CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY COLLEGES

Abstract

The California community colleges are among the nation's oldest and largest. This article describes their origins, major events in their development, and possible future prospects. Having begun as Grades 13 and 14 in unified school districts, they were declared an integral part of California's tripartite system of public higher education in the 1960 Master Plan for California Higher Education. In 1968, they were removed from the jurisdiction of the State Board ofEducation and placed under a new appointed board of governors for the community colleges, with its own chancellor and staff – not as a system of colleges, but with a still‐evolving process of shared governance with locally elected trustees, district and college administrators, faculty, students, and others. Transfer and occupational education persist as dominant functions, with remediation, basic skills development, and English as a second language for the colleges' ever more diversified student body. The colleges' already broad vocational‐technical education mission may expand in both scope and magnitude in the future, in response to federal proposals for changes in both welfare and job training programs.