Four-year junior college

A four-year junior college was a type of educational institution in the United States in the 20th century that provided education from the 11th to the 14th grades, corresponding to the last two years of high school and the first two years of college. Although these are now considered secondary education and tertiary education respectively, advocates of the four-year junior college argued that all four years should be considered part of secondary education.

The first proposal for four-year junior colleges was made in 1894, by George A. Merrill, Director of the Wilmerding School of Industrial Arts in San Francisco, California. The first law formally authorizing such institutions was enacted in 1908. However, the idea took some time to catch on. The first four-year junior was established in Texas in 1923 as Hillsboro Junior College, known today as Hill College. Many others were established soon thereafter, but even in 1931, they numbered less than ten nationwide.

The four-year junior college movement was closely associated with a broader movement for a 6-4-4 educational system: six years of elementary school, four years of junior high school, and four years of junior college (or "senior school"). Under this plan, graduation from junior college would "mark the end of the period of general education", and students who wished would then proceed to more specialized education leading to the bachelor's degree and beyond.

Around its peak in 1942, the movement embraced 34 institutions nationwide, enrolling about 16,000 students in total. Five of these institutions and 8,000 of the students were in California. The development of the movement in California was facilitated by a state law allowing individual districts to adopt a 6-4-4 plan. Seven did so and established four-year public junior colleges: Pasadena (1928), Compton (1932), Ventura (1937), Pomona (1942), Napa (1942), Vallejo (1945), Stockton (1948). From the late 1940s to the early 1960s, all of these localities changed back to a traditional high-school system. The last holdout was Napa, which assimilated in 1964.

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