This past weekend, the New York Times Education Life section included a portfolio,
The Disrupters, that explored a series of “disruptive innovations” in higher education. These innovations range from those quite likely to be adopted on a broader scale (e.g., competency-based education) to those less likely (e.g., Minerva Schools). Read together, the stories present a single and fairly convincing message: regardless of how one feels about the changes taking place, higher education is in the midst of significant upheaval that has the potential to reshape the academy.
So, the question becomes how to respond to these disruptions? I’d suggest that the history of the community college would encourage us to keep ourselves open to them. We work in a sector of higher education that first emerged as a disruption itself. To put it another way, we were disruptively innovative before being disruptively innovative was cool.
When (then) junior colleges were in their infancy, some thought little of their standing in higher education. Harvard’s President A. Lawrence Lowell remarked of two-year colleges: “One of the merits of these new institutions will be [the] keeping out of college, rather than the leading into it, [of] young people who have no taste for higher education.” But others saw real potential. William Rainey Harper, President of the University of Chicago, presaged great things that could come of junior colleges: “Today only 10% of those who finish high school continue the work in college. If the high schools were to provide work for two additional years, at least 40% of those finishing the first four years would continue until the end of the sophomore year [of college].” For decades, junior colleges hovered on the fringes of higher education.
But then, World War II ended, and America found itself with thousands and thousands of returning soldiers who wanted to use their new Servicemen’s Readjustment Act benefits (another disruptive innovation) to go to college. Colleges did not have the capacity to admit this sudden influx of students, and to be frank, many did not want to admit them either. Faced with this dilemma, President Harry Truman convened an education commission that eventually produced a groundbreaking report, “Higher Education for American Democracy” (1947). The authors of that report found an answer to the need for greater higher education access in the disruptive innovation also known as the junior college. They modified that designation, calling for the establishment of a network of public community colleges that would charge little or no tuition, serve as cultural centers, be comprehensive in their program offerings with an emphasis on civic responsibilities and would serve the specific needs of the areas in which they were located.
This report marked one of the first uses of the term “community colleges,” and it led -- from that day forward -- to our institutions being cast as “Democracy’s Colleges.”
Community colleges, once marginalized as “junior” and rarely enrolling more than 100 or so students, suddenly became a significant force in providing access to ever greater numbers of students. Throughout 1950s and '60s, when community colleges opened in areas previously without public higher education, college enrollment increased dramatically ─ sometimes by as much as 50%. More than 450 community colleges opened in the 1960s and '70s, with enrollment growing ever more rapidly after the passage of another disruptive piece of legislation, the Higher Education Act of 1965.
It’s almost impossible now to recall a time when students did not have the access and opportunity provided by community colleges, or when veterans did not receive education benefits, or when students did not receive federal financial aid. Yet, those days are not so long ago. Just as few would have ever predicted the rapid rise of community colleges in the second half of the 20th century, few may be able to predict the next big, successful disruption in higher education. But, we have an obligation to assure that whatever it is, it is just as focused as community colleges on providing access to quality higher education and turning that access into opportunity. Whatever innovation comes next, it will have an extraordinary legacy of success to live up to!
What will be the next successful disruption in higher education? Please share your ideas on the
blog.