"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
                                                                                              - George Santayana
 
“The effort to allow Arizona's community colleges to offer four-year bachelor's degrees is gaining momentum, with some lawmakers saying there's a strong chance it could get the green light in the spring.
 
 “If a bill allowing the change is approved by the Legislature, Arizona would become one of at least nine states to redefine the role of community colleges, long a hub of job-skills training and remedial and continuing education.” (Support for 4-year degrees mounting, Mile Cronin, The Arizona Republic, Dec. 19, 2005)
 
A bill being drafted by Rep. Laura Knaperek, R-Tempe and Senate colleague Linda Gray, R-Phoenix, would award bachelor's degrees in four professions: teaching, nursing, law enforcement and firefighting sciences.
 
A major objections is that it will submerge the community colleges' traditional mission. 

“House Minority Leader Phil Lopes, D-Tucson, who helped found Tucson's Pima College in 1969, said the proposal ‘runs a great risk of diluting and changing their uniqueness.’"
 
The proposal that community colleges should offer a four year degree is a new twist on an old struggle.
 
That struggle is between vocational training and academic education.
 
Wisconsin’s story is a representative case study.  But first a little background.  In the late 1800’s there were two distinct tracks for formal post-secondary education, and each track served a different purpose.
 
Colleges and Universities were chartered to provide a well rounded education implicitly aimed at leadership roles in our society.  The first two years are normally academic: readin’ writtn’ and ‘rithmetic type subjects.  The more specific job-skill focused training comes in the second two years as the student zeros in on a specific degree in such areas as engineering, biology, chemistry, accounting.  And there are of course degrees in more esoteric majors such as languages, philosophy, religion and other subjects for which there was not a huge demand in the workforce.  To begin with, colleges and universities served primarily the “wealthy and elite” segment of society, a very small but privileged segment.
 
The community college’s charter was twofold: to provide training for a trade or craft (the vocational track); to allow the first two years of a four year degree program to be accomplished locally (the academic track). 
 
In Wisconsin, around the turn of the twentieth century, the legislature created and funded community college campuses in communities across the state.  The primary clientele was a population that often times did not have the ability or desire to attend college. 
 
The vocational emphasis came into being with a lot of support and help from the labor movement.  Its origins can be traced to apprentice programs for developing skilled workers for business and industry.  Workers, skilled and well paid, but not leaders.  It was put into place to serve the vast majority of citizens who were unable to pursue, or uninterested in pursuing, academic learning.  They simply wanted to get on with their lives in a well paying job.  The academic courses were minimal, and the focus in the second year was on specific job skills to prepare the graduate for work as an electrician, plumber, auto mechanics or in some other trade.  The vocational schools served a much larger segment of the population than did the colleges and universities.  That clientele, defined as the “working man”, accounts for perhaps 95 percent of the population.
 
But the local campus of the community college also made it possible to take the first two years of a four year degree program close to home and then transfer to a four year institution to finish the degree.  Academic credits for the readin’ writtn’ and ‘rithmetic subjects taken locally were transferable then to the four year institution.   Thus did the community college system serve as a feeder system for the four year institutions. 
 
The community college system, then, was a dual-track institution, which is more a European model than an American model of education.  The vocational track was more in keeping with the original purpose of the schools.  The academic track seemed like a good idea, but it proved disastrous to the vocational track in the system as constituted.
 
There were in fact now three system of higher education: the University of Wisconsin; State Teachers’ Colleges (later to be consolidated into the Wisconsin State University system); and the community college system.  With the best of intentions, if not foresight, the lawmakers put all three systems under a single state board of directors.
 
Well, admit it or not, consciously or not, most everyone ranked the systems in stature.  Top to bottom, it went something like this: U of W; Wisconsin State Universities; community colleges, and unwittingly, the academic track and then the vocational track in the community college system. 
 
Over time this subtly and not so subtly warped the community college system.  Gradually the vocational track students became second class citizens on campus, while the academic track students became the elite.  It was subtle, but not wasted on the students themselves that the system valued them differently.  And this affected funding as well.  The academic feeder track tended to recieve the gravy funding while the vocational track got leftawfuls. 
 
To Wisconsin’s great credit, it saw this erosion of its original intent and took measures to correct it. 
 
The major fix was to put the three systems each under their own separate and distinct, but equal, state board of directors.  Each was responsible directly to the legislature, and each was funded independently to achieve its unique charter. 
 
The thing that is germane to today’s controversy, however, is the firewall that was put between the post-secondary community college system and its post-secondary bedfellows.  Credits earned in the community college system were no longer transferable to the university systems. 
 
A cosmetic change that is more important than one might think was that the community college system was re-named as the Vocational, Technical, and Adult Education (VTAE) system.   The term community “college” now implied something no longer intended, and Wisconsin understood that the name got in the way. 
 
Well, we’ve come full circle, haven’t we?  Wisconsin, as has Arizona and most if not all other states, has dismantled the firewall prohibiting credit transfer from the “VTAE” system to the university system.  And the vocational schools are once again “Community Colleges”.
 
In Wisconsin, the old system of teachers (Normal) colleges that were loosely knit into the Wisconsin State University system were merged with the University of Wisconsin.  The 18 districts of the community college system and the U of W are the survivors, and it seems that there is now a more comfortable symbiotic relationship between them.
 
Those changes back to the past are advantageous, so long as we understand and remember the past.
 
But the jury is certainly still out on the concept of community colleges granting baccalaureate degrees.  That seems fraught with new perils that are reminiscent of past mistakes.