The Effect of Community Junior Colleges on the Proportion of the Local Population Who Seek Higher Education

Abstract

THIS REPORT compares the changes in the proportion of local populations that seek post high school education in areas with newly created public community junior colleges and in areas without public junior colleges. One of the objectives of the community junior college movement is to overcome the geographic, economic, and motivational barriers which con tribute to the failure of students to enroll in insti tutions of higher education. The junior college movement attacks these barriers by providing local, low-cost, open-door educational facilities. That economic and geographic factors do act as barriers to college attendance is evidenced by studies of the junior college population. Florida students indicate that these factors are impor tant. In fact, forty-eight percent report that they attended a particular junior college because of its proximity to their homes. Twenty-seven percent report that cost was a major factor in the deci sion to attend a junior college (4). In the past five years, Florida has moved rap idly towards the development of a comprehensive public community junior college system. The enrollment of this system grew from 5736 in 1957(1) to 38,210 in 1962(2). However, the State of Florida is also growing. It is one of the fastest growing states in terms of population. This could mean that instead of meet ing the needs of a different section of the popula tion, the community junior colleges are merely taking up the excessive growth that the univer sities cannot handle. If this is true, the propor tion of the local population that enrolls in higher education will not increase even though the num ber of students enrolling does increase. This study was conducted to determine whether or not the junior colleges do in fact affect the pro portion of the local population who enroll in post high school educational institutions. This is a matter that cannot be decided merely by counting heads or by calculating ratios of enrollment to population for the State or the Nation. It can be decided by comparing locales having new public junior colleges with control locales that have no public junior colleges. Evidence on this matter can be obtained by controlled comparison in which changes are revealed in the proportion of the pop ulation attending institutions of higher education when low-cost, local facilities become available. This study was also designed to estimate the effect of a junior college on the proportion of the local population that plans to extend their educa tion beyond high school. Such estimates are quite valuable in predicting future enrollments. If the beginning of a new junior college increases the proportion of the local population which enrolls in college, then these new junior colleges not only satisfy the present demand for educational insti tutions but actually create new demand.