The History of Community Colleges

Community colleges have become a vital part of higher education system. Many events have contributed to the development and continued growth of American community colleges. Their history dates back to the early twentieth century, and largely came about due to the need for workers to operate the nations expanding industries. In addition there was also an increased pressure on the nation’s school system to fix any social issues or problems that were occurring; such as merging ethic lines, unemployment levels, supplying the nation with skilled vocational traits etc. (Cohen & Brawer, 2008). Community colleges would thrive on the new responsibilities because they had no traditions to defend, or any alumni to question their role (Cohen & Brawer, 2008). Several different groups advocated for community colleges in the early twentieth century, including students and parents, educators, businesses, state universities, and government officials. Community colleges were first known as "junior colleges" and were lower divisions of larger private universities. They were defined as any institution that awarded the associate of arts or science as its highest degree (Cohen & Brawer, 2008). Organizationally, they tended to be very small intuitions that focused on general education classes with the goal of transferring to a four year institution. The growth of community colleges had a direct correlation with overall growth of higher education in the twentieth century. Our nation was in an academic transition, the percentage of high school graduates rose from 30 percent in the 1924 to 75 percent by 1960, with nearly 60 percent of high school graduates going on to higher education (Cohen & Brawer, 2008). As educators began to realize that students needed more educational opportunities after high school; the idea of these smaller colleges came about. Educators saw that a lot of students were not able to go away to a four-year college after high school and they also saw that

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