the University of California reorganized the cultural courses of that institution with the following features:1 1. The retention of the traditional framework of the four-year college course leading to a bachelor's degree. 2. The recognition of the middle of this course as a suitable point for turning from cultural to professional aims, since the work of the first two years was in reality a continuation of the secondary educational and the work of the last two years could be connected without a break over into the strictly professional. Another committee reported in 1903 a further development of the plan of 1892. It provided 1. For greater freedom in dovetailing the upper end of the fouryear course with the lower end of professional courses. 2. For a more definite, sharply marked separation of the last two years, upper division, from the first two years, lower division. 3. For a junior certificate to be given on the completion of six years of combined high school and college work to serve as an admission card to the upper division. This arrangement was made deliberately with a view to promoting a unified sixyear course, to unstiffening the barrier between the twelfth and thirteenth grades, and to facilitating transfer from one group to another according to students change of purpose. 2 In 1907 another committee worked out a junior certificate for technical courses as well as cultural, further emphasizing the unity of the six years of secondary education. The same year the State legislature passed an act enabling high-school districts to add two years to the traditional four-year course. In 1910 Fresno became the first high school to avail itself of this opportunity. By 1914 there were 10 and at the present time there are more than 20 of such extensions. We shall review later in greater detail some of the factors influencing this development, but it may be said here that in the minds of its promoters in California at least, the junior college is here to stay. There is ample evidence that there appeared in the minds of many educators at an early date the suggestion of the junior college as a means to the solution of the problems of the articulation of the high school with the college and university. In 1896 President Jesse, of the University of Missouri, in an address before the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, said:3 The first two years in college are really secondary in character. I always think of the high school and academy as covering the lower secondary period, and the fresh 1 Lange, A. F. The Unification of Our School System. Sierra Educational News, vol. 5, June 9-14, p. 99. 2 Ibid, June, 1909. * Jesse, R. R. Proc. N. Cen. Assoc. of Colleges. in and sophomore years at college as covering the upper secondary period. In the condary period and in at least the first two years at college not only are the studies most identical, but the character of teaching is the same. At this same meeting President Draper, of the University of linois, said, in discussing President Jesse's address: 1 We can not tell just where the high-school course is to end and the college course >mmence. We all believe that they are continuous and ought to be uninterrupte!. he different circumstances of different communities will have much to do with xing the point where the high-school course shall stop and the college course begin. hat point will be advanced higher and still higher as communities grow in size and ncrease in knowledge, in culture, in means, and in all the instrumentalities for educational development and progress. Such are the beginnings of the junior college idea. In later chapters we shall consider the different types of the institutions as they present themselves at present. In each case there will be a further more critical discussion of the potent influences operating to give rise to that peculiar type of institution. Following this there will be a detailed consideration of the present status of these institutions; their location, character, quality of instruction, and methods of accrediting. Draper. Proc. N. Cen. Assoc. of Colleges and Sec. Schs., 1896, p. 789. 117675-19 INFLUENCES TENDING TO FURTHER THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE JUNIOR COLLEGE IDEA. In the preceding chapter there was presented a brief discussion of the origin and early development of the junior college idea. It remains now to consider at some length those influences which have tended to further the development of this idea. For the purposes of this discussion, these influences have been grouped under the following general heads: 1. Those coming from within the university. 2. Those coming from within the normal school. 3. The demand for an extended high school. 4. The problem of the small college. It is of interest to note that these four lines of influences which have resulted in the development of the junior college may serve also to explain the four rather distinct types of junior college with which we are familiar to-day. These are: 1. the "lower division" of junior college within the university. 2. The normal school accredited for two years of college work. 3. The public junior college. 4. The private junior college. It is not the purpose here to discuss these various types. The chief concern in this chapter is to make clear by means of a somewhat detailed analysis those factors and influences which have contributed directly to the development of the junior college idea as a whole as well as to the peculiar types of junior college above mentioned. 1. INFLUENCES COMING FROM WITHIN THE UNIVERSITY. The university must be held responsible for the first suggestion of the junior college idea in the United States. More particularly must this responsibility and perhaps honor go to the University of Michigan, where the idea was perhaps for the first time officially recognized. From the university also comes the first practical demonstration in an administrative way of the possibilities of the new plan. Credit for this is probably to be divided equally between the Universities of Chicago and of California. But this is not all. In nearly every State where the junior college movement has made any significant progress, it has followed in the wa the situation in California, Illin as evidence of this assertion. iversity influence. Witness souri, Minnesota, and Texas These facts are significant, and one is led immediately to ask the question Why are these things so? In the attempt to answer this question the leaders in this movement are left, so far as possible, to speak for themselves. For convenience in discussion the answer will be given under the following headings: 1. The rapid growth of the university within recent years. 2. The conviction of the need of a wiser division of university and secondary work. 3. Other administrative advantages. 1. THE RAPID GROWTH OF THE UNIVERSITY WITHIN RECENT YEARS. The population of the United States increased 4 times between 1830 and 1890. During the same period the number of colleges and university students increased 10 times.1 * * * During the last 20 years Columbia has grown 11 times as great in student enrollment, Illinois 9 times, Michigan and Wisconsin 4 times, California 6 times, Ohio 5 times, and Missouri 8 times. In 10 American institutions, of which 7 are State, the enrollment has gone beyond the 5,000 mark, California leading all State institutions with an enrollment in 1914 of 8,699. Twelve of the largest institutions in the United States have doubled their enrollment in the last decade and are still rapidly increasing. During the decade from 1903 to 1913 the total enrollment in 30 of our leading universities increased from 67,000 to 113,000, or 68 per cent, as compared with an increase in population of but 21 per cent during the same period." This rapid increase in enrollment has involved the university in many administrative difficulties, not least of which is the task of providing for the needs of the large groups of students enrolled in the first and second year classes. Gray, who has recently made an investigation of this phase of the problem, says: " In a president's report of a great State institution for 1913 attention is called to the size of many of the classes. The freshman class for 1913 numbered 1,477, and during the first semester there were 27 freshman and sophomore classes having each more than 150 students and 9 classes having over 350 students each. The number of freshmen in history was 637; elementary economics, 480; in women's hygiene, 571; in men's hygiene, 888; and in chemistry, 687. In the two latter classes a division was made requiring a repetition of the lecture of the instructor, "as if such a repetition were a thing to be deplored." Imagine a freshman class of 444, a pitiable sight, one to make the very gods weep. In the report it was stated that "it would be shortsighted to plan a laboratory with a capacity less than a thousand." This situation has led many university authorities to support the junior college, which they claim would not only relieve the university 1 Avery, Sam. Nat. Ed. Assoc., 1912, p. 784. • Independent, Feb., 1914, p. 221. from the tremendous expense of caring for these large beginning classes, but would also insure better work and more personal attention for these students when such is especially desirable. 2. THE CONVICTION OF THE NEED OF A WISER DIVISION OF UNIVERSITY AND SECONDARY SCHOOL WORK. University authorities have supported the junior college because of a firm conviction that there is need of a better and wiser division of work between the secondary school and the university. The extension of the high-school course, they claim, will but serve to give to that institution what rightfully belongs to it, and at the same time will relieve the university of a large amount of secondary school work, all of which will lead to a more efficient and economical scheme of public education. Consider the following statements of the leading advocates of the junior college: President Harper said nearly 20 years ago:1 The work of the freshman and sophomore years is only a continuation of the academy or high-school work. It is a continuation not only in subject matter but in methods employed. It is not until the end of the sophomore year that the university methods of instruction may be employed to advantage. At present this consecutive period of preparation, covering six years, is broken at the end of the fourth year, and the student finds himself adrift. A great waste of time, energy, and interest follows this unnatural break in the prosecution of the student's work. President Judson, of the same university, said in his report of 1911-12: 2 Attention is invited to the situation in the curricula of the colleges. An investigation of this subject shows plainly that from 20 to 30 per cent of the work requiredin the four-year college is in content and essentially in mode of treatment merely high-school work. In other words, we require the student in order to enter one of the colleges to have spent four years in a good high school, and then, not satisfied with that, we require him before taking serious college work to spend at least a year more in high-school training. Obviously this leads to the question as to what is the distinction, if any, between work properly adapted to the high school and work better adapted to the college. Is not almost every subject taught in colleges also made a part of the high-school curriculum? 3 President David Starr Jordan, in 1912, thus expressed his views: I am looking forward, as you know, to the time when the large high schools of the State, in conjunction with the small colleges, will relieve the two great universities from the expense and from the necessity of giving instruction of the first two university years. The instruction of these two years is of necessity elementary and of the same general nature as the work of the high school itself. It is not desirable for a university to have more than about 2,000 students gathered together in one place, and when the number comes to exceed that figure, then some division is desirable. The only reasonable division is that which will take away students who do not need libraries or laboratories for their work. 1 Harper, W. R. The Trend in Higher Education, p. 378. 2 In Johnston's Modern High School, p. 837. a Ibid, p. 832. |