Seven hundred and eight students, aged from sixteen to sixty, attend state-supported Mayville College in a village of eighteen hundred in an agricultural region of Midwest State. Half of the students live in dormitories where lodging and meals are provided at cost (thirty-eight dollars a month for board and room); one-third drive to the college each day from farms and villages within com- muting distance; and the remainder, adults, come to the campus for evening classes one or two evenings a week. With a curriculum planned on the basis of regional surveys, and developed with the help of lay-advisory boards, the college features two-year programs in agriculture, homemaking, secretarial-training, and preparation for transfer to State University or to State Agricultural College.

In the preceding chapters we have noted certain social and technological trends which, along with an emerging public concern regarding the educational problems and needs of individuals, are uniting in a demand for sharply expanding provisions for post-high-school education; we have identified and interpreted the role and purposes of the public junior college; we have reported the growth and development of the two-year college; and we have noted some of the important problems of these institutions. In the light of these findings we have reported program practices and have suggested needed directions for improvement and development of public education at the junior-college level.

Junior colleges include a wide variety of educational institutions. Typically, thejunior college has a curriculum which extends two years beyond the high school; an increasing number of junior colleges now, however, have a four-year curriculum.

With the changes in society and in the needs of youth, and with the passing of the years, one might expect the junior college to have studied student needs and to have established new programs designed to meet those needs. However, we find little evidence of success in blazing new educational trails; we still find the dominance of the college preparatory objective almost complete.

The purpose of this chapter is to consider the place of the school library in the broad reading program recommended in this Yearbook.