Southern and "border" States plus Massachusetts, where the State university and M.I.T. share instructional funds.

A third major Federal act affecting the Land-Grant system, passed in 1914, created the Cooperative Extension Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and The Land-Grant institutions, with the mission of carrying the results of research in agriculture and family life into practice on the farms and in the homes. This educational service – financed by a combination of Federal, State, and local and private funds - today reaches millions of families in rural, suburban, and urban areas annually (including more than five million youngsters in the 4-H Club movement) and is represented in virtually every county of the United States.

Several privately controlled colleges and universities bore the Land-Grant designation under the Morrill Act, and some still do. Yale, Brown, and Dartmouth were for varying periods LandGrant institutions, for example; Cornell nas been the Land-Grant institution of New York from its founding, and in Massachusetts the private Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Stateoperated University of Massachusetts have shared the designation for more than a century. In Vermont, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey existing private nstitutions were given the Land-Grant designations. With time these assumed a Bubstantial identity with other State universities, though some are technically of a mixed public-private character.

Viewed in the perspective of history, the great virtues of the Land-Grant College Act would clearly include its ambiguity, its diversity of purpose, its omission of any ight "set of rules" as to purpose and nethod of operation so characteristic of ater legislation in the field of education. The consequence has been an affirmative ather than a negative revolution in higher ducation. The institutions involved were equired to emphasize hitherto neglected reas, but were warned not to "exclude" ubjects-such as the classics raditionally stressed by established American colleges. They were to meet the lemand for more "practical" education, but the language of the act inextricably inked this aspect of learning to "liberal" ducation, in a governing phrase that poke of "liberal and practical ducation

in the several pursuits and ›rofessions of life."

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of subject matter. Postsecondary enrollments in the United States no longer represent a particular stratum of society, and college and university chairs in many subjects now universally considered academically respectable were initiated in Land-Grant institutions.

Today these institutions constitute about five percent of the total number of American colleges and universities offering four or more years of postsecondary study, enroll about a quarter of all the students attending these colleges and universities, and grant more than half of all degrees awarded in the United States at the highest or doctoral level.

As the Declaration of Independence signified the determination of Americans to sever the political ties that bound them to the monarchical and hierarchical societies they had emigrated to escape, so the Land-Grant College Acts signified a "declaration of independence" for education. Thus taking as its benchmark the pre-Constitution law asserting that "schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged," an 1890 study by the U.S. Office of Education said that "next to the Ordinance of 1787, the Congressional Grant of 1862 is the most important educational enactment in America." Sixty years later an analyst for the Hoover Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of Government, Hollis P. Allen, pointed out that "The general support for resident instruction of the Land-Grant Colleges is sometimes referred to as the most effective grant in aid ever made by the Federal Government." Similar tribute was paid in a 1953 report of the National Manpower Council, affiliated with Columbia

University, which declared that "The most important single step in connection with the training of scientific and professional personnel was the Morrill Act of 1862 which laid the basis for the country's extensive state college and university system."

Beyond its impact on the character of higher education, the collegiate system Senator Morrill did so much to create has made a major contribution to our national security. Out of his specification that "military training" be offered in the LandGrant institutions, there gradually developed the idea of the Reserve Officers Training Corps, which ultimately involved a wide range of colleges and universities as well as the Land-Grant group. The existence of this system prior to World War II was credited by Gen. George C. Marshall with shortening mobilization (and thus the war) by six months, and saving thousands of lives.

Perhaps the most impressive tributes to the significance of the educational revolution inaugurated by the Morrill and subsequent Acts, however, are those of emulation. Domestically, the changes called for by Senator Morrill have been widely accepted by all segments of American higher education. Internationally, other countries seeking to capture the secret of the remarkable success of the United States in improving the lives of its people have introduced most of the features of the Land-Grant system into their own systems of higher education. This is particularly true in the developing nations, where the "Land-Grant idea" is America's most sought after educational export.

The contributions of the Morrill Acts were perhaps most succinctly summed up in three points emphasized in the report of the Council of State Governments cited earlier: First, thanks to the Land-Grant system it is now generally agreed "that higher education should be made available to broad segments of the population"; second, "education in the applied sciences technical and vocational education generally now have wide recognition and status'; and third, "the performance of broad public services and participation in activities designed to serve both immediate and long range needs of society are generally accepted as proper and important functions of institutions of higher education." And the report added : "These trends toward democratization of higher education, thus begun, continue strong today..."

-RUSSELL I. THACKREY

Executive Director-Emeritus, National Associa tion of State Universities and Land Grant colleges hey have been called

T "people's colleges,"

"commuter colleges," and "democracy's colleges" by observers seeking to capture the special character of those uniquely American educational institutions, our public community and junior colleges.

By whatever name, they have made a substantial impact on the shape of postsecondary education in this country. And they have done so in a relatively short period of time not quite 75 years in terms of when the first of them came into being, perhaps 25 years if one considers the period of greatest growth and expansion. Their essence is the American ideal of equal opportunity for all, and their role has been that of opening channels for further education to greater numbers of Americans than could have been accommodated in more traditional institutions.

Formal steps to establish the two-year "junior" college as a new entity in higher education can be traced back to 1892 and the late William Rainey Harper, first president of the "reorganized" University of Chicago, though the germ of the idea had been expressed even before then. Early in the 1850s Henry Tappan, president of the University of Michigan, referred to the notion that the first two years of college might well be separated from the last two in some special kind of arrangement, and much the same idea was also

recommended a few years later by William Watts Folwell, president of the University of Minnesota.

It was Dr. Harper, however, who put the concept into action by establishing at the University of Chicago a "university college" (covering the junior and senior years) and an "academic college" (covering the freshman and sophomore years). These designations were subsequently changed to "senior" and "junior" college, and the latter term became generic, for Dr. Harper also sought to encourage the establishment of a network of public two-year postsecondary institutions, envisioning that

they might be developed as an extension of the offerings of local school districts. Today the State of Illinois has some 50 public community junior colleges including one bearing his name.

The public community junior college "movement" may be said to have started when Dr. Harper suggested to school authorities in nearby Joliet that they undertake to offer two years of classwork beyond high school, with the understanding that the students who successfully completed this work could be accepted by the University of Chicago in its "senior college." Dr. Harper's basic concern was to strengthen the university by assuring a supply of mature and purposive students, but he also foresaw potential benefits to education generally and to the higher education community in particular by providing a way by which those fouryear colleges that were having difficulty keeping afloat could consolidate their resources by becoming two-year colleges. In any case, the ultimate result was the creation in 1901 of Joliet Junior College by the Joliet Township High School Board.

T

he idea of linking high school and college quickly caught on and for many years was standard. California's ubiquitous community colleges, for example, were until recently so closely tied to the secondary schools that both often operated under the same administrators. The development of junior colleges as part of the public school system of that State was in particular championed by Alexis F. Lange in his capacity as head of the department of education at the University of California. Dr. Lange and others also stressed the need for a departure from the traditional "academic" approach -- the need to offer both general and vocational education specifically addressed to students who might not necessarily be interested in attending college for four years.

Meanwhile the junior college movement was receiving its principal impetus from private two-year institutions, though they may variously have been called academies, seminaries, finishing schools, or the like. The first private junior college would appear to have antedated the first public

junior college, as represented by Joliet, and in any case, these private two-year schools flourished during the early part of the current century. Even as late as 1930 they outnumbered the public junior colleges 258 to 178.

It was the latter, however, that were destined to dominate, a consequence that had its roots in far-reaching changes in public attitudes and the society's needs. Greater concern developed over the traditional exclusivity of much of higher education and a greater interest in equalizing educational opportunities at all levels. In educational circles and in the public arena alike, there was a call to provide new kinds of school experiences attuned to the individual interests and goals of the students involved while at the same time responding to the Nation's manpower requirements. The advent of a technological age was creating an increasing demand for better trained people for industry, in business, in the health fields, indeed in all aspects of the American world of work. Concomitantly, there was increasing insistence that every individual be enabled to pursue education as far as his abilities and ambition would carry him. The four-year colleges and universities, however, were confronted by such an enrollment boom, receiving far more applications than they could handle. that they began to tighten their admissions requirements.

This combination of forces found in the public community junior college a natural meetingplace. One result, beginning in the 1950s, was the emergence of these institutions as a major phenomenon ultimately attracting perhaps half of all students entering postsecondary education. Another, as they began to proliferate, was the development of various new arrangements for their governance and a more precise definition of their role. New patterns of control and financing began to emerge, often accompanied by provisions for more direct involvement of the community. Thus in California, where community and junior colleges once were wedded firmly to the local school systems, there has been a trend toward the establishment of separate, discrete districts with both local and State support. Pennsylvania uses another model. The operating expenses of a college are equally shared by the students, the State, and the local sponsor (a county, a municipality, a school district, or any combination of these); capital costs are borne equally by the State and the local school district. In Virginia and Florida, control and support are the responsibility primarily of the States. In general the goal has been to institute control and support patterns attuned to the particular State's needs.

hese shifts have been accompanied

by the development of a manif the role of the community junior college. Until not so very long ago - and perhaps to some degree even now such an institution was typically thought of as a stop-gap method of starting on a four-year program, a transfer mechanism for those who could not make it into a more "respectable" college. Similarly, members

of the community often proclaimed that their new two-year institution was simply an interim arrangement preparatory to a more satisfying expression of local pride in the form of a "regular" four-year college.

While many students continue to use these institutions as the starting place for their pursuit of a baccalaureate – as Dr. Harper had suggested - the community junior college has today established its own identity, generating its own share of local pride and serving as a focal point for overall community development. In the process it is also preparing thousands and thousands of people for a wide range of careers that neither require nor need four years of advanced training.

By its convenience and by the relatively low costs it imposes on students, the community junior colleges have opened up opportunities for postsecondary education for those that traditionally have been denied them members of minority

groups being one noteworthy example. Older Americans have found in these institutions a new resource for retraining or for general intellectual and cultural stimulation. The ambitious young high school graduate can take courses applicable to the ultimate award of an A.B. degree or enter training that would lead to a good job at the end of two years or so. From timber-falling to computer technology, from nursing and police training to English literature and art appreciation, there is something for just about everybody.

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he result has been such a wave of interest that in the late 1950s and during the 1960s, new community junior colleges were brought into being at a rate of nearly one a week. Enrollments rose from one million to more than three million in a little more than a decade. Today, with 937 public two-year colleges in operation, plus 228 conducted under private auspices, the number of new institutions being established has leveled off at about 12 annually, and total enrollments now stand at about 3,144,000.

Numerical growth has meanwhile been replaced by an expanded view of functions to be served. These functions continue to include standard academic courses plus considerable emphasis on education "a little out of the ordinary." Equally important, however, the community junior college seeks to serve as a general resource center for the population area it serves – as a force for mobilizing and catalyzing the efforts of a wide range of local agencies, institutions, and groups toward resolving community issues and problems. The campus and the community in effect become one.

The community junior college has in short evolved into an instrument of liberation in a society where opportunity for education means opportunity to lead a truly productive and satisfying life. It has thus set out not only to respond to change but to influence the directions that change may take.

-EDMUND J. GLEAZER, JR.

President, American Association of Community and Junior Colleges

prominent university

A president said it

would open postsecondary education to a floodtide of unqualified students and consequently depress academic standards. Another called it a “threat" to the cause of higher learning and added that in any case "education is not a device for coping with mass unemployment." A Harvard economist believed it "carried the principle of democratization too far." A spokesman for the military said the debate over it was bootless, since projections indicated that no more than seven percent of those eligible would sign up anyway. Thus toward the end of World War II, amid doubt and some acrimony, the Nation signed an I.O.U. to be collected on demand by members of the Armed Forces when hostilities ceased. It was a promissory note equally applicable to 15 million military personnel whether, by chance or training, they had risked their lives on the Normandy beaches, flown overloaded transports across the Hump to Burma, slogged through the jungles of the South Pacific, or fought the paper war back home.

Officially Congress called it the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 and included in it incentives for veterans housing, insurance, pensions, medical benefits, and of course education. Unofficially this remarkable piece of legislation became known as the GI Bill of Rights, and its education benefits changed forever the Nation's notions about who should go to college in America.

The veterans quickly established themselves as a new breed of college student. The war had afforded them a look beyond the limited opportunities in New England mill towns, Alabama tenant farms, Detroit slums, and Texas barrios. They came home war-tested and mature, with a cool awareness of what they wanted to make of themselves and a no-nonsense determination to get on with it. Education was the key, and the GI Bill a way to help pay the freight. The Bill was not a free ride, designed to foot the entire cost. The

veterans - many from poor families, many the first in their families to aspire to higher education - stretched their dollars, took odd jobs, and made do. Some flocked to liberal arts, technical, and professional schools. Thousands of others went the route of vocational and on-the-job training programs.

In cashing in their I.O.U.'s they confounded the experts. No more than 640,000 veterans in all, it had been predicted, would ever use their GI college benefits and no more than 150,000 would be enrolled full-time in any single academic year. In fact, however, the peak year of 1947 saw nearly 1,150,000 GIs crowding the Nation's campuses. By 1955 the number of ex-service men and women who had gone to college under the Bill reached 2.2 million - 14.3 percent of all World War II veterans. During the 194555 decade, another 3.5 million studied at schools below the college level. Adding onthe-job and farm-related training, 48 percent of all veterans over seven million men and women used their GI education benefits.

The veterans also defied predictions of how they would perform in the classroom. It had been assumed that being more mature than the typical student, they would be serious about their studies, and

so they were. It was also assumed that they would fare poorly in an academic sense and would be unwilling to put up with the discipline involved in higher learning. Those who were married were expected to have a particularly tough time.

P

resident Conant of Harvard, however, was subsequently to observe that veterans were "the most mature and promising students Harvard ever had." More particularly, a 1968 report on the GI Bill by the Syracuse University Research Institute noted that almost all studies made of it "have concluded that the veteran earned higher grades than did his nonveteran classmates." Moreover, the report added, "Thirty percent of all veterans were married and ten percent had children when they started their education; yet these veterans usually earned higher grades than single veterans."

The Syracuse analysis went on to relate some of the broader implications of such findings as these to the conduct of higher education generally. Veterans who were first generation college students demonstrated that a far greater proportion of the Nation's youth could profit from postsecondary education than previously had been envisaged. Veterans had a major impact on the balance between public and private college enrollment: Whereas the majority of prewar students went to private institutions, by 1968 only a third did so. Veterans made the married student an accepted member of the academic community. And by their unprecedented enrollments and their demand for more pragmatic instruction, veterans forced higher education to re-examine its objectives, facilities, and methods toward adjusting to students outside the conventional mold.

ard on the heels of the World War II veterans came those involved in Korea. For them the Congress enacted a new piece of legislation, followed in 1966 by the Cold War GI Bill covering Vietnam veterans (and for the first time providing opportunities for college training to men and women on active duty).

For whatever reasons – perhaps because they were fewer in number than those of World War II, perhaps because jobs in 1954 were easier to find - the proportion of Korean veterans using their GI benefits for education was just under 42 percent, as contrasted with the 48 percent of the previous decade. With Vietnam veterans. however, it's a different story. The Veterans Administration says the Vietnam participation rate already exceeds that of Korean veterans and ultimately can be expected to go well beyond that of the veterans of World War II.

Together the I.O.U.'s represented by the three GI Bills have been collected by no less than 27.5 million men and women, and in the process postsecondary education has been given a bracing new dimension.

-STORY MOOREFIELD

OE's Office of Public Affairs sta