In this volume, authors discuss the roles community colleges and proprietary schools will play in the United States as the twentieth century draws to a close. If community colleges are evolving into institutions primarily committed to job training, are the lines between these colleges and proprietary vocational schools becoming blurred? Is the proprietary sector, with several of its schools now offering accredited associate and bachelor's degrees, becoming a for-profit counterpart to the community college sector? Will the two be distinguishable in years to come? Some of these questions will be answered in later chapters. Authors will define the proprietary sector as it exists today, its student population, its administrative, instructional, and financial characteristics, and its marketing and recruiting techniques. Here, the questions at hand are approached by examining the historical context in which the proprietary school developed its ethos. The evolution of the proprietary school in the United States will be examined, beginning with early proprietary educators who taught vocational as well as academic subjects in the seventeenth century.
This historical perspective will help us formulate hypotheses about how proprietary schools and community colleges may interact in years to come. We will see how the proprietary school developed its current operating principles in the context of expanding commerce-the needs of business and of students eager to enter the workforce have always driven proprietary school behavior. Conversely, the community college developed its guiding assumptions in the context of expanding educational opportunity. While the missions of the proprietary school and the community college appear now to be converging, how these two institution types behave over the next few decades may be greatly NEW DIRECTIONS FOR COMMUNITY COLLEGES, no. 91. Fall 1995 0 Josscy-Bass Publishers