Junior College: Rochester (MN) Junior College

Year Established: 1915

Date Closed:

Location: Rochester, Minnesota

Historical Highlights:

Ostensibly organized in 1915, Rochester Junior College is generally credited with being the oldest, continuously operating public two-year college in the state of Minnesota. However, a review of contemporary local records and newspaper accounts raises some questions as to whether local residents in fact believed that they were establishing a junior college, per se, or were instead creating an extension -- both in its offerings and in its standards of scholarship -- of the University of Minnesota. Moreover, while the record may be unclear as to exactly what the original sponsors' of Rochester's collegiate program may have intended with respect to the relationship of their program to the university at St. Paul, it is clear that they did not act to further any democratic or egalitarian purposes. Both in the standards they set for admission and the program's unprecedented tuition, the Rochester school board seemed intent on limiting access to this program to only the most academically able and financially fortunate young people of their community. With respect to its exclusivity, Rochester's college program differed little from virtually all other junior college programs established in conjunction with public high schools.

The Immediate Impetus to Establishing a College Program

That the immediate impetus behind Rochester's school board to append a collegiate program to its high school may not have been a desire to democratize access to higher education, but very self-interested political considerations is suggested by the initiative's timing. As indicated by the photograph below, Rochester's extension of its high school program to include college-level courses in 1915 followed by only a few years what was, at least from the perspective of the community as a whole, a vastly more significant development. In 1911, Rochester followed the lead of other Midwestern progressive communities by constructing a large and well-appointed high school building. As had been the case at both Joliet, Illinois, and Detroit, Michigan, a decade earlier, it was not uncommon for such a community to construct an imposing facility long before high school enrollment was sufficient to fill the available space.

Of course, school board members in such districts as Joliet and Rochester recognized that local taxpayers, who bore virtually the entire cost of school facilities through a mill levy on real property, might well find reason to protest if a large portion of a new (and expensive) high school building went unused for an extended length of time. In the case of Joliet, there is evidence to suggest that such potential criticism was deflected not only by the expansion of the district's small postgraduate program after 1901, but also by the introduction of a normal (i.e, teacher training) school and an adult evening program. In the case of Rochester, it seems possible that the school board acted to fill vacant space in its new high school building by first organizing a vocational program in 1913 (which subsequently developed into Rochester Vo-Tech) and then by establishing its freshman-year-only "college program" in 1915, the precursor to Rochester Junior College.

Examining the Local Record

One suspects that some might well reject any suggestion that the addition of a collegiate program at Rochester gained its initial impetus from the workings of such narrow political self-interest, arguing instead the the college program's creation simply reflects an historical coincidence. The college program was, it would be argued, a good idea that surfaced at a fortuitous moment, when a progressive city had sufficient resources at hand to bring this idea to life.

But in the case of Rochester, at least, we do not have to rely solely upon inferences drawn from the chronology of events that began with the opening of the high school in 1911 and the organization of the college program in 1915. We have as well a fairly extensive historical record of the events immediately preceding the establishment of the city's collegiate program and, through this record, considerably insight into the thinking of its principal advocates as these events unfolded. A major portion of that historical record, a series of newspaper accounts and public announcements that appeared in Rochester's leading daily newspaper, the Rochester Daily Post and Record, over the six weeks that immediately preceded the opening of classes of Rochester's collegiate program, are reprinted below. When read in sequence, one is lead to the conclusion that Rochester's civic leaders not only recognized the need to more fully utilize their city's over-large high school, but that they did so in a manner that served their interests, and not those of the general public interest. The record indicates, for example, that the effective decision to establish the collegiate program had been made by civic leaders before the matter was brought before the public for debate, that what debate eventually ensued was without effect, and that both through its imposition of strict admission standards and an extraordinarily high tuition the Rochester school board effectively limited program access to children of elite families. But most interestingly of all, at no point did the Daily Post and Record represent this program as a junior college. Between the appearance of the first article, in mid-August, to the beginning of classes just a month later, the name of the program evolves steadily to imply an increasingly close relationship to the University of Minnesota (although, it must be acknowledged, no evidence has yet been uncovered to confirm that university officials were aware of, much less endorsed this association.) One cannot help but infer from this record that Rochester's civic leadership sought to resolve the political embarrassment of an undersubscribed high school by creating a program without meaningful public involvement and that they would be its principal beneficiaries, both directly (given that it would be their children who would enroll in the new program) and indirectly (in the enhanced status a college program would bring to their community).

The Extent of Public Debate

A distinctive feature of the self-styled "progressive" communities that appended college-level programs to their high schools in the first three decades of this century is the typically brief period between the introduction of a proposed college program or junior college to the general public, any debate of its merits, and its implement ion. In the case of northern California's city of Santa Rosa, for example, the establishment of a junior college was first discussed at a closed meeting of the Federated Home and School Association (whose members included the wives of the city's "leading men") on November 14, 1917, at which it was agreed to hold a public hearing on the matter on November 17, 1917. While the local newspaper reported that the hearing was to be held on the 17th, the outcome of the meeting was not reported, although the Santa Rosa school board shortly thereafter approved the creation of Northern California's first junior college.

Developments went no less quickly, and with no greater evidence of public involvement, in Rochester. Given that the first report of a collegiate division appeared in the Daily Post and Record on August 13, 1915 under the banner, Collegiate Program All But Assured, it is difficult to believe that the assertions made by Rochester's school board president, H.H. Witherstine, on August 14th that any final decision on establishing such a program depended upon public concurrence at a general meeting scheduled for the 17th, were anything but insincere.

Indeed, when one reads in sequence the half dozen newspaper accounts of the progress of Rochester's "college program" from initial conception to implementation -- a period covering less than two months -- it is difficult to escape an overriding sense of inevitability, all of Witherstine's assertions to the contrary notwithstanding. Had there been any serious objections to the plan, opponents simply lacked the time to gather their forces and seek to influence a board clearly set on a course of action. That there may well have been opponents to the idea of a college program, and that prompt action was necessary to deny them the opportunity to coalesce, is suggested by Witenstine's statement of August 14, 1915. From the second paragraph, it is apparent that Witherstine recognized the importance of mollifying those in the community who would object to the use of public school funds to support a college program. While not entirely true (public junior colleges typically did not pay any portion of the bonded indebtedness of the building they shared with the high school through student tuition or private subventions, and so, at least in this respect, they drew upon funds initially voted solely for the benefit of the high school), Witherstine is intent upon convincing residents of her city that the college program would not burden local taxpayers but, much in the manner of a traditional private college, be self-supporting.

Were the School Board's Motives Egalitarian?

Even if it were conceded that the Rochester school board intended to add a collegiate program without any meaningful public scrutiny, it might still be argued that its motives were nonetheless egalitarian. After all, Rochester was without a local college, and the University of Minnesota was located beyond a reasonable commuting distance. As a consequence, college attendance, whether at one of Minnesota's few, generally inexpensive private colleges or even its tuition-free university, nevertheless entailed the considerable expense of room and board, and both Minnesota's private colleges and its university required a minimum of 14 Carnegie units of academic high school work as a prerequisite for admission -- something accomplished by less than 15% of all high school students. Yet if the Rochester school board's motives were egalitarian, one would reasonably expect that the new collegiate program would impose no more than a nominal tuition and that it would permit the enrollment of young men and women who might not have the high school records prerequisite to admission a standard college or to the university.

With respect to tuition, the Rochester school board imposed what was, by the standards of the time, a remarkably high tuition fee on the program's students. That this would be the case had been signaled in Witherstine's commitment that local taxpayers would bear none of the proposed program's expense. Accordingly, the entire cost of the venture, she assured the community, would be met through the levy of a tuition charge of approximately $200 a year -- a figure in fact very close to the actual cost of instruction in the typical small junior college of the first quarter of this century. In an era of very limited student aid, and given that even white collar salaries at this time rarely exceeded $2000 annually, such a tuition charge would have almost certainly limited enrollment in Rochester's college program to all but the community's most affluent young people.

As for its admissions standards, Rochester did not depart from conventional practice in the slightest. Just like those students seeking admission to the University of Minnesota, Rochester applicants were expected to present a total of 15 Carnegie units -- the equivalent of 30 semester courses -- in the traditional academic subjects as a prerequisite for admission. At a time when only about 15% of 18 year olds had completed high school, but less completed a rigorous academic program required for college admission, it is had to conclude that Rochester's college program, virtually like Yale and Columbia, was open only to those with the capacity to pay a substantial charge and the academic ability to complete a rigorous high school program. Such students were, at best, a very small percentage of what today we regard as college-eligible young people.

At the same time, it would unfair to conclude from this evidence that the intent of Witherstine and other Rochester civic leaders was solely to limit access to the children of their families, although this was almost certainly the effect. In its decision to charge tuition, Rochester's school board was acting in manner consistent with most other school districts, except those in California, that established collegiate programs during the first three decades of this century. While it would be tempting to conclude that the purpose in charging tuition was elitist, a far more likely explanation is that the proponents of a junior college recognized that there was generally little support among voters for such programs. Witherstine's blunt language, reproduced below, seems most concerned with deflecting any potential criticism of the proposed collegiate program from the vast majority of voters whose children were never likely to graduate from high school, much less go on to college, rather than signal, through the use of tuition, that access to the college program was limited to the well-to-do. Witherstine seemed very concerned -- and the experience of other school districts tends to corroborate her concerns -- that most tax payers would almost certainly object to any scheme that used their tax dollars to support a program whose only beneficiaries would be young men and women whose parents could well afford to send them away to college.

But Was It at Least a "Junior College"?

One indication of the historicism that has characterized junior college history generally is the common characterization of all forms of high school-sponsored collegiate programs organized during the early part of this century as junior colleges. In fact, the acceptance of a standardized terminology to describe these initiatives would not come until the early 1920s, and then only under pressure from regional accrediting associations and state legislation. In the absence of such pressure, communities described their collegiate programs as everything from "six year high schools" to "postgraduate programs" to "upward extension programs." What is particularly noteworthy in the case of Rochester is the evident indecision within the community as to what specifically their new program would be called. What is initially represented as simply a "college course" grows, within the space of a few weeks, into "the University of Minnesota Department of the Rochester high school," only to be shortened, just two weeks later, to the "University course at Rochester."

While it might be tempting to assume that Rochester's school leaders were merely attempting to impart greater status to their undertaking by implying a closer link to the University of Minnesota than was the case (the university neither provided the program with funding assistance nor the direct supervision of its faculty and curriculum, in the manner of a true extension center) the university may come to afford sufficient general direction, particularly in the appointment of faculty and the design of its curriculum, to provide some nominal justification for the close relationship with the University that Rochester implied in the later descriptions of its collegiate program. However, what is important from a broader perspective is that the people of Rochester, Minnesota, showed no interest whatsoever in characterizing their collegiate program as a junior college. This reluctance, when considered in the context of the widely variant terminology with which these initiatives were described across the nation, challenges the conventional view that a small cadre of nationally-prominent educators -- the likes of William Rainey Harper and Alexis Lange -- conceived of the junior college in virtually full form and local school districts simply adopted this form and its associated terminology as it was handed down. What one finds, instead, is a wide range of local initiatives that were only eventually "standardized" in response to a range of external pressures.

Conclusion

If ever there was a junior college that should have been created in response to university influence, it is Rochester's. The president of the University of Minnesota in 1915, George Vincent, had previously served as the dean of the junior college at the University of Chicago. He was familiar with Harper's views of a educational reform, especially at it pertained to higher education, and he did encourage local initiatives along these lines by permitting the adoption of uniform standards for the acceptance of advanced standing credit by the university -- the original form of the modern-day "transfer agreement." There is even evidence, at least as reported by Rochester's advocates of their college program, that "university officials" of Vincent's administration had been consulted as to the feasibility of opening a college program in Rochester, and that they had given their full support for the venture. But what seems to be more the case is that the civic leaders Rochester, likely feeling some pressure to make fuller use of their new high school facility, created instead an institution that served local interests, without angering local tax payers, and garnered to the city as much reflected prestige from the university as could be had. Out of this very parochial mix of interests developed a college program that was ever equal to the university in the academic prerequisites it imposed on applicants, exclusive as a consequence of its extremely high tuition charge, inoffensive to local tax payers because it was fully financed by those very tuition charges, and which adopted a terminology to describe itself that did not associate it with the junior colleges than taking form in Joliet, Kansas City and Detroit, but implied that it was effectively a branch campus of the University of Minnesota. That Rochester's "university program" would eventually come to describe itself as a junior college reflects, more than anything, the increasing power of the North Central Association and other regional accrediting associations to impose a measure of standardization on what were largely independent local efforts to test the programmatic limits of the public high school.

Collection of Local Newspaper Reports on Rochester's College Program

This article outlines the rationale offered by supporters of a proposal to offer a year of "University work" at Rochester High School. The article is noteworthy on several counts. First, it makes no mention of a "junior college." As this article reflects, even as late as 1915, there was no agreement on a uniform term with which to describe experiments by public high schools with the offering of college-level course work. Rather than something fundamentally different from what could be had by a student at the University of Minnesota, the proponents of "University work" in Rochester made clear that their program would be similar in all respects -- except cost.