The Mission of the City Colleges of Chicago

Through our seven colleges, we deliver exceptional learning opportunities and educational services for diverse student populations in Chicago.  We enhance knowledge, understanding, skills, collaboration, community service and life-long learning by providing a broad range of quality, affordable courses, programs, and services to prepare students for success in a technologically advanced and increasingly interdependent global society.  We work proactively to eliminate barriers to employment and to address and overcome causal factors underlying socio-economic disparities and inequities of access and graduation in higher education.

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The History of the City Colleges of Chicago

The City Colleges of Chicago has always represented hope and opportunity to people in Chicago's working class and immigrant communities. When the district was founded on September 11, 1911, the Progressive Movement led by Jane Addams and John Dewey was demanding access to higher education for the nation's poor. The academic community, led by William Rainey Harper of the University of Chicago, urged creation of a "junior college" modeled on the first two years of a four-year college. When its doors opened, the first City College was clearly a "people's college" -- a name that has defined its mission and operations throughout its near-85 years of history.

When the doors of Crane Junior College opened in 1911, the college was a unit of the Chicago Public School System. The 32 students who enrolled were primarily immigrants living on Chicago's near West Side. The junior college was still in its infancy; its major purpose yet to be defined: should the emphasis be on vocational training or preparation for baccalaureate education?

John Dewey, Jane Addams, and Ella Flagg Young saw the need for vocational education to prepare the city's immigrants and poor for employment. On the other side of the debate were many academics, such as William Rainey Harper, founding president of the University of Chicago. He joined with the college's faculty urging that Crane adopt an abbreviated baccalaureate program. The academics won. By the time Crane received accreditation in 1917, the pre-baccalaureate curriculum had been firmly established, with the progressives' agenda of technical and vocational education deferred for the moment -- in fact, for almost 50 years. Crane grew rapidly during its first two decades, topping 3,000 by its 20th anniversary in 1931.

Despite its overwhelming success, hard times lay ahead. In 1927, the Illinois Attorney General ruled that as institutions of higher education, junior colleges were not entitled to state funding. Chicago legislators rose to the occasion, winning special funding authority. Enrollments continued to grow. By 1930, overcrowded and under-funded, Crane lost its accreditation. To regain it, Crane was restructured, re-staffed, and reduced in size.

In 1933, Chicago was faced with a budget crisis. Bowing to growing political and fiscal pressures, Chicago Mayor Edward J. Kelly and the Board of Education withdrew funding from the junior college. Thus, while the city hosted a world's fair, proclaiming "A Century of Progress," the city's most progressive educational institution -- Crane Junior College -- was closed.

Response was immediate and visible. With students and faculty in the lead and allies like Clarence Darrow and the emerging Chicago labor movement taking part, massive protests were organized to "save educational opportunity for working people." Embarrassed and stunned by the overwhelming public outcry, in 1934, Mayor Edward J. Kelly and the Board of Education authorized the re-opening of Crane [as Herzl Junior College] and added two new sites: Wright Junior College on Chicago's Northwest side, and Wilson Junior College on the South side. The people's college had emerged from the troubled 1930s not only in tact, but stronger than ever.

With these three neighborhood locations, the groundwork had been laid for the modern community college. But the curriculum remained the same. The three branches offered a pre-baccalaureate curriculum built on general education survey courses. These were taught in huge lecture halls to hundreds of students at a time. This reflected the premise that there was a common core of knowledge that all educated people should share.

During the next decade, interest grew for greater diversity in educational offerings. Progress was halted with the onset of the Second World War.

The war years saw facilities of two junior college branches taken over as military training facilities. Students enlisted for military service or went to factory jobs, and enrollments dropped to the lowest level since the 1920s. Following the war, all three branches again opened: Herzl, Wilson and Wright. Returning veterans financed by the G.I. Bill were ready to pursue an education and expand their opportunities, even if that meant long lines and crowded classrooms. Students now included African Americans, many of whom had migrated from the South during and after the war. While there was some expansion of adult and vocational education offerings, the curricular focus of the junior college remained on baccalaureate degree preparation.

In the 1950s, there was national discussion of "comprehensive community colleges," institutions that would complement pre-baccalaureate programs with a range of other offerings for adult learners. Access was crucial. In 1956 the City College made an historic contribution in its pioneering use of television for college instruction. Underwritten by funding from the Ford Foundation, the Chicago City Junior College launched TV College. For the first time, people who were physically disabled, mothers of young children, working people, and others for whom physical attendance at a college was impossible, were able to pursue higher education. TV College was immensely popular, each term enrolling thousands of students who would not otherwise have been able to attend.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Chicago City Junior College grew to meet the growing demand for college opportunities. Migration from the South continued and the branches began to see the first of the baby boomers. In 1956, the predecessor to Truman College opened on the Northeast Side as an evening college at Amundsen High School. Facilities for the city's Southeast Side soon followed with the founding of Fenger College in 1957 and Southeast College in 1958, both of which were later consolidated into today's Olive-Harvey College. In 1960 the founding of Bogan College took place [now Daley College] on Chicago's Southwest side. In 1962, Loop Junior College [now Washington College] was founded to serve the number of Chicagoans who wanted to combine college study with downtown employment.

The colleges founded in the late 1950s were housed in office buildings and schools. By the 50th anniversary of the colleges in 1961, new facilities were planned that would be exclusively devoted to junior colleges. Although their campuses were not completed for several years, by 1962 seven of the district's neighborhood colleges had been founded. While each college reflected the diversity of its community, all were unified by a common core curriculum and a perspective that focused on pre-baccalaureate education.

In 1966, under the Illinois Public Community College Act, the City Colleges of Chicago became independent of the Board of Education. This separation generated a new spirit of creativity; the faculty and administration began a new era in curricular development. Vocational education was expanded and new adult learning skills programs were created.

The most profound change came in the late 1960s. During 1968-69, students closed down several City Colleges campuses over civil rights issues. Immediate results included changing the name of Herzl to Malcolm X College, and Wilson to Kennedy-King College, discontinuing certain remedial classes, and the mainstreaming of students into college-level courses. The long-term consequences were broader, redefining the role of the community college in Chicago.

By the early 1970s, the colleges offered a broad variety of programs. The number of students seeking vocational and technical education grew, as did the number of students seeking other opportunities. Adult learners seeking neither jobs nor college degrees enrolled in great numbers. Strong growth occurred, too, in the vocational and adult learning skills programs operated through the Chicago Urban Skills Institute, a special unit created in 1972 to coordinate such programs.

In 1975, Chicago City-Wide College was established to offer "college-without-walls" programs. In 1983, WYCC-TV Channel 20 was founded under City-Wide, providing televised instruction to the entire metropolitan area through the Center for Distance Learning, the successor to TV College. In 1985, the Chicago Urban Skills Institute was disestablished and the adult learning skills offerings placed under the colleges. The purpose was to bring the non-collegiate offerings into the educational mainstream, increasing opportunities for those students needing basic education.

By the late 1980s, the primary student constituencies of the City Colleges remained the immigrant and moderate-income families of Chicago. But within this population, the changes were dramatic: 70% of the students were part-time, 60% were women, 46% were African American, and 15% were Hispanic. More than 50 countries were represented.

With these changes, a new challenge for the City Colleges emerged: the need to take under-prepared students, raise their skills to college-level standards, and to provide the education required for a career or further education. This broader challenge did not replace the traditional role of the City Colleges of Chicago in providing pre-baccalaureate education, but strengthened it.

To meet the challenge, the City Colleges took several key steps. Student services were given priority, with placement offices and transfer centers established at the colleges. New degree programs were developed and approved to strengthen transfer preparation. The colleges became involved in more outreach activities than ever before. Leaders of business, government, community organizations, and the district's faculty had key collaborative roles in the change process that these initiatives represented.

Due to enrollment fluctuations, financial reductions, and other district-wide resizing mandates, in 1993 Chicago City-Wide College was reduced in scope and remaining departments consolidated with Harold Washington College, reducing the number of colleges within the district from eight to seven. A satellite center of Chicago City-Wide College, the Dawson Technical Institute, became a part of Kennedy-King College, focusing on intensive training in food service, business, health care and industrial occupations. Increasing public demand for more technical and career training in certain communities of the city resulted in legislation approving funding for two technical/vocational centers: Humboldt Park Vocational Education Center opened in 1995 under the administration of Wright College, and the Arturo Velasquez West Side Technical Institute which opened in late 1996 under the administration of Daley College.