Community, Technical, and Junior Colleges: Are They Leaving Higher Education?

In 1981 this journal published an article by Cross which described America's community colleges as the plateau [7]; in 1983 a follow-up article by McCartan [16] attempted to identify the community colleges' current mission and to predict the future mission. In 1985 Cross continued her speculation about future directions and missions for the community college [6] and Tillery and Deegan identified a fifth generation of community colleges [26]. This article continues that re-examination of community college mission. Ample evidence exists to support the fact of change in the function and mission of community, technical, and junior colleges, but the direction of that change is not clear nor has a clear concensus on current or future mission emerged. While change in mission is occurring, the debate over mission has been slow to develop. We believe continued debate on mission would be constructive. We also believe that the weight of the available evidence indicates a drift or evolution of that mission in a direction with potentially significant consequences for all of higher education. We propose to identify the direction of drift and to indicate areas of concern. We hope to further stimulate the discussion of mission for the community college so that planned change, not institutional drift or mission erosion, will determine the future mission(s) of the community, technical, and junior college. Change has been a constant in the landscape of American higher education, and no segment of higher education has changed as much or as rapidly as the junior college then community/junior college, now community, technical, and junior college. Higher education continues to respond to social, demographic, and economic shifts. Notable recent responses have been the evolution from more to less academic emphasis [20] and from less to more occupa-