Four-year junior college

[1] The first proposal for four-year junior colleges was made in 1894, by George A. Merrill, Director of the Wilmerding School of Industrial Arts in San Francisco, California.

Seven did so and established four-year public junior colleges: Pasadena (1928), Compton (1932), Ventura (1937), Pomona (1942), Napa (1942), Vallejo (1945), Stockton (1948).

Four-year junior colleges and the 6-4-4 movement were never able to achieve the critical mass required to shift the national educational system, and had faded away by the mid-1960s.

The problem of providing a smooth transition between high school and college remained, however, and was tackled by Robert Maynard Hutchins, first at the University of Chicago and later nationwide through the Fund for the Advancement of Education.

The plan faced stiff resistance from a variety of entrenched constituencies, including university faculty and high school principals, and most such early entrance to college programs disappeared, reappearing decades later as a form of gifted education.