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US education news
 

Source Documents

 

 


 1

Brooks, Elizabeth, "The Junior College," Master's thesis, Clark University, 1917.

Summary: One of the first extended discussions of the junior college, Brooks provides a balanced discussion, giving equal weight to private and public junior colleges, as well as describing developments in all regions of the nation.

 

 2

 

City of Philadelphia Board of Public Education, Ninetieth Annual Report, (Philadelphia: 1909), 128-129.

Summary: A proposal by the "president" of Philadlephia's Central High School to append a junior college to his institution. The proposal was rejected, the city school commissioners deciding instead to expend funds on the establishment of additional high schools.

 3

Cubbereley,“Junior College,” in Paul Monroe, An Cyclopedia of Education (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1912), 573.

 

 

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Eells, Walter Crosby, Bibliography on Junior Colleges Bulletin No. 2, (Washington, D.C.: US Office of Education, 1930)

Summary: Includes the initial 500 entries of Eells' 1600-entry bibliography of the early junior college.

 

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Gray, A.A., The Junior College in California, Vol. 23 No. 7 School Review, (Sept. 1915), pp 463-475

 

 

Green, Herbert Charles, “Junior Colleges in North Carolina”. Master’s thesis, University of North Carolina,1932. 

Summary: While an extremely weak document from virtually any perspective, it includes a list of junior colleges, all but one of which were private and a brief but unverified description of the events that led up to the establishment of each of the junior colleges.

 

 

 

 

 

 

7

Kansas City School District, Forty-Fifth Annual Report. (1916): 28-29.

Summary: These comments of Kansas City citizens before their school board reflected two of the more common rationales for public junior colleges in the Midwest. The first was that the city’s high school graduates were relatively young even by standards of the time – many of the women high school graduates were just 16. The second was that the city’s high school seniors, rather than waiting to leave for college when they were older and more mature, were putting off graduation and continuing as high school students, essentially defeating the cost-savings the school district would have realized if seniors took their diplomas and moved onto college.

 

8

 

Le Grand (California) Advocate, 14 December, 1912.

Summary: This brief announcement provides an excellent and early example of the "booster" argument frequently employed by civic leaders in advocating for the public junior college. As the articles concludes: "We don't get good things by passively waiting and hoping they will come in their own good time."

 

 9

Johnston, Charles Hughes. The upward extension of the high school In his Modern high school, New York, 1914, Scribners & Sons.

 

10

 Lippitt, W.O., "The Junior College at Jackson, Minnesota," School Education (December, 1916): 4

Summary: Lippitt argues that a public junior college was required in Jackson to provide students with a safe, supportive alternative to the large and impersonal university. For Lippitt, the junior college was not so much an isthmus to the university, but an alternative.

 

11

McLane, C.L., "The Fresno Junior College," The California Weekly (July 15, 1910).
Summary: The original announcement of Fresno JC's opening. McLane describes a diverse curriculum, including special programs in agriculture and teacher education.

 

12

Oklahoma Department of Education, The Eighteenth Biennial Report of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction (Oklahoma City, 1940).

Summary: Among the most persistent and effective critics of the early junior college were chief state school officiers, for whom the junior college represented an unconstitutional threat to public funds earmarked by elementary and secondary education. This report not only provides a good overview of the junior college's condition in the state with, at the time, third greatest number of these institutions, but provides an excellent summary of the arguments against the junior college typically raised by state school officials.

 

13

Prall, Charles E., "Report of the Junior College Survey Committee," The Journal of Arkansas Education (November, 1930): 18-23.

Summary: Prall's study reflects the on-going tension between communities, that often believed that the desire to establish a junior college was sufficient to ensure it success, and those educators who recognized that a junior college established as part of a small high school supported by a weak tax was doomed to failure. Prall provides substantial evidence, not otherwise available, to support his view.

 

14

Samuleson, Agnes, Public Junior Colleges: Preliminary Report (Des Moines, IA: 1928).

Summary: Samuleson's report reflects the on-going efforts of state school officials to limit the spread of the junior college, arguing (with considerable truth) that it drew resources away from elementary and secondary schools.

 

15

San Francisco Public Schools. Report of the Superintendent (June 1936): 4.

Summary: This brief report represents an exceptionally blatant attempt to use the rhetoric of access and opportunity to mask what was, in fact, a very pragmatic -- even calculated -- decision to establish a junior college.

 

16

Santa Rosa (CA) Press Democrat, "Junior College Is Recognized", 29 August, 1918

Summary: This press report announces that students from Santa Rosa Junior College could enter San Jose Normal with senior standing, thereby requiring them to complete only one year of student before they could secure their state teaching credential. This press report highlights the importance of the teacher education function for many early junior colleges.

 

17

School District of Kansas City. Forty-Fifth Annual Report. (1916): 28-29. 

Summary: This section from the board minutes of the Kansas City (MO) school board presents two of the most common reasons underlying local support for a public junior college. The first was that the city’s graduates, because their program was only 11 years in length, graduated at just 16. They were required as simply too young by their parents to attend a distant university.

The second reason was that students, not wishing to leave school until their parents would let them leave home for college, were simply putting off graduation, effectively eliminating the cost savings the district realized from having, at least on record, an 11-year school program.

 

18

 Turner, Edward C., 1928 Ohio Opinions of the Attorney General, No. 2017, Vol. 3, 1013

 

19

University of Illinois Committee on Admissions From Higher Institutions, "Rating of Burlington Junior College," (Urbana: 1929).

Summary: This report provides an example of the close and critical scrutiny to which junior colleges were subjected by universities as a pre-condition for the all-important recognition of their credits for purposes of transfer.

 

20

 Zook, George. "The Extent and Significance of the Junior College Movement." Transactions of the Fifty-sixth Annual Meeting of the Ohio College Association (April, 1927): 8-11

 

 

21

 

Zook, George (Ed.), National Conference of Junior Colleges, 1920. US Bureau of Education, No. 19, 1922. (GPO: 1922).

Summary: This entry e contains a complete transcript of the 1920 St. Louis meeting at which George Zook, on behalf of the federal Bureau of Education, sought to convince the assembled junior college presidents and deans to establish an accrediting body for all junior colleges. The members rejected Zook’s proposal, and instead established the advocacy association then known as the AAJC and today known as the AACC. The work should be read in its entirety, as it contains a remarkable wealth of insight into the exceptional range of factors that led a truly disparate range of communities to establish remarkably similar junior colleges.