13 However, extreme care was taken to assure the essential accuracy of quotations and illustrations. (Indeed, I would often restate, or read to, individual teachers, their comments as a check on their fidelity.) Where a single quotation or comment is reflective of the views of many, this has been indicated. Special thanks go to those administrators of the colleges visited for their quick understanding of the intent of this study, and for their unvarying courtesy and cooperation. Most especially, however, appreciation is given to those hundreds of teachers who gave their time and thoughtful, frank responses to the questions posed to them. To the extent that this report may be useful to our junior colleges (and, in other ways, to four-year colleges and universities), these faculty are responsible. Where statements may be in error, or possibly misleading or distorted, these reflect my own lack of knowledge of local situations: One does not become an expert on an area's problems or even the problems of a single college faculty with a visit measured in days. And in no sense, either, was there any attempt or intention to "evaluate" any institution. This would have been presumptuous and would have destroyed the validity of the study. Obviously, given the limitations of a study of this kind, more questions are raised or implied than are answered. Clearly, some of these questions have serious import for the future quality of junior college education. Others may be peripheral or temporary. Whatever the measure of their pertinence, they deserve the thoughful consideration of all those who are concerned with the development and maturity of the junior college in this country. ROGER H. GARRISON Project Director and Staff Associate 14 GENERAL CATEGORIES OF COLLEGES (Subcategories are not listed) 1. A college in a large city system (one unit in a multiunit organization under one central administration) 2. A college in an urban area, with a broad community college concept and programs 3. A multicampus district, with already-planned additional campuses. 4. A private, church-related college 5. A rapidly growing college in an essentially nonurban area 6. A technical college or institute 7. A nonurban college, with administrative organization still a part of the public school system 8. A college moving with difficulty toward establishment of greater local control, separate board of trustees, and greater local financial support 9. A two-year, independent college for women. 10. A rapidly growing public college, one of a state system, with state board and local advisory committees 11. An independent college moving toward public support. 12. A coeducational, largely residential college 15 Section One: 1 THE TEACHER AND THE SETTING IN WHICH HE WORKS Junior College Teacher - AS A PERMANENT CAREER In the course of hundreds of interviews and discussions on twenty varied campuses over a period of nearly ten months, the impression (indeed, the conviction) deepened that the junior college teacher is or may be becoming - a new breed of instructor in higher education. Markedly different in significant ways from the usual situation of his four-year colleagues are his conditions of instruction, his aims, and his professional-philosophical attitudes toward his task. Not simply a post-high-school instructor of grades thirteen and fourteen, he is, in his own desire and view, a colleague in a new kind of collegiate effort, as yet ill-defined and in furious flux. He is unsure of his status in the educational spectrum, for he fits few traditional categories. He is aware that he is being asked to function professionally in an unprecedented situation, and he is deeply concerned about this professionalism, in the best sense of that term. He is the servant of several demanding masters, and he is groping to bring such demands into a compatibility, a coherence, that will give his work a clear rationale and thrust that will command his loyalty and his long-range commitment. His situation in the public colleges is unprecedented, in part, because he is being asked to implement a policy he had no part in formulating: namely, the "open-door," or "after-high-school-education-for-everyone-who-wants-it." Indeed, by now, this is less a policy than it is a national aspiration and expectation. The consequence, of course, is that neither the faculty member nor his institution has 16 much effective screening control over students admitted to the colleges. "All kinds" come to the junior colleges, and the teacher's mandate is to instruct "all kinds," and at a level reputable enough to be termed "higher education." The optimists' view is that this presents an especially challenging set of teaching problems, demanding innovative solutions and superior instruction. The pessimists (and many of their four-year colleagues) are appalled and, in moments of special discouragement or cynicism, term the junior colleges "baby-sitting" institutions, or devices for "keeping floods of young people off the labor market for two more years." Neither extreme, of course, is wholly valid. But the fact remains that traditional teacher-expectations of freshman and sophomore students are simply not applicable in most junior colleges. Instead of relative homogeneity of backgrounds and abilities, the instructor faces heterogeneity of a really extraordinary sort. Instead of "usual" collegiate motivations in students, teachers deal with motives-forbeing-in-college ranging from immediate employability to fantasy notions about careers wholly unrelated to the obvious abilities (or lack of them) brought by the student to his college experience. In the comprehensive community colleges, where the bulk of students attend, no one is resident: everyone, including faculty, is a commuter. Typically, students still "go home at night," just as they did in high school and this often poses special challenges which will be alluded to later. Also, because of the ebb-and-flow of the college population, campus life, as it has traditionally been thought of, simply does not exist. Student organizations find difficulty retaining identity, functions, and membership. Strong faculty advisory leadership is required in extracurricular areas. These are some of the elements that make the junior college teacher's situation "unprecedented." Other elements are more appropriately referred to in other sections of this report. How may the junior college teacher be characterized? He is student-centered rather than subject-centered. He accepts and gladly works with students of an extraordinary range of abilities and motivations, ranging from the 17 obviously-doomed-to-flunk student, who entered the junior college for lack of anything better to do, to the occasionally very bright and even brilliant student who, for reasons of his own, chose to begin his collegiate career in the local public college. The teacher's pedagogical challenges are many-layered and complex: How to present college-level material in such ways that the four-year college transfer student will derive full value from it; yet at the same time, prevent the watering-down or oversimplifying of subject matter for the dull or under prepared student whose aims are either unrealistic fantasies, or nonexistent? How to give personal attention and needed help to students without crossing the subtle line into mollycoddling? How to cope with increasing class numbers without mechanizing instruction? How to keep up-to-date in his subject? How (in the case of vocational instructors) to produce employable graduates and at the same time provide them with as much general education as possible? How to spend the major portion of his energies and attention in actual instruction — and yet not lose that needful core of scholarly work that keeps his teaching fresh and pertinent to his students' needs and the developments in the discipline? And how, given the variety of student abilities and the pressure of their numbers, to break away from traditional freshman-sophomore instruction to new concepts and techniques? What sort of teacher seems to be required? A dean of instruction, and former veteran teacher, described the qualities he looks for in hiring instructors. Primarily, he said, there must be a basic articulateness: an ability to speak clearly and directly to a point at issue. Second, and of equal importance, is a capacity to explain, to illustrate, to interpret a point, and a willingness to work with student questions, no matter how elementary they might sometimes be. Third, the teacher needs a kind of "command presence," by which he meant a sufficient force of personality to convince students on early meeting that here is a teacher who not only knows what he is talking about, but is willing and even eager to communicate it. Well down the list of qualifications was a kind of academic standing, in the usual sense of degrees and accumulated |