Junior college
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A junior college is a two-year post-secondary school whose main purpose is to provide a method of obtaining academic, vocational and professional education. The highest certificate offered by these institutions is usually an associate's degree, although many junior college students continue their education at a university or college, transferring some or all of the credit earned at the junior college toward the degree requirements at the four year school.
The term junior college was previously used to refer to all non-bachelor's degree granting post-secondary schools. Over the last 30 years, the name junior college was often thought to have negative connotations with respect to the education received by its students. A junior college is often looked at as "a high school with ashtrays". Since many public junior colleges in the United States served a more localized community, these schools began to replace the "junior" in their names with "community". With the advent of the term community college for public institutions, in the United States the term junior college is often explicitly used to refer to private institutions. However, the relative small number of private junior colleges and the continued use of the term in the names of many community colleges means that people often do not perceive a distinction between the two terms, and thus they are interchangeable in casual speech.
Junior colleges originated in the Chautauqua movement in late 19th century New York State. By the turn of the century, groups from established colleges and universities would travel around the nation, visiting small towns that did not have access to upper level schools, to offer eight to ten week course on subjects such as the arts, science and literature.
According to one website, "In 1989, only 89 private two-year institutions were still in existence, accounting for less than 1% of the nation's two-year college students." [1]
