The Indiana Story: How the Extension Movement Was Won

IntroductionIn the years following World War II, thousands of veterans returned to college, and the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 (the G.I. Bill) made it possible for many to have financial access to postsecondary education that would otherwise not have been available (Thelin, 2004). In fact, 2-year colleges of all types experienced phenomenal enrollment growth during the postwar years, and the democratic notion that Americans have access to postsecondary educational opportunities grew as more women, adult learners, people of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, people with disabilities, and low-income individuals enrolled in college for the first time (Carroll, 1999; Medsker & Tillery, 1971; Toffelson, 1994). Between 1958 and 1968, as many as 500 new community colleges were established; in the fall semester of 1967 alone, 70 community colleges enrolled students for the first time (Gleazer, 1968). During the 1950s and 1960s, "whenever a community college was established in a locale where there had been no publicly supported college, the proportion of high school graduates in that area who began college immediately increased, sometimes by as much as 50 percent" (Cohen & Brawer, 2008, p. 18). By the late 1960s, the 2-year colleges' share of total higher education enrollments rose to nearly 3 in 10 (up from 1 in 6 in 1955), and between 1960 and 1970, 2-year college enrollments more than tripled nationally, from 45 1 ,000 to 1 ,630,000 students throughout the United States (Brint & Karabel, 1989).Although new community colleges proliferated in most states across the nation during the 1950s and 1960s, Dougherty (1994) established that six states did not develop any new community college institutions and instead opted for one of the following other policy strategies to expand higher education: developing a university branch structure combined with technical institutes (Indiana and Maine), establishing 2-year colleges organized under the state university system (Hawaii, Kentucky, Alaska), or establishing technical institutes but no community colleges or university branches (South Dakota). In addition, several states established both community colleges and 2-year university branches (e.g., Connecticut, New Mexico, Ohio, and Pennsylvania). In another study, Katsinas, Johnson, and Snider (1999) investigated community college development in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, finding extensive variety in community college development and positing that state policies enabling the development of community colleges across the nation were integral to addressing the "access challenge of the 'baby boom'" (p. 11). In Indiana, as Katsinas et al. concluded, state interests outweighed local interests, and comprehensive community colleges lacked the support they needed from university and state-level leaders:Another key factor is the tradition of local governing board autonomy, which was very different across the five states. Local governing board autonomy is well embedded in the Michigan Constitution, and it was a key component to the Illinois Junior College Act of 1965. Indiana, on the other hand, decided to follow the lead of the most outstanding figure of higher education in perhaps the entire history of the Hoosier state, Herman ? Wells, who served as the president of Indiana University from 1928 to 1961 and chancellor following his presidency into the 1970s. Wells' steadfast opposition and great personal prestige probably doomed the development of comprehensive community colleges as a vehicle to address the access challenge posed by the "baby boom" in Indiana. There the interplay between state interest and local interests was decided strongly in favor of the state interest, and against the need to provide geographic access to the entire citizenry of the state, (p. 15)An informative study by Lemmons is a good illustration. In the late 1960s to early 1970s, community members and educators sought to develop a community college in the city of Richmond, Indiana. …