The time has come to make education through the fourteenth grade available in the same way that high school education is now available. This means that tuition-free education should be available in public institutions to all youth for the traditional freshman and sophomore years or for the traditional 2-year junior college course.

To achieve this, it will be necessary to develop much more extensively than at present such opportunities as are now provided in local communities by the 2-year junior college, community institute, community college, or institute of arts and sciences. The name used does not matter, though community college seems to describe these schools best; the important thing is that the services they perform be recognized and vastly extended.

Such institutions make post-high-school education available to a much larger percentage of young people than otherwise could afford it. Indeed, as discussed in the volume of this Commission's report, "Organizing Higher Education," such community colleges probably will have to carry a large part of the responsibility for expanding opportunities in higher education.

Said public junior colleges shall offer instruction through, but not beyond the fourteenth grade level including, but limited to, one or more of the following: (a) standard collegiate transfer to higher institutions, (b) vocational-technical fields leading to employment, and (c) general, or liberal arts courses.

The junior colleges admit both high school graduates and nongraduates. Education Code Section 5706 requires junior colleges, assuming residence requirements are met, to accept “any high school graduate and any other person over eighteen years of age . . . capable of profiting from the instruction offered.” The results of a questionnaire circulated at the request of the Technical Committee, to which 56 junior colleges replied, indicate that (a) 50 admit anyhigh school graduate; (b) 36 admit any person over eighteen years of age; (c) 30 admit some students on a probationary basis.