The distributive effects of public junior college availability

This paper presents the results of a study to determine the effect of the presence of a public junior college in a community upon the types of colleges attended by high school graduates of that community. Results of multivariate cross-tabular analysis of the college destinations of over 8,000 1966 Illinois high school seniors of different sex, ability, and social-status backgrounds living in 25 different communities, suggest that the local availability of a public junior college serves largely to alter patterns of college-going by substituting attendance locally for attendance elsewhere in a manner inversely related to social status. More importantly, results also suggest that among lower- and middle-status persons the substitution is such as to replace attendance at nonlocal four-year colleges with attendance locally at the public junior college.