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This gap between intention and reality stems from a problem of social prestige: youngsters are under increasing pressure from parents and peers to enter the professions. Few will admit at the outset that they may not really be interested, are not bright enough, or lack the money for professional training. Probably more students should be steered into the technical track at the beginning. But too often the community college teacher is as prestige-conscious as his students, and tends to shun nonacademic assignments. "Psychologically, there's even more strain on the faculty than on the students," observes Lyman Glenny, associate director of the Illinois Board of Higher Education. "The faculty is more given to snobbishness among its liberal arts people."
Teachers Who Teach. The strain is so great that Medsker foresees a major decision within five years on whether the junior colleges will continue to perform both academic and vocational functions. He argues strongly for continuing the present system because a combined institution is more economical and avoids a "scarring" experience for the student who otherwise might flunk out of a four-year college, then enter a technical school. Flushed with their liberal arts success, some of the nation's junior colleges are already converting to regular four-year institutions —a trend that most educators earnestly deplore, since the community college then loses its own special functions, and too often becomes merely another second-rate four-year college.
Horace T. Morse, dean of the University of Minnesota's General College, sees the junior colleges as paradoxically good at teaching. The universities, he notes, "emphasize research to the exclusion of the teaching function. Undergraduates need the teaching of mature, seasoned and experienced major professors." The junior college—so long scoffed at as inferior (and still generally derided in private college-conscious New England)—often gets the inspiring classroom performers who love to teach and who consider paper-publishing strictly extracurricular. And while the universities have "fragmented and specialized" their liberal arts instruction, Dean Morse says, the field is wide open for the junior college to provide a much-needed "integration of learning" in more "pervasive" courses of instruction.
Federal Help. Despite the rapid growth of the community colleges, U.S. Commissioner of Education Francis Keppel finds that "they have not expanded at the dramatic rate needed for the increasing population of students— we are just beginning." A considerably bigger boost will come from a 1963 education bill, just now being implemented, by which $232 million this year and $464 million next year will be granted to help build college facilities, 22% of it going to public junior colleges. While the bulk of financial support for such public colleges still comes from funds of local communities, state aid is generally increasing. At the same time, administration of these colleges is shifting away from the regular local school boards to independent college boards—a trend that provides a desirable separation from the high school.