# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1950_S180
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

178 SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES

tions would admittedly be a hazardous proposition. The
for Higher Education is convinced, however, that an experimen,
in junior college operation should be undertaken under these con. &
trolled circumstances and that the Fort Wayne situation is almost
ideally constituted for this very purpose.

2. Portland, Oreg.

The Board for Higher Education recommends that the Poy. »
land, Oreg., institution serve as one of the pilot schools for obser.
vation of a four-year junior college program (junior and senig, |
high school years; freshman and sophomore college years). Actua} -
introduction of the program to be subject to the prior consent and -
the request of the local administration. This school would, then,
constitute a West Coast experiment in the expansion of an exist.
ing academy to a four-year junior college and offer opportunity
to observe the effects of gearing an institution to increasingly popu.
lar sequences of elementary and secondary education: 6—4—4 and
6—-3—3. (For a detailed analysis of this trend, see Exhibit 7,
page 180.)

This is a type of arrangement which ought to receive attention
and ought to be carefully examined, but not be applied to all of
our institutions without careful testing. It may well be that serious
recruitment problems would result from such a change, since the
freshman year cuts into the middle of a standard type of program.
Nevertheless, a rather considerable interest in this type of com-
bination has been evident in American education. There are al-
ready 64 four-year junior colleges listed in the standard yearbook
of the American Association of Junior Colleges.

For our own purposes this arrangement offers an opportunity
to eliminate a high school (operated in Portland for 45 years) and
to set up a junior college without operating more than a four-year ;
program. Le

While the long-term outlook does not indicate that Synod
should continue the operation of separate high schools, there is -
insufficient evidence at this time to justify the reduction of all”
schools to four-year units, but the opportunity to experiment with:
this type of unit in selected instances should be grasped. The ex- ,
periment proposed here would give Portland the stability which :
comes from the junior college years and would also give Synod »
an opportunity to see whether or not it can afford to apply such -
arrangements generally without completely losing the advantages .
which it now has. .

Of course, it would be necessary to develop an appropriate :
recruitment program to actually determine whether the loss of the.
freshman and sophomore high school years must necessarily affect -:
the total enrollment at such an institution. 3