Source Document

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.

Interpretation

George Zook, a native of Fort Scott, Kansas, was an individual of considerable influence in American higher education during the first half of this century. Serving as one of the first specialists in higher education for the US Bureau of Education, then as president of the University of Akron, and finally as the president of the American Council on Education, Zook was a forceful advocate for greater efficiency in what was, at the beginning of this century, a highly fragmented and standard less system of postsecondary education. As the Bureau's higher education specialist, Zook undertook surveys of the state of higher education in several states, including Oregon and Arkansas (referred to in the text below), which he used as platforms to argue for either the outright closure or consolidation of what he regarded as the excessive number of small, isolated private colleges in those states. Zook was also an advocate of institutional standardization -- what is today known as accreditation -- and took such steps as encouraged the organization of the American Association of Junior Colleges (AAJC) in the hope that it would assume the role of national accreditator of this rapidly growing sector. While the member institutions of the AACJ rejected Zook's call for them to take up this role, the regional accrediting associations, such as the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, did take up this responsibility with considerable success, particularly with regard to public two-year colleges, a group of highly parochial institutions that would likely not have so quickly adopted remarkably uniform standards for admissions, faculty qualifications and curriculum absent the influence of the regional associations.

The presentation by Zook reproduced below, and given while he was president of the University of Akron, is noteworthy because it summarizes the view of the junior college and its purposes shared by many university professors and administrators, federal officials, and other school leaders who were not junior college practitioners during this era.

Indeed, it is important that readers keep in mind that Zook's views, like those of Walter C. Eells, Leonard Koos and Doak Cambpell, now appear to have had enjoyed far wider acceptance than was, in fact, the case, because of the control this relatively small and elite group of men exercised over the school journals, conferences and graduate programs of the day. When local records are closely examined, it becomes very apparent that local junior college advocates, including school superintendents, principals, Chamber of Commerce members, parents and newspaper editors, viewed the junior college in a very different light. For some, the junior college was a means to keep young people at home, and away from what was perceived by many early 20th century parents as large, impersonal and morally threatening universities. For others, most notably civic boosters, a local junior college was the only viable alternative to a traditional college at a time when religious denominations -- the traditional sponsors of such colleges -- were hard pressed simply to maintain the institutions that they had established in the 19th century. And still others, principally merchants, saw a local college as a means of attracting business to main street. For these local boosters, establishment of a local junior college was not meant to resolve some perceived failing in the fundamental structure of American education, or to free universities of lower classmen, or even promote instruction in the so-called "semi-professions." It was a pragmatic solution to immediate concerns and a vehicle for advancing local interests that such communities as Kilgore, Texas, and San Mateo, California, could readily implement without unacceptable cost to local taxpayers.

For Zook, the chief beneficiary of a junor college is not its sponsoring community, but the university. It is a means of freeing American universities of the burden of providing that "cultural" education that young people should have obtained through their secondary schooling, just as it is a mechanism for sorting out those students whose talents and interests would not be well served, in Zook's opinion at least, by a university education. The expansion of the junior college, as conceived by Zook, would provide young people with access to "semi-professional" curricula for which the four-year high school is ill-equipped to offer and which would be inappropriate for a university or traditional college. It is one of the unexamined ironies of late twentieth century American higher education that many four-year colleges and universities are, in the pursuit of enrollments, embracing programs in such fields as health care, business, and communications that Zook would have certainly classified as "semi-professional."

A second point to note in Zook's comments is his discussion of the problem faced by many American cities in providing their residents with access to higher education, and the potential of the junior college to at least partially ameliorate that need. Indeed, a number of junior colleges were established for just this reason and proved remarkably successful (see Kansas City Junior College.) But a number of considerations worked against the establishment of public junior colleges in urban centers, or, once established, their continuation so that the success of a Kansas City Junior College should not be viewed as the norm. One early failure was Newark Junior College, which failed to win local support for the costs associated with the need to provide it with its own facility, contributing to the defeat of supportive school board members, while advocates of the junior college in both Philadelphia and Baltimore met with continuing resistence to their proposals to bring the junior college to their cities. While it is easy to condemn those who blocked attempts to organize urban junior colleges in the pre-1940 era as elitist, a fairer assessment of their position would take into account their belief (particularly strong in Philadelphia and San Francisco) that a city's first obligation was to provide universal access to a high school education before it attempted to offer some college education to what was, at the time, the small minority of youth who graduated from high school. Given their limited resources, the school boards in these communities simply chose to invest in expanding their secondary schools rather than experiment with the junior college to the benefit of a very small minority. It was certainly true that, at Zook argues below, establishing additional junior colleges, particularly in urban centers, would have increased the number of young Americans going on to college, and that such a development would have been in the national interest. But urban school boards did not have infinite resources at their disposal, and state aid was, at best, nominal, and they had no real choice but to limit the extent of their school program to the level of taxation local voters were willing to bear, as the school board of Newark, New Jersey, learned at its cost in 1921.

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[Pg. 8]

THE EXTENT AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE JUNIOR
COLLEGE MOVEMENT

By President George F. Zook, University of Akron

As is generally known, the laws governing the charting and incorporation of colleges and universities in this country are very lax in almost every State in the Union. The result of this situation is that a large number of colleges and universities have been established. A considerable proportion of these institutions have had only a short life and have disappeared. In other instances they have not been able to make a great deal of progress. In recent years the standardizing movement represented by organizations such as the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools has, in many instances compelled weaker colleges to attempt only two years of college work. In this way a large number of the privately endowed colleges have seen fit to join the so-called junior college movement. Their work has come to be regarded as standard for the first two years of college.

One of chief reasons for the rather large number of four-year colleges which have found it necessary to become junior colleges is the fact that in many states a large proportion of these colleges have been located away from the centers of population. At various times I have had occasion to travel extensively in such states as Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri and Oregon, where there are a large number of colleges located in those parts of the state which are not heavily populated. In each of these instances there are large and important cities which, up to the present time, do not have very extensive facilities in higher education. I came, therefore, to the conclusion that it had been the principle and practice in many states in this country to locate colleges where the people are not rather than where they are.

After making these observations in several other states, I decided to ascertain whether this situation was essentially true in Ohio. For this purpose I selected the first twenty-five cities in population. Each of them has a population in excess of 25,000. In only eight of these cities are there regular college facilities of any kind, either within the limit of the cities or within ten miles of them. Indeed, a majority of the colleges in Ohio are located more than ten miles from any of these twenty-five cities. In general it is the institutions which are located at some distance front the centers of population which today are having difficulty in securing adequate funds and sufficient student body.

It is only in recent years that we find a growing tendency to locate colleges in urban centers. I believe that one of the chief reasons for the growth of the junior college movement is to provide at least two more years or education for the graduates of high schools which are located in cities which hitherto have not possessed college facilities. In Michigan, for example, where there are five junior colleges, only one is located in a city which now has a four-year college. In Kansas there are eight junior colleges; in Minnesota, four, all located in towns where there are no other college facilities. In California only one of the twenty-two junior colleges is located in a city already possessing [P. 9] a four-year college. I believe, therefore, that the rapid growth of public junior colleges is accounted for in part by the desire for at least two years of college work in urban centers not now containing other institutions.

Another reason for the establishment of public junior colleges is the fact that they are, in large part, supported through public taxation and can, therefore, offer two years of work to young people at very little cost. Considering the high cost of attending college away from home, it is not surprising that an increasing number of young people enroll at these public junior colleges.

Inasmuch, therefore, as the junior college movement is in line with two of the main trends of higher education today, first, the trend toward urban institutions, it seems certain that their growth and development will be rapid. Some of the public junior colleges are supported at state expense. I refer, for example, to the junior college branches of the University of Texas and of the Agricultural and Mechanical College in Texas. The Agricultural and Mechanical College in Utah also possesses it branch in southern Utah. The Idaho Technical Institute at Pocatello has recently become a branch of the University of Idaho. In addition to these illustrations there are independent state junior colleges located at Miami and Panhandle. Most of the junior colleges, however, are supported at municipal expense. There are approximately 6,000 students in the junior colleges of California and something over 1,000 in the junior colleges in Kansas. Those in Michigan, Minnesota, Texas, Oklahoma and Illinois also enroll very large numbers.

I do not have time to speak extensively concerning the significance of the junior college movement. I wish, however, to mention several of the most important amplifications: First, the unification of the field of secondary education. It is common knowledge that in this country elementary schools and the colleges were established almost contemporaneously. Under these circumstances it was natural that the field of elementary education should be pushed of) and the field of college education brought down, so that when the American secondary school was established it had to be sandwiched in between an extended elementary school eight or nine years in length, and a college which had reached down into what is really the field of secondary education. Consequently the American secondary school is a four-year school as against the practice of a longer period in almost every other country throughout the world. The college, therefore, is compelled to complete in the freshman and sophomore years the general secondary education of their students before they call begin their real function of higher education.

There would be no particular objection to this Situation were it not for the fact that elementary and secondary education in general have grown up under one administration while higher education is largely under the administration of other officials. Without administrative unification there has resulted a divorce of the latter part of our high school curriculum from the first part of the college curriculum. It seems to me quite impossible to close this gap until we have something more in the nature of unification of administration. I believe, therefore, that one of the most significant implications of the junior college movement is to bring about a closer correlation between the high school on the one hand and college, work on the other. One of the unfortunate [P. 10] results of this lack of unification at the present time is the repetition of subject matter and the consequent waste of time which practically every student is subjected to. This waste of time has been reliably estimated by Professor L. V. Kobos, in his recent book on the junior college, as equivalent to a half of the school year. Such a waste is a terrific price to pay for the preservation of the traditional organization of secondary and higher education in this country. Another important implication in this movement is the possible diversification of the educational program immediately following high school graduation. It has been commonly assumed that the chief function of the junior college would be to undertake the first two years of the regular four-year college course, including such pre-professional courses of study as the pre-medical and pre-legal groups. I have no doubt that this will always be one of the main functions of junior colleges. On the other hand, I am of the opinion that the field of so-called semi-professional education will ultimately attract a larger number of students. This field is as yet almost entirely unorganized and in many instances not even identified. I am confident that it is a very large one. The vocational education program in the public high school is not entirely successful, in part because the students are as yet too young to know what vocations they actually wish to enter. Consequently some who are not really qualified. continue their general cultural education. At the same time, the independent vocational and semi-professional schools are usually regarded as being outside the educational pale. The public junior college, therefore, should be in a position to continue the vocational education which has been begun in the high school and offer additional courses on a semiprofessional level in technical, agricultural, nursing and home economics education. There is indeed scarcely any end to the variety of work which could be offered along these and other lines.

I am interested in the development of junior colleges largely because of the possible good effects which would come to the present colleges and universities. This development would enable these institutions to devote their energies and resources more largely to advanced graduate and professional work instead of, as at present, spending their efforts largely on the freshmen and sophomores. I believe that this would have a profound influence on the. standards of the work accomplished at these institutions. In the next place, it would tend to reduce the emphasis on social and intercollegiate athletic activities. These activities largely grow out of the youthful enthusiasm of freshmen and sophomores. By subtracting these students in part from the present colleges and universities, the serious attitude of the professional student would more largely dominate the campus. Such a change in the atmosphere of most of our institution,; would be distinctly beneficial.

Finally, I believe that the establishment of more and more junior colleges in towns and cities which are large enough to support them and to provide adequate enrollment would enable us to reach a larger proportion of our population with these additional facilities in higher education. Such an extension of higher education should be regarded as very desirable. We have by no means reached the limit of those who should go to college. Indeed, I think that we are very likely to see the college population of the country doubled [P. 11] in a short time and I for one believe that it will be distinctly beneficial.

I do not wish to close, however, without sounding a warning that junior college work should be upon a high standard of performance. The present enthusiasm for junior colleges may result in the establishment of such institutions in places which are too small to support them or to provide an adequate enrollment. I believe, therefore, that it would be desirable for each state in the Union to set up standards for such institutions. As soon as these junior colleges are able to satisfy these standards I believe that the state should offer a substantial subsidy to them. Such a procedure is justified by reason of the fact that the state has seen fit to support what we now call higher education in state institutions. Any relief which the municipalities provide in the way of support for the municipal junior colleges reduces the state's obligation to that extent and therefore justifies partial though not complete state support.

Contributor: RP

Last Updated: July 4, 1999