Junior College: Scottsbluff Junior College

Date Established: 1926

Date Closed:

Location: Scottsbluff, Nebraska

Historical Highlights:

Scottsbluff, the westernmost of Nebraska's cities, was no more than a trading outpost as late as 1890. But the extension of a major Burlington rail line through the town in 1900, followed by the introduction of large-scale irrigated farming along the North Platte River, quickly transformed Scottsbluff into the center of commerce, transportation, government, and culture for the Nebraska panhandle. Beginning with fewer than 2,000 residents at the turn of the century, the city of Scottsbluff and its adjacent communities grew to a population of more than 15,000 by 1930 and, in the process, assembled those institutions we associate with an urban center. Its first churches, hotel, and mercantile establishments were constructed almost immediately following the arrival of the railroad. By 1903 Scottsbluff had incorporated and the city's small high school graduated its first class in 1908. Cultural interests were not ignored by its civic leaders. By 1910 an opera house (which would later became home to the lyceum) and a Chautauqua building were in place, and by 1920 high school enrollment had grown sufficiently to support a small postgraduate program. The groundwork had been laid for a junior college.

Edwin Saylor, in his brief history of Scottsbluff Junior College, highlights the interplay of just these conditions in explaining Scottsbluff's decision to establish a junior college:

Scottsbluff seemed to be an ideal center for a junior college. The population had reached 10,000 and was steadily increasing. The town, located more than 100 miles from any institution of higher learning, drew trade from ten smaller towns within a radius of 25 miles. The [K-12] school enrollment ranked fifth largest in the state.

Unlike most of the early public junior colleges, we are fortunate to have several contemporary accounts of Scottsbluff Junior College during its formative years. In particular, Lloyd Garrison, who served as an assistant dean at the junior college during the mid-1930's, described the origins, curriculum, and student culture of the college at length in an article defending smaller junior colleges from claims that such institutions were inefficient and, therefore, incapable of providing students with a curriculum of adequate breadth, instruction in up-to-date science laboratories, or a sufficiently rich extra-curriculum to justify a claim of collegiate status. While writing exclusively about conditions at Scottsbluff Junior College, much of what Garrison described applies equally to the great many small junior colleges found in Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma before 1940.

Like Saylor, Garrison emphasized Scottsbluff's geographic isolation in offering an explanation for the city's decision to establish a public junior college. Located in the state's western panhandle, the city was well removed from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln (some 450 to the east) and the half dozen smaller, denominational colleges clustered in the state's far southeastern corner. At a time when travel was both costly and difficult, the decision by one of Scottsbluff's high school graduates to attend college was effectively a decision to leave home for good -- a choice, particularly in the case of females that not all parents were willing to permit, nor something that the students themselves wished.

Like many other Midwestern junior colleges, Scottsbluff opened in 1926 as an "extra-legal" junior college, meaning that its sponsoring high school lacked explicit authority in state law to offer college-level instruction. It would not be until 1931, and after several failed attempts, that the Nebraska legislature finally adopted enabling legislation that placed Scottsbluff Junior College on firm legal footing.

Also like most other Midwestern junior colleges, Scottsbluff was extremely small. At its opening, Scottsbluff Junior College enrolled some 25 students, all freshmen, and it was not until 1932 that a sophomore year was added, and a few years still until student enrollment exceeded 100 students in any one semester. According to Garrison, Scottsbluff JC was able to expand its program to include a second year when the state's 1931 junior college act was adopted because, in addition to a mill levy of no more than 2 mills (Scottsbluff adopted a 1.8 mill levy), the school was required to impose a $108 annual tuition on all students. These two sources of revenue covered the costs of an a more costly sophomore year of study. At the same time, a tuition of this amount also likely limited enrollment to more affluent students, given that, in 1931, few family incomes exceeded $1500 a year, and scholarships were few.

Even when it had won legislative approval and its enrollment began to increase, like virtually all pre-1940 junior colleges Scottsbluff JC did not have exclusive use of a campus and its buildings. Rather, its "campus" was limited to a few rooms on the third floor of the city's only high school building. Additionally, the junior college not only shared its facility with the city's four-year high school, but also with its two-year junior high. While the junior college did have a separate library collection, that collection was extremely small by modern standards, amounting to only some 1,400 volumes in 1936.

That the junior college did not require its own facility, nor a separate faculty, in large part explains its low cost of operation. In 1936, the school's total budget was less than $17,000, or about $175 per full-time student. This was on a par with most small public junior colleges of the era and, given that tuition was $108 a year, suggests a rough parity between the student and public contributions to its operational costs and contrasts to the modern situation where, even in states with the highest mandated tuition charges, student tuition accounts for less than 40% of operating revenues.

Initially, it appears that Scottsbluff JC's curriculum was closely modeled on that of the freshman year at the University of Nebraska. But very quickly after 1931, the junior college broadened its program of study, primarily because so few of its students went on to a second year of college study, much less transferred to the university at Lincoln. According to Garrison, by 1939 over 50 per cent of Scottsbluff's students ever attended another college, and less than 40 percent returned for a second year of study. In response, the college introduced general or survey courses in the liberal arts and vocational or, as they were called at the time, terminal programs. This development suggests that, contrary to the argument made by Brint and Karabel and others, public junior colleges did not adopt either general liberal arts courses (as opposed to university parallel courses) and vocational curricula out of some sinister design, to divert lower class youth away from the university, but as a strategy to draw in and hold additional students whose tuition revenue, if nothing else, was essential to the survival of the institution.

As Garrison wrote,

Each year new courses have been developed to meet student needs. Classes are now taught which meet most college and university requirements in liberal arts, engineering, law, medicine, nursing, education, business administration, journalism, agriculture and fine arts. Terminal courses in business are in operation, and several others are in preparation. Emphasis has been placed upon the generalized or survey type courses, since they meet a greater variety of needs and seem to be increasing in favor with other institutions. (p. 120).

The college's small size, however, did not seem to deter students from supporting a rich and varied extra-curriculum, as was also the case at many other small, early junior colleges. The extra-curriculum, which was supported by a mandatory student fee of $2.50 a semester, apparently centered on music, with the junior college supporting a mixed chorus and smaller groups that sang regularly for community organizations and events. There was also a college orchestra, drama society (which produced a play a year), and a literary magazine -- Wood Smoke. While sororities and fraternities per se did not operate at the college, there were two social organizations, The Tuckabachee Club for the girls and the Tecumseh Club for the boys. Meeting bimonthly, these groups were intended, again according to Garrison, "to make up for some forms of social life lost by the student who does not go away from home to college." Students also held four major social functions each year, with the Christmas ball and spring dinner dance the principal events on the social calendar.

Sources:

Garrison, Lloyd A. "How Small Can a Junior College Be?" Junior College Journal. 9, no. 3 (Dec. 1938): 118-121.

Galen Saylor, et al., Legislation, Finance, and Development of Public Junior Colleges, (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska, 1948)

Elizabeth Hughes Thies, "Scottsbluff's Social Development," in Scottsbluff and the North Platte Valley, (Scottsbluff, NB: Scottsbluff Star-Herald, 1967)

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