of them were separate units, almost two-thirds were high school extensions, and only ten were in 6–4–4 systems (Koos, 1947).

The high point for the private, nonprofit junior colleges came in 1949, when there were 288 such institutions, 108 of them inde- pendent nonprofit and 180 affiliated with churches. As Table 1.1 shows, they began a steady decline, merging with senior institutions or closing their doors. Few new independent nonprofit schools have been organized since the mid-1970s. Never large, the median-sized private, nonprofit college had fewer than 500 students by the late 1980s. By contrast, the median public college enrolled nearly 3,000 students. The sources of information on the number of colleges vary because they may or may not include community colleges’ branch campuses; the two-year branches of universities such as those in New Mexico, South Carolina, and Wisconsin; and various categories of technical institutes such as those in Indiana, where not until 2005 did the state legislature mandate their offering

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Table 1.1. Numbers of Public and Private Nonprofit Two-Year Colleges, 1915–2011

Year Total Public Private Nonprofit Number Percentage Number Percentage

1915–16 74 19 26 55 74 1921–22 207 70 34 137 66 1925–26 325 136 42 189 58 1929–30 436 178 41 258 59 1933–34 521 219 42 302 58 1938–39 575 258 45 317 55 1947–48 650 328 50 322 50 1952–53 594 327 55 267 45 1956–57 652 377 58 275 42 1960–61 678 405 60 273 49 1964–65 719 452 63 267 37 1968–69 993 739 74 254 26 1972–73 1,141 910 80 231 20 1976–77 1,093 905 83 188 17 1980–81 1,127 945 84 182 16 1984–85 1,121 935 83 186 17 1988–89 1,164 984 85 180 15 1992–93 1,203 1,024 85 179 15 1996–97 1,272 1,088 86 184 14 1998–99 1,233 1,069 87 164 13 2000–01 1,220 1,076 88 144 12 2004–05 1,173 1,061 90 112 10 2010–11 1,065 978 92 87 8

Sources: American Association of Community and Junior Colleges, Com- munity, Junior, and Technical College Directory, 1992; Palmer, 1978b; NCES, Digest, 2012.

transferable courses and two-year degree programs. Not only do the data vary among the directories, but also because of revised survey procedures or definitions they are not consistent from year to year within the same directories.

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Background 17

Although enrollments at community colleges have grown, the number of colleges has remained relatively stable since the late 1980s. Even so, this has not changed the median college size because most of the growth has taken place in the larger insti- tutions. Almost half of two-year colleges in 2009 had full-time equivalent enrollments of 1,999 or fewer; these small or very small institutions, as categorized by the Carnegie Foundation, enrolled less than 17 percent of all two-year students. Medium two-year colleges—those with full-time equivalent enrollments of between 2,000 and 4,999—constituted 17 percent of the institutions and enrolled over a quarter of the students. A mere 13 percent of two-year colleges were considered large or very large (i.e., had full- time equivalent enrollments from 5,000 on up to 40,000 or more). However, these sizable institutions enrolled 60 percent of all two- year students, roughly half in colleges with average enrollments of 11,000, and the other half where average enrollments topped 24,000 (Carnegie Foundation, 2010).

There is a simple explanation for why enrollment growth is concentrated in the largest institutions: More than any other single factor, access depends on proximity. Public universities, even highly selective ones that are located in urban areas, draw most of their entering freshmen from within a short radius. Hence, the advent of the community college as a neighborhood institution did more to open higher education to a broader population than did its policy of accepting even students who had not done well in high school. Pedersen (2000) noted that community colleges in rural and suburban areas were given a great impetus in the 1920s when federally funded highways were built, allowing students to drive to campus. The interstate freeways that followed federal funding beginning in the late 1950s had a similar effect, as community colleges were built along the beltways that ringed the major cities. Throughout the nation, in city after city, as community colleges opened their doors, the percentage of students beginning col- lege expanded dramatically. During the 1950s and 1960s, whenever

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a community college was established in a locale where there had been no publicly supported college, the proportion of high school graduates in that area who began college immediately increased, sometimes by as much as 50 percent. The pattern has not changed: 96 percent of the two-year college matriculants nationwide are in-state residents; the distance from their home to the campus is a median of ten miles (Horn, Nevill, and Griffith, 2006).

Fueled by the high birthrates of the 1940s, this rapid expansion of community colleges led their advocates to take an obsessive view of growth. Obviously, though, the number of new institu- tions could not continue expanding forever. In 1972, M. J. Cohen studied the relationship among the number of community colleges in a state, the state’s population density, and its area. He found that community colleges tended to be built so that 90 to 95 per- cent of the state’s population lived within reasonable commuting distance, about twenty-five miles. When the colleges reached this ratio, the state had a mature community college system, and few additional colleges were built. As that state’s population grew larger, the colleges expanded in enrollments, but it was no longer necessary to add new campuses. In the early 1970s, seven states had mature systems: California, Florida, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Michigan, and Washington. In these states, the denser the popula- tion, the smaller the area served by each college and the higher the per-campus enrollment. Applying his formula of the relationship between number of colleges, state population, and population den- sity, Cohen (1972) showed that 1,074 public community colleges would effectively serve the nation. In 2001, 1,076 such colleges were in operation; thus, after three decades, the formula has been proven valid and the resultant figure incredibly precise. (The colleges that have since begun offering bachelor’s degrees were removed from many tabulations; hence, the 2011 number dropped to under one thousand.)

Diversity marked the organization, control, and financing of colleges in the various states. Like the original four-year colleges

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Background 19

and universities, junior colleges grew without being coordinated at the state level. Decapitation was one impetus. Four-year private colleges struggling to maintain their accreditation, student body, and fiscal support might abandon their upper-division specialized classes to concentrate on freshman and sophomore work and thus become junior colleges. The University of Missouri helped several struggling four-year colleges in that state to become private junior colleges. In southern states where weak four-year colleges were prevalent, this dropping of the upper division also took place, helping to account for the sizable number of private junior colleges in that region. Originally, over half the private colleges were single-sex institutions, with colleges for women found most widely in New England, the Midwest, and the South.

The public sector grew in various ways. A few junior colleges opened in the 1930s under the auspices of the federal government. More often, colleges were organized by public universities wanting to expand their feeder institutions. The first two-year colleges in Pennsylvania were established as branch campuses of the Pennsyl- vania State College. The state universities of Kentucky, Alaska, and Hawaii also organized community colleges under their aegis. Some public universities established two-year colleges on their own campuses. A University Center System gave rise to several two-year institutions in Wisconsin, and the University of South Carolina founded several regional campuses.

Although community colleges now operate in every state and enroll close to half of the students who begin college in the United States, they found their most compatible climate early on in the West, most notably in California. One reason may have been that many of the ideals of democracy first took form in the western states, where women’s suffrage and other major reforms in the electoral process were first seen. But the expansion of the community college in the West must also be attributed to the fact that during the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, while colleges sponsored by religious institutions and

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private philanthropists grew strong elsewhere, the West had not yet been populated. In the twentieth century, it was much easier for publicly supported institutions to advance where there was little competition from the private sector. California became the leader in community college development because of support from the University of California and Stanford University, a paucity of small denominational colleges, and strong support for public education at all levels. Even now, more than 60 percent of the college students in California and Wyoming are in community colleges, and other western states such as Arizona and Washington also have high percentages attending community colleges (30 and 40 percent, respectively).

A 1907 California law authorizing secondary school boards to offer postgraduate courses “which shall approximate the studies pre- scribed in the first two years of university courses,” together with several subsequent amendments, served as a model for enabling legislation in numerous states. Anthony Caminetti, the senator who introduced the legislation, had been responsible twenty years earlier for an act authorizing the establishment of high schools as upward extensions of grammar schools. Actually, the law sanc- tioned a practice in which many of the high schools in California were already engaged. Those located at some distance from the state university had been offering lower-division studies to assist students who could not readily leave their hometowns at the com- pletion of high school. When Fresno took advantage of the law to establish a junior college in 1910, one of its presenting arguments was that there was no institution of higher education within nearly two hundred miles of the city. (Such justifications for two-year colleges have been used throughout the history of the development of these institutions.) Subsequent laws in California authorized junior college districts to be organized entirely independent of the secondary schools, and this form of parallel development continued for decades. Indicative of the inchoate nature of the institution in its early years, in 1927 California had sixteen colleges organized

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Background 21

as appendages of the local secondary schools, six as junior college departments of state colleges, and nine organized as separate junior college districts. In 1936, the number operated by the high schools had increased to twenty-three and those by separate junior college districts to eighteen, but the junior college departments of state universities had declined to just one. By 1980, nearly all the junior college districts had been separated from the lower-school districts.

The beginnings of the two-year college in other states that now have well-developed systems followed similar patterns but with some variations. Arizona in 1927 authorized local school districts to organize junior colleges. In Mississippi, they were spawned by county agricultural high schools. In 1917, a Kansas law allowed local elections to establish junior colleges and to create special taxing dis- tricts to support them. Michigan’s authorizing legislation was passed the same year. Public junior colleges had already begun in Min- nesota before a law was passed in 1925 providing for local elections to organize districts. Missouri’s legislation permitting secondary schools to offer junior college courses dates from 1927, although junior colleges were established there earlier. Most of the commu- nity colleges in New York followed a 1949 state appropriation to establish a system of colleges to “provide two-year programs of post- high-school nature combining general education with technical education, special courses in extension work, and general education that would enable students to transfer” (Bogue, 1950, p. 34). Each state’s laws were amended numerous times, usually to accommodate changed funding formulas and patterns of governance.

But these patterns are not uniform. Many aspects of college operations continue as they were when the institutions were under the local control of school boards; faculty evaluation procedures and funds awarded on the basis of student attendance are prime examples. And sometimes, just as one characteristic of the col- lege changes in the direction of higher education, another moves toward the lower schools. In 1988, the California legislature passed a comprehensive reform bill that made many community college

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management practices correspond with those in the state’s univer- sities, but in the same year a proposition that was passed by public initiative placed college funding under guarantees similar to those enjoyed by the K–12 system.

The Two-Way Stretch

Two rapidly growing innovations extend the diversity of institu- tions commonly referred to as community colleges. Early college high schools and community colleges offering the baccalaureate both demonstrate colleges reaching for new service areas and clientele, one picking up students in grades 11 or 12 and the other reaching toward grades 15 and 16. Together, they represent a two-way stretch.

The seamless web, schools organized so that students might progress with minimal disruption from grade 1 through a graduate degree, has long been a chimerical goal. The American system of primary, middle, and secondary schools, community colleges, bachelor’s degree–granting colleges, and graduate schools, all of which may be organized apart from each other, has made transfer between institutions a capricious process. Ideally, each state’s public education system would be governed uniformly and curriculum would build sequentially. But despite sporadic efforts to achieve such systems, they are as elusive as ever.

Many community colleges have attempted to minimize the barriers by reorganizing. Some have expanded in the direction of the secondary schools through Early College High School Initiatives, offering accelerated programs that lead to high school diplomas and associate degrees. Several foundations have supported these ventures: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. State and local policies must often be adjusted to accommodate the modifications, including lifting restrictions on the number of college courses that high school

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Background 23

students may take and for which the school district will be reimbursed and state and union regulations that prohibit college instructors from teaching in high school and vice versa. These programs can be quite salutary, especially where they encourage financially and educationally disadvantaged ninth graders to graduate from high school and earn associate degrees in four or five years instead of the traditional six (Kisker, 2006).

Other colleges have expanded into the realm of four-year institutions by collaborating with universities to offer bache- lor’s degrees or conferring their own; Navarro College (Texas) in 1985, Utah Valley Community College in 1997, and Westark College (Arkansas) in 1994 were pioneers in this move. In 2001, the Community College Baccalaureate Association held its first annual conference. These institutions vary considerably; some offer programs located on the community college campus with degrees awarded by a senior institution (actually a long-standing practice), whereas others present their programs on a university campus. Some formed university centers, often located close to or at the community college but with several institutions par- ticipating. Examples of the latter were Northwestern Michigan University Center, which included eleven four-year institutions; North Harris Montgomery Community College (Texas) with six public universities; and Broward Community College, with a cam- pus at the home of Florida Atlantic University (Floyd, Skolnik, and Walker, 2005). Some of these have been identified by the South- ern Regional Education Board as hybrids, associate/baccalaureate institutions that grant associate degrees primarily but also the baccalaureate; examples include Dalton State College and Macon State College (Georgia). The trend to confer the baccalaureate grew so that in 2005 the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education created a new category: baccalaureate/associates colleges, into which it placed associate degree–granting institutions where bachelor’s degrees represent between 10 and 50 percent of all undergraduate awards, and fifty-seven institutions were so

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designated (Townsend, 2005, p. 180). Five years later, this num- ber had increased to 147, and the number of primarily associates colleges—where bachelor’s degrees comprise fewer than 10 per- cent of undergraduate awards—had risen 49 percent from 109 to 162 (Carnegie Foundation, 2010). (These categories exclude the many community colleges that collaborate with universities to offer bachelor’s degrees via articulated degree programs, university centers, concurrent-use campuses, or university extensions but do not confer the baccalaureates themselves.)

Evolution has been occurring rapidly. Utah Valley Community College became Utah Valley State College in 1994, and Dixie Col- lege became Dixie State College of Utah in 2000. Westark College was designated University of Arkansas at Fort Smith in 2001. More than half of Florida’s colleges have dropped community from their names. All of Hawaii’s community colleges have changed names to reflect their changed status, and, because the Southern Associ- ation of Schools and Colleges so mandated, the institutions that the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has authorized to offer the B.A. have become four-year schools.

By 2010, community colleges in eighteen states were approved to offer the baccalaureate. The authorizing legislation typically allowed workforce-oriented degrees in high-need fields. Although Florida was not the first, it displayed the greatest number, and by 2013 twenty of the state’s twenty-eight colleges had opened baccalaureate programs.

Vertical expansion—the stretching of the community college curriculum down toward grades 11 and 12 and up toward the baccalaureate—has developed some momentum. While a desire to expand into every niche not currently served well by other institu- tions is not new to the community college, this latest expansion is significant as its supporters on both ends have aligned themselves with philanthropic interests or have created lobbying associations to further their cause, thus ensuring some staying power. Yet this expansion, like previous forays into unexplored curricular territory,

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Background 25

has not transpired without controversy. Proponents argue that early college and community college baccalaureate (CCB) programs pro- vide avenues to college and to degrees for students who might not otherwise attend and that (in the case of CCB programs) they do so at a lower cost or in applied fields that are not currently offered by universities. Opponents, however, critique these moves as mission creep, decry what they claim will inevitably lead to lower standards, or argue that they will lead to program duplication. Opponents of CCB programs, in particular, also argue that the expansion would result in higher costs for students and states, accreditation obsta- cles, and a need to recruit faculty with higher degrees who demand more pay and may be less focused on teaching.

The mission creep argument is particularly powerful; claims that CCB programs will “[weaken] the traditional community college mission and [leave] behind those students it is designed to serve … shift resources, raise tuition for all students, challenge open-door policies and divert attention away from developmental education” (Russell, 2010, p. 7) resonate strongly with college constituents. Yet others interpret the community college mission more broadly; as the former president of Edison College in Florida, now Edison State College, declared, “Our mission was never to be a two-year college. It was to be responsive to the needs of our communities” (Fliegler, 2006, n.p.). By this definition, vertical expansion is simply the logical next step in fulfilling the community college’s mission and, given the demand for greater numbers of bachelor’s and other degrees, is not likely to slow in the near future. However, its momen- tum is more than matched by the growing number of universities now offering associate degrees: 42 percent of all the members of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

Curricular Functions

The various curricular functions noted in each state’s legisla- tion usually include academic transfer preparation, occupational education, continuing education, developmental education, and

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community service. All have been present in public colleges from the beginning. In 1936, Hollinshead wrote that “the junior col- lege should be a community college meeting community needs” (p. 111), providing adult education and educational, recreational, and occupational activities and placing its cultural facilities at the disposal of the community. Every book written about the institution since then has also articulated these elements, and recently Levin (2001), among others, has broadened the definition of community to include foreign nationals and a global workplace.

Academic Transfer

Academic transfer, or collegiate, studies were meant to fulfill sev- eral institutional purposes: a popularizing role; a democratizing pursuit; and a function of conducting lower-division general edu- cation courses for the universities. The popularizing role was to have the effect of advertising higher education by showing what it could do for the individual and encouraging people to attend. The democratizing pursuit was realized as the community colleges became the point of first access for people entering higher edu- cation. The function of relieving the universities from having to deal with freshmen and sophomores was less pronounced because the universities would not relinquish their lower divisions. Instead, community colleges made it possible for them to maintain selective admissions requirements and thus to take only those freshmen and sophomores they wanted.

In 1930, Eells surveyed 279 junior colleges to determine, among other things, the types of curricula offered (Eells, 1931). He found that 69 percent of the semester hours were presented in academic subjects, with modern foreign languages, social sciences, and nat- ural sciences predominating. The 31 percent left for nonacademic subjects included sizable offerings in music, education, home eco- nomics, and courses similar to those offered in extension divisions. At that time, there was little difference between the curricula presented in public colleges, whether state controlled or locally

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Background 27

controlled, and in private denominational or independent institu- tions, but the older the institution was, the more likely it was to be engaged in building a set of nonacademic studies. The universities accepted the collegiate function and readily admitted transferring students to advanced standing, with most universities granting credit on an hour-for-hour basis for freshman and sophomore courses. Bogue (1950) reported that “60 percent of the students in the upper division of the University of California at Berkeley, according to the registrar, are graduates of other institutions, largely junior colleges” (p. 73).

Occupational Education

Occupational education was written into the plans in most states from the earliest days. The first act providing state funding for community colleges in North Carolina, passed in 1957, specified that “most of the programs offered within the Community Col- lege System are designed to prepare individuals for entry level technical positions in business and industry with an associate of applied science degree” (North Carolina Community College Sys- tem, 2007a, p. 6). In the 1970s, the U.S. Office of Education popularized career education, which is still widely used. However, it never replaced occupational education, the phrase used throughout this book as a collective term for all vocational, career, and tech- nical studies. Originally conceived as an essential component of terminal study—education for students who would not go on to further studies—occupational education in the two-year colleges was designed to teach skills more complicated than those taught in high schools. Whereas secondary schools in the 1930s were teach- ing agriculture, bookkeeping, automobile repair, and printing, for example, junior colleges taught radio repair, secretarial services, and laboratory technical work. Teacher preparation, a function of the junior college in the 1920s, died out as the baccalaureate became the requirement for teaching, although it reappeared in the 1990s, as in Maryland where a transferable Associate of Arts

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in Teaching degree was formulated (McDonough, 2003). But a sizable proportion of the occupational curriculum in the 1930s was still preprofessional training: prelaw, premedicine, preengineering. According to Eells (1931), in 1929 the proportional enrollment in California public junior colleges was 80 to 20 in favor of the collegiate; in Texas municipal junior colleges, it was 77 to 23. By the 1970s, the percentage of students in occupational education had reached parity with that in the collegiate programs.

Continuing Education

The continuing education function arose early, and the percent- age of adults enrolled increased dramatically in the 1940s. The 1947 President’s Commission on Higher Education emphasized the importance of this function, and Bogue noted with approval a Texas college’s slogan: “We will teach anyone, anywhere, any- thing, at any time whenever there are enough people interested in the program to justify its offering” (1950, p. 215). He reported also that “out of the 500,536 students reported in the 1949 [AACJC] Directory, nearly 185,000 are specials or adults” (p. 35). The open- end nature of continuing education fit well with the idea that the colleges were not to be confined to particular curricular patterns or levels of graded education but were to operate in an unbounded uni- verse of lifelong learning, which would, not incidentally, enhance public support.

Developmental Education

Developmental education—also known as remedial, compensatory, preparatory, or basic skills studies—grew as the percentage of stu- dents poorly prepared in secondary schools swelled community college rolls. Although some remedial work had been offered early on, the disparity in ability between students entering community colleges and those in the senior institutions was not nearly as great in the 1920s as in recent years. Koos (1924) reported only slightly higher entering test scores by the senior college matriculants.

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The apparent breakdown of basic academic education in secondary schools in the 1960s, coupled with the expanded percentage of peo- ple entering college, brought developmental education to the fore.

Community Service

The community service function was pioneered by private junior colleges and by rural colleges, which often served as the cultural centers for their communities. Early books on two-year colleges display a wide range of cultural and recreational events that insti- tutions of the time were presenting for the enlightenment of their communities. Public two-year colleges adopted the idea as a useful aspect of their relations with the public, and special funds were set aside in some states for this function. In 1980, the AACJC Direc- tory listed nearly four million community education participants, predominantly people enrolled in short courses, workshops, and noncredit courses. The community service function also included spectator events sponsored by the colleges but open to the public as well as to students.

Intertwined Functions

This book presents separate chapters on each of the curricular func- tions: developmental (remedial); integrative (general education); transfer and the liberal arts (collegiate); and occupational (tech- nical, vocational) education. Community service and continuing education are merged, and student guidance, often mentioned as a major function, is covered in the chapter on student services. Yet all the functions overlap because education is rarely discrete. Community college programs do not stay in neat categories when the concepts underlying them and the purposes for which students enroll in them are scrutinized. Although courses in the sciences are almost always listed as part of the transfer program, they are career education for students who will work in hospitals or medical laboratories. A course in auto mechanics is for the general educa- tion of students who learn to repair their own cars, even though it

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is part of the offerings in a career program. Transfer, occupational, and continuing education are all intertwined, and the concepts underlying integrative or general education permeate all functions. Who can say when one or another is being provided?

Such definitions are pertinent primarily for funding agents and accreditation associations and for those who need categories and classification systems as a way of understanding events. Occupational education is supported by especially earmarked funds or is supposed to lead to direct employment. When a course or program is approved for transfer credit to a senior institution, it becomes part of the collegiate function. When it cannot be used for associate degree credit, it is developmental or community education. That is why community college presidents may honestly say that their institutions perform all tasks with great facility. When confronted with the charge that their school is not doing enough in one or another curricular area, they can counter that it is, if only the courses and students were examined more closely. All education is general education. All education is potentially career enhancing. All education is for the sake of the broader community.

Place in the Academic Pipeline

Whether seen as an extension of the high school or the first two years of university, community colleges have always been defined to some extent by their associations with the institutions on either end of their curricular offerings. These connections have grown in importance in recent years as legislators and others have paid more attention to the ways student flow through the kindergarten- through-graduate school (K–20) pipeline. No longer can the col- leges offer programs or introduce policies in isolation; now they must coordinate with one if not both bookending institutions. For example, in many states community colleges are working closely with representatives from the schools to better align high school graduation standards with entrance criteria for college-level classes.

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At the other end of the pipeline, most states have enacted detailed transfer and articulation agreements, and many have developed a common general education core that is automatically accepted at in-state senior institutions. At least ten states have gone even further, enacting transfer associate degrees: statewide pathways or degree programs that allow students to both earn an associate degree from a community college and transfer seamlessly into a state university with junior status (Kisker, Wagoner, and Cohen, 2011).

Longitudinal student record systems being implemented in sev- eral states and tools such as the National Student Clearinghouse’s StudentTracker allow for in-depth examinations of student progress throughout the pipeline; a proposed national student records database would extend the data array even further. K–20 coordi- nating commissions and governing bodies further solidify the sense that postsecondary institutions must act in concert to best serve the needs of students and states. Increased coordination and coop- eration among educational sectors is generally viewed as beneficial to the entire educational enterprise, but the resulting limitations on institutional autonomy are worth noting. Indeed, community colleges may be governed by separate boards of trustees, managed by local administrators, and their courses taught by individual fac- ulty members, but very little of what occurs on campus is shielded from the actions of other educational sectors. Ideally, students must be taught at the level of their prior preparation; courses—even those once seen as terminal—must transfer or lead directly to employment; policies must support student movement within state systems; and outcomes must be examined in light of how well the colleges helped or hindered student progress along the pipeline.

Colleges in Other Countries

All nations face similar issues of workforce development, societal cohesion, and the need to provide avenues of individual mobility, and every nation with a formal education system has institutions

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that serve people between the years of compulsory schooling and various adult pursuits, especially transition into the workforce. They are prominent throughout Europe, in Australia, China, Japan, and Vietnam, and in several African and South American nations. Whether named a school, college, or institute, more than two- thirds have vocational or technical in their title. Hardly any award university-transferrable credits. No other countries but the United States (and to some extent Canada) have formed comprehensive community colleges. The primary reason is that compulsory school- ing continues for a greater number of years for America’s young people than it does in any other nation, a phenomenon seeding the desire for more schooling. The second reason is that Americans seem more determined to allow individual options to remain open for as long as each person’s motivations and the community’s budget allow. Placing transfer, occupational, and developmental education within the same institution enables students to move from one to the other more readily than if they had to change schools.

Changing Emphases

By expanding access, community colleges have led to notable changes in American education. Well into the middle of the twentieth century,highereducation had elementsof mystery within it. Only one young person in seven went to college, and most students were from the middle and upper classes. To the public at large, which really had little idea of what went on behind the walls, higher education was a clandestine process, steeped in ritual. The demystification of higher education, occasioned by the democratization of access, has taken place steadily. After World War II, as a result of the GI Bill, which made available the first large-scale financial aid packages and made it possible for people to be reimbursed not only for their tuition but also for their living expenses while attending college, the number of people going to

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college increased rapidly. By 2010, 57 percent of all American adults had attended college for at least a semester, and 28 percent had earned a bachelor’s degree (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2010).

The increase in enrollments was accompanied by a major change in the composition of the student body. No longer were colleges sequestered enclaves operated apparently for the sons of the wealthy and educated, who were on their way to positions in the professions, and for the daughters of the same groups, who would be marked with the manners of a cultured class; now colleges were open to minorities, lower-income groups, and those whose prior academic performance had been marginal. Of all the higher education institutions, the community colleges contributed most to opening the system. Established in every metropolitan area, they were available to all comers, attracting the “new students”: minorities, women, people who had done poorly in high school, those who would otherwise never have considered or been able to afford further education.

During this same era, community colleges contributed also to certain shifts in institutional emphasis. They had always been an avenue of individual mobility; that purpose became highlighted as greater percentages of the populace began using college as a way of moving up in class. The emphasis in higher education on providing trained personnel for the professions, business, and industry also became more distinct. Admittedly, it is difficult to identify the students who sought learning for its own sake or who went to college to acquire the manners that would mark them as ladies or gentlemen; perhaps students whose purposes were purely nonvocational were rare even before 1900. But by the last third of the twentieth century, few commentators on higher education were even articulating those purposes. Vocationalism had gained the day. College going was for job getting, job certifying, job training. The old value of a liberal education became supplemental, an adjunct to be picked up incidentally, if at all, along the way to higher-paying employment.

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Other shifts in institutional emphasis have been dictated not by the pronouncements of educational philosophers but by the exigencies of financing, state-level coordinating bodies, the avail- ability of new media, legislative and public interest in return on investment, and new groups of students. There has been a steady increase in the public funds available to all types of educational institutions, but community colleges have been most profoundly affected by sizable increases in federal appropriations for vocational education. Beginning with the Smith-Hughes Act in 1917 and continuing through the Vocational Education Acts of the 1960s and later, federal dollars have poured into the education sector. Community colleges have not been remiss in obtaining their share. Their national lobbyists have worked diligently to have the com- munity college named in set-asides, and the colleges have obtained funds for special occupational programs. The vocational education cast of contemporary colleges is due in no small measure to the availability of these funds.

State-level coordinating agencies have also affected institu- tional roles. Coordinating councils and postsecondary education commissions, along with boards of regents for all higher education in some states, have attempted to assign programs to the differ- ent types of institutions. These bodies may restrict lower-division offerings in community colleges or mandate some minimal level of standardization among courses offered in the freshman and sopho- more years at both community colleges and universities. In some states, continuing education has been assigned; in others, it has been taken away from the colleges. A few states have remanded all developmental education to the community colleges, solidifying remediation as a major mission priority.

The new media have had their own effect. Electronic gadgetry has been adopted, and elaborate learning resource centers have been opened on campus. Because learning laboratories can be made available at any time, it becomes less necessary for students to attend courses in sequence or at fixed times of day. The new media,

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originally radio, then television, and more recently computers and tablets, have made it possible for institutions to present sizable proportions of their offerings over open circuits. The colleges have burst their campus bounds.

Greater scrutiny of the colleges by legislative leaders and the general public, along with demands for greater accountability and responsiveness to public investment, have had little effect on the type of programs offered but have led to significant changes in the way the colleges measure progress and how they communicate with their stakeholders. Long focused on reporting inputs and feel- good statistics (numbers and types of students enrolled, programs offered, good works in the local area), community colleges now must provide detailed information on outputs and productivity: percentage of students who transfer, earn a degree or certificate, or find employment after program completion; percentage retained from one term to the next; degrees awarded as a percentage of full-time equivalent students; and so forth. In an era of budget deficits and growing distrust of governmental investment in social institutions, the colleges’ mantra—“we serve anyone, anywhere, for as long as they like”—no longer holds sway.

But the new students have had the most pronounced effect. The community colleges reached out to attract those who were not being served by traditional higher education: those who could not afford the tuition; who could not take the time to attend a college full time; whose racial or ethnic background had constrained them from participating; who had inadequate preparation in the lower schools; whose educational progress had been interrupted by some temporary condition; who had become obsolete in their jobs or had never been trained to work at any job; who needed a connection to obtain a job; who were confined in prisons, physically disabled, or otherwise unable to attend classes on a campus; or who were faced with a need to fill increased leisure time meaningfully. The colleges’ success in enrolling these new students has affected what they can offer. Students who are unable to read,

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write, and compute at a level that would enable them to pursue a collegiate program satisfactorily must be provided with different curricula. As these students become a sizable minority—or, indeed, a majority—the institution’s philosophy is affected. Gradually, college spokespersons stop talking about its collegiate character and speak more of the developmental work in which it engages. Gradually, faculty stop demanding the same standards of student achievement. Part-time students similarly affect the colleges as new rules of attendance are adopted to accommodate students who drop in and out and swirl among multiple institutions. And new types of support systems and learning laboratories are installed for those who do not respond to traditional classroom-centered instruction.

Overall, the community colleges have suffered less from goal displacement than have most other higher education institutions. They had less to displace; their goals were to serve the people with whatever the people wanted. Standing outside the tradition, they offered access. They had to instruct; they could not offer the excuse that they were advancing the frontiers of scholarship. Because they had expanded rapidly, their permanent staffs had not been in place so long that they had become fixed. As an example, they could quite easily convert their libraries to learning resource centers because the libraries did not have a heritage of the elaborate routines accompanying maintenance and preservation of large collections. They could be adapted to the instructional programs.

In 1924, Koos was sanguine about the role of the junior college in clarifying and differentiating the aims of both the universities and the secondary schools. He anticipated an allocation of function “that would be certain to bring order out of the current educational chaos … By extending the acknowledged period of secondary edu- cation to include two more years … allocation of purpose to each unit and differentiation among them should take care of them- selves” (p. 374). Koos believed that most of the aims and functions of the secondary school would rise to the new level so that the first two years of college work would take on a new significance. These

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aims included occupational efficiency, civic and social respon- sibility, and the recreational and aesthetic aspects of life. The universities would be freed for research and professional training. Furthermore, the college entrance controversy would be reduced, and preprofessional training could be better defined. Duplication of offerings between secondary schools and universities would also be reduced by the expansion of a system of junior colleges.

Clearly, not many of Koos’s expectations were borne out. He could not have anticipated the massive increase in enrollments, the growth of universities and colleges and the competition among them, or the breakdown in curriculum fostered, on one hand, by part-time students who dropped in and out of college and, on the other, by the institutions’ eagerness to offer short courses, workshops, and spectator events. His scheme did not allow for the vast diversity of students or for expectations that the community college would take on social responsibilities previously housed in schools, houses of worship, and family units. And he was unaware of the importance that students and educators alike would place on programs related to job attainment.

Current Issues

The revolution in American education, in which the two-year col- lege played a leading role, is almost over. Two years of postsecondary education are within the reach—financially, geographically, practically—of virtually every American. Three generations have passed since President Harry Truman’s Commission on Higher Education recommended that the door to higher education be swung open. Now community colleges are everywhere. There are systems with branches in inner cities and rural districts and with programs in prisons and on military bases. Classes are offered through online instruction, twenty-four hours a day, every day. Open-admissions policies and programs for everyone ensure that no member of the community need miss the chance to attend.

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Riding the demographics of the World War II baby boom, the fiscal largesse resulting from an expanding economy, and a wave of public support for education, community colleges had been organized in every state by the 1960s. By the mid-1970s, when the colleges enrolled 34 percent of all students in U.S. higher education, there were nearly eleven hundred institutions. This number has slipped slightly as branch campuses are no longer counted as separate entities and as for-profit institutions have gained a greater foothold in the sector. Nonetheless, a mature system of community colleges has taken its place as a central element in the fabric of American postcompulsory education.

This maturity has not changed the colleges’ perennial problems of funding, public perception, relative emphasis, purposes, and value. To Bogue in 1950, the critical problems of the community colleges were devising a consistent type of organization, maintain- ing local or state control, developing an adequate general education program integrated with the occupational, finding the right kinds of teachers, maintaining adequate student guidance services, and getting the states to appropriate sufficient funds. These problems have never been satisfactorily resolved.

Recent changes in both intra- and extramural perceptions of community colleges have led to other issues. Some of these shifts are due to educational leadership at the state and the institutional level, but more are because of changing demographic patterns and public perceptions of institutional purposes. First, there has been a blending in the uses of occupational and collegiate education. Vocational education was formerly considered terminal. Students were expected to complete their formal schooling by learning a trade and going to work. Students who entered occupational programs and failed to complete them or who did not work in the field for which they were trained were considered to have been misguided. Transfer and liberal arts programs were designed to serve as a bridge between secondary school and baccalaureate

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studies. Students who entered the programs and failed to progress to the bachelor’s degree were considered dropouts.

Since the 1970s, however, high proportions of students who complete occupational programs have been transferring to univer- sities. Vocational programs typically maintain curricula in which the courses are sequential. Many of these programs, especially those in the technologies and the health fields, articulate well with baccalaureate programs. Most have selective admissions policies. Students are forced to make an early commitment, satisfy admis- sions requirements, maintain continual attendance, and progress satisfactorily. This pattern of schooling reinforces the serious stu- dents, leading them to enroll in further studies at a university. The liberal arts courses, in contrast, are now frequently taken by students who have not made a commitment to a definite line of study, who already have degrees and are taking courses for per- sonal interest, or who are trying to build up their prerequisites or grade-point averages so that they can enter a selective admissions program at the community college or another institution. Thus, for many students, the collegiate courses have become the catchall, the vestibule program.

A second issue is that, by the 1970s, the linear aspect of community colleges—the idea that the institution assists students in bridging the freshman and sophomore years—had been severely reduced as a proportion of the community colleges’ total effort. The number of students transferring was reasonably constant, but most of the expansion in community college enrollments was in the areas of occupational and continuing education. The collegiate programs remained in the catalogs, but students used them for completely different purposes. They dropped in and out, taking the courses at will. The course array in the collegiate programs was more accurately viewed as lateral rather than linear. Not more than one in ten course sections enforced course prerequisites; not more than one course in ten was a sophomore-level course. What had happened was that the students were using the institution in one

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way, whereas the institution’s patterns of functioning suggested another. Catalogs displayed recommended courses, semester by semester, for students planning to major in one or another of a hundred fields. But the students took those courses that were offered at a preferred time of day or those that seemed potentially useful. In the 1980s, many colleges took deliberate steps to quell that pattern of course attendance, but requirements regarding sequence proved difficult to enforce until the recent growth in the number of eighteen-year-olds brought higher proportions of baccalaureate-bound students into the community colleges.

Third, a trend toward less-than-college-level instruction has accelerated. In addition to the increased number of remedial courses as a proportion of the curriculum, expectations in collegiate courses have changed. To take one example, students in community col- lege English literature courses in 1977 were expected to read 560 pages per term, on average, whereas, according to Koos (1924), the average was three times that in high school literature courses in 1922. These figures are offered not to derogate community colleges but only to point out that the institutions cannot be understood in traditional terms. They are struggling to find ways of educating stu- dents whose prior learning has been dominated by nonprint images. The belief that a person unschooled in the classics was not suffi- ciently educated died hard in the nineteenth century; the ability to read prose as a criterion of adequate education has been questioned in an era when most messages are carried by wires and waves.

Fourth, external demands for achievement indicators have not been uniformly well received. Introducing finite concepts such as graduation, transfer, and job-getting rates into an enterprise that has at bottom the open-ended goal of leading people to a better life has had a jarring effect, which explains much of the antagonism to contemporary moves toward judging, comparing, and in some cases funding community colleges on the basis of their products or outcomes. Statements such as “The value of education becomes apparent only years after the students have left college” (sometimes

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expressed as “The things we teach can’t be measured”) have been made for decades by staff members whose focus is on process. In sum, an unbridgeable gulf exists between concentrating exclusively on individual progress and assessing institutional accomplishments.

But all questions of curriculum, students, and institutional mission pale in the light of funding issues. Are the community colleges—or any other schools—worth what they cost? Have the colleges overextended themselves? Do their outcomes jus- tify the public resources they consume? Can they, should they, be called to account for their outcomes? These questions have appeared with increasing frequency as public disaffection with elementary and secondary schools has grown. Whether the com- munity colleges stand alone or whether they are cast with the higher or lower schools, their advocates will be forced to respond.

Several other current issues may also be phrased as questions. How much more than access and illusory benefits of credits and degrees without concomitant learning do the colleges provide? Are they in or out of higher education? How much of their effort is dedicated to higher learning, to developing rationality and advancing knowledge through the disciplines? How much leads students to form habits of reflection? How much tends toward public and private virtue?

Is it moral to sort and grade students, sending the more capable to the university while encouraging the rest to follow other pursuits? Commenting on the terminal programs—the commercial and general education courses that did not transfer to the universities—Eells noted, “Students cannot be forced to take them, it is true, but perhaps they can be led, enticed, attracted” (1931, p. 310). And in his chapter on the guidance function, he stressed, “It is essential that many students be guided into terminal curricula” (p. 330). Koos also contended that “the great majority will be best served by terminal programs” (Eells 1941b, p. 327). Viewed from a contemporary perspective, do Eells’s and Koos’s assertions still apply?

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What would the shape of American education be if the com- munity colleges had never been established? Where would people be learning the trades and occupations? Apprenticeships were the mode in earlier times. Would they still dominate, as they do in Europe? Would the less-than-college-level regional occupational centers and area vocational and technical schools be larger and more handsomely funded? Would different configurations have developed?

What would have happened to the academic transfer function? How many fewer students would be attending college? Would the universities have expanded to accommodate all who sought entry? Community colleges certainly performed an essential service in the 1960s and 1970s when masses of high school graduates, the first wave of baby boomers, demanded access. By offering an inexpensive, accessible alternative, these colleges allowed the universities to maintain at least a semblance of their own integrity. How many universities would have been shattered if community colleges to which the petitioners could be shunted had not been available? Similar issues arose in the 1990s, when the second wave arrived and a steady increase in the number of high school graduates brought access forward once again as a major issue.

If there were no community colleges, what agencies would be performing their community service? How many of the services they provide would be missed? Would secondary schools better maintain their own curricular and instructional integrity if com- munity colleges were not there to grant students absolution for all past educational sins? Would other institutions assume the developmental function?

Although such questions have been asked from time to time, they have rarely been examined, mainly because during most of its history the community college has gone unnoticed, ignored by writers about higher education. Books on higher education published from the turn of the twentieth century, when the first community colleges appeared, through the 1980s rarely gave even a

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nod to the community college; one searches in vain for a reference to them in indexes. In 1950, Bogue deplored the lack of attention paid to the junior colleges, saying that he had examined twenty- seven authoritative histories of American education and found only superficial treatment of junior colleges or none at all. Rudolph’s major history of the higher education curriculum, first published in 1977, gave them a scant two pages. Pascarella and Terenzini’s massive review, How College Affects Students (1991), offered little more. Recently, however, their 2005 update and a small body of literature, noted in Chapter Thirteen on scholarship, have been filling in some of the gaps.

Perhaps community colleges should merely be characterized as untraditional. They do not follow the central themes of higher education as it developed from the colonial colleges through the universities. They do not typically provide students with new value structures, as residential liberal arts colleges aspire to do. Nor do they further the frontiers of knowledge through scholarship and research training, as in the finest traditions of the universities. Community colleges do not even follow their own traditions. They change frequently, seeking new programs and new clients. Community colleges are indeed untraditional, but they are truly American because at their best they represent the United States at its best. Never satisfied with resting on what has been done before, they try new approaches to old problems. They maintain open channels for individuals, enhancing the social mobility that has characterized America, and they accept the idea that society can be better, just as individuals can better their lot within it.

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