In the United States, community colleges (once commonly called junior colleges), are primarily two-year public institutions of tertiary education. Many community colleges also offer remedial education, GEDs, high school diplomas, technical degrees and certificates, and a limited number of 4-year degrees. After graduating from a community college, most students transfer to a university or liberal arts college to complete a bachelors degree, while others enter the workforce.
During the Great Recession (2007-2009), community colleges faced state budget cuts amid increases in enrollment, and community colleges raised student tuition. With enrollments decreasing, lower budgets at community colleges continues with increasing reliance on adjunct professors, who are paid less, typically receive few employment benefits, and face greater uncertainty of continued employment semester to semester.
Community colleges received attention in 2015 after President Barack Obama proposed making community college tuition free to many residents of the US in his State of the Union Address. The plan, called "America’s College Promise," rekindled a nationwide conversation on community colleges and the funding of higher education in general. The proposed program would cover tuition only; non-tuition items (e.g., textbooks, supplies, transportation, and room and board for those wishing to live on campus) would not be covered.
Community college enrollment has declined every year since 2010. According to the National Student Clearinghouse, enrollment at public two-year institutions was 5,445,562 students in Fall 2018, a 3.2 percent drop from the previous year. The total decline in enrollment from 2010 to 2018 was more than 1.5 million students. These declines have been mitigated through increased participation by high school students using dual enrollment.
Community college tuition is free in several states to qualified individuals, through College Promise programs. College Promise has been instituted in Mississippi, Indiana, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Missouri, Delaware, and Tennessee.
Before the 1970s, community colleges were often referred as junior colleges, and that term is still used at some institutions and for athletics, specifically the NJCAA. However, the term "junior college" is now usually used to characterize private two-year institutions. The term "community college" has evolved to describe publicly funded two-year institutions. The main national advocacy organization for community colleges, which was founded in 1920 as the "American Association of Junior Colleges," changed its name in 1992 to the "American Association of Community Colleges".
Cohen and Brawer noted other names: city college, county college (in New Jersey), and branch campus. Other common components of the school name include vocational, technical, adult education and technical institute. Nicknames include "democracys college" and "opportunity college."
In several Californian cities and in other large cities such as Chicago, with its City Colleges of Chicago, community colleges are often called "city colleges", since they are municipally funded and designed to serve the needs of the residents of the city in which they are situated. Also, the states public two-year colleges are not solely found in its larger cities.
New York Citys network of community colleges was established outside of the CUNY system, and integrated into that system at the insistence of the state government. Another example is Westchester Community College. In the late 1940s, the county operated a popular vocational institute. The New York state government required that the county transform its technical institute into a community college. The county government resisted this transformation, as it would be responsible for a third of the new institutions operating costs (in contrast, the state paid for all of the technical institutes operating costs). After a series of very heated meetings, fully reported in the local press, the county was forced to conform to the state governments wishes.
The origins, purposes, and funding of public two-year colleges varies widely among the states and, as in California, within states. Because the role played by rural community colleges in preparing excess rural youth for productive careers in urban centers is not well understood by policy makers, these smaller institutions do not receive sufficient state funding to offset their weak tax bases and, because of their relatively small size, much higher per-student costs when compared to urban community colleges. This inequity in basic institutional funding has led to the creation of such organizations as the Community Colleges of Appalachia and the tribal college association, which have sought to promote more equitable funding irrespective of an institutions size or location.
Before 1850, a few public institutions offered two years of college: Lasell Junior College in Auburndale, Massachusetts, and Vincennes University of Vincennes, Indiana. Helland cites a section from the 1899 Vincennes University catalog: “The Vincennes University occupies a unique position in the educational field. It is half-way between the commissioned high school and the full-fledged college: it is in fact a junior college.”
Many early community colleges were normal schools that prepared school teachers. Primary emphasis was placed on traditional middle class values and developing responsible citizens. As an example, Normal Schools began in the State of Massachusetts in the 1880s as extensions of local high schools. They were originated to meet the need for teacher preparation. In Saint Joseph, Missouri, a Normal School was added to the local high school to provide a career track for women who wanted to teach. Mr. Whiteford, the area’s district superintendent, inquired of the University of Missouri to determine if credits from Saint Joseph Normal School could transfer into a baccalaureate program. The University’s President Dr. Hill acknowledged the request and provided for the articulation. Coincidentally, Dr. Hill was actively involved in the American Association of Universities and calling for the establishment of junior colleges for this purpose.
In Minnesota, St. Paul’s Public School District established a “City Training School” for preparing teachers. The 1883 school’s mission was to provide certified teachers and substitutes for the district. Mrs. M. E. Jenness from the Normal School at River Falls, Wisconsin, was the St. Paul School’s first principal; Mrs. N. F. Wheaton was the Director of Practice. Wheaton had been employed at the Oshkosh Normal School in Wisconsin. In Minneapolis, a Normal Training School was instituted in the fall of 1887. Miss Adele Evers of Manchester Normal School in New Hampshire was appointed the first teacher; she was one of six candidates for the position. Evers’ references included work at Martha’s Vineyard and Saratoga.
Baltimore’s Manual Training High School opened in 1884, was the first separate secondary school for education that was specifically work orientated. The Maryland institution was unique as a stand-alone campus. Other examples of sub-baccalaureate programs were the University Preparatory School and Junior College of Tonkawa. The result of the two- year schools founded in Oklahoma Public School Secondary System in 1902, both institutions later merged in 1914 and became the Oklahoma Institute of Technology. Dean Schneider of the University of Cincinnati developed an alternative high school with a cooperative plan where students spent one week in an occupation and the other in school. Industry provided the shop experiences and the classroom facilitated the academic. There were also non-cooperative high schools; two examples were the Girl’s Vocational High School in Kansas City, Missouri and the Delgado Trade School in New Orleans. A two-year, terminal education, was seen as more socially efficient for students who could advance past high school but not continue to attain bachelors degrees. This national vocational movement gave junior colleges a target population, but numerous students wanted more than a semiprofessional education; many maintained a desire to transfer. Throughout this time period, there was a move for more public two-year institutions along with a trend to separate from high schools and affiliate with higher education. With the change in affiliation came a new status which encouraged junior colleges to develop additional credibility through the creation of professional criteria and use of scientific methods.
Brint and Karabel conclude that “The two-year college has been a distinctively American creation, and nowhere else has it attained such prominence.” J. L. Ratcliff. suggests one perspective for the emergence of two-year post secondary institutions of the past century: they began in the private sector after the Panic of 1893. At that time of severe financial hardship J. M. Carroll, president of Baylor University, made a pragmatic suggestion to solve the problem of too many Baptist colleges with insufficient funds and not enough students to support them: reduce the smaller Baptist colleges’ curriculum to the freshman and sophomore years. After this preliminary period, Baylor University accepted the two-year students and provided the junior and senior years of their academic plan. Carroll hoped this split would require fewer faculty and resources for the first two years of higher education.
In the larger cities early public community colleges were often an extension of high schools, like the first established, Joliet Junior College, in Illinois in 1901. These initial community colleges generally were small (usually fewer than 200 students) and focused on a liberal arts education with the goal of transferring students to four-year colleges. They reflected high school needs and lacked a definite identity. These examples of two-year structure innovations with transfer missions in the private and public sector provided a pragmatic approach for the preservation of existing institutions.
Junior colleges grew in number from 20 in 1909 to 170 in 1919. By 1922, 37 states had set up 70 junior colleges, enrolling about 150 students each. Meanwhile, another 137 were privately operated, with about 60 students each. Rapid expansion continued in the 1920s, with 440 junior colleges in 1930 enrolling about 70,000 students. The peak year for private institutions came in 1949, when there were 322 junior colleges; 180 were affiliated with churches, 108 were independent non-profit, and 34 were private Schools run for-profit.
Many factors contributed to rapid growth of community colleges. Students parents and businessmen wanted nearby, low-cost schools to provide training for the growing white collar labor force and for more advanced technical blue collar jobs. Four-year colleges were also growing, but not as fast; however many were located in rural or small-town areas away from the fast-growing metropolis.
Several different movements supported the creation of community colleges, including local community support of public and private two-year institutions, the expansion of the public education system, increased professional standards for teachers, the vocational education movement, and an expanding demand for adult and community education. Numerous colleges and universities advocated for the development of junior colleges. Leadership felt small, private liberal arts colleges and high schools could provide the first two years of college while larger universities could focus resources on research and junior and senior level students.
During the 1920s and 1930s there was a shift in the purpose of community colleges to developing a workforce, which was influenced by wide unemployment during the Great Depression. Developing "semiprofessionals" became dominant national language to describe junior college students. The notion that engineers and supervisors make primary decisions about what and how activities were to be done in the workplace provided the origins for employees needed to carry out their decisions. This need for a class of workers to implement the decisions of the theoreticians demanded an educational delivery system other than the traditional four-year college or university. The closed shop of the artisan which had initially provided workers was no longer the educational program of choice. Nationally, a new two-year vehicle for educating the industrial worker found its launching within the secondary public school system under the leadership of local school districts.
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