A Study On The History Of Community College And Its Enlightens

Community college is a kind of comprehensive, multi-functional two-year educational institute, which attaches much importance on the development of local economy. Being the most energetic level of America's higher education, it has its own characteristics and its multiple function, and so it could find its place in the system of higher education. The history over one hundred years of community college is the process for massification of American higher education. Even we can say massification of American higher education could not developed so rapidly without community college. Many aspects of community college are worth analyzing and considering. And the successful experiences are of importance to the development of higher education in our country.The paper tries to study the history of community college, including the background of community college, its functions and characteristics for running school, and trends for future development. And analyze its contributions to massification of American higher education and then draw the conclusions of enlightens which would be good for the massification of higher education in our country.There are seven parts in this paper. The first part summarizes its cultural basis and background of the times; the second part introduces the history of its more than one hundred years development; the third part gives a brief introduction of its functions, they are Transfer Education, Vocational Education, Continuing Education, Remedial Education, Community Service and General Education; the forth part analyzes its characteristics of running school, trends for future development; the fifth part gives a thorough generalization of its contributions to massification of American higher education, they are: to enhance the enrollment of higher education, to make the structure of higher education into many-faceted, to consummate the function of higher education step by step, to promote the renewal of knowledge and the progress of technology; On this basis, in the sixth part, according to China's specific conditions of achieving the massification of higher education in two years, the paper gives an all-around analysis and summary of the enlightens to our higher education from American community college, that is to say, the strategy for mass higher education must employ both pattern of connotation and that of extension, combine dimension expanding and structure regulating. And the motive force for structure regulating is mainly from institutional innovation of higher education, which covers institutional innovation of financing, running school, internal administration and enrollment.