Transformation of the Community Colleges for the 21st Century

Clark Kerr (cited in Brint & Karabel, 1989) called the community college the great educational innovation of 20th-century American higher education. From its humble beginnings in the early 1900s to the present day, the community college has become a critical component of the educational system. Today well over 5 million students enroll (44% of all U.S. undergraduates) in over 1,100 public 2-year colleges in all 50 states (Phillippe, 1998). The emphasis on achieving mobility through education, particularly higher education, is distinctly American. To this day no other society sends as many of its young people to colleges and universities as the United States does. At the center of this ef-