Junior Colleges - United States

United States

In the United States, a junior college is a two-year post-secondary school whose main purpose is to provide academic, vocational and professional education. The highest certificate offered by such schools is usually an associate's degree, although junior college students may continue their education at a university or college, transferring some or all of the credit earned at the junior college toward the degree requirements of the four-year school.

The term junior college has historically referred to all non-bachelor's degree granting post-secondary schools, but over the last few decades many public junior colleges, which typically aim to serve a local community, have replaced "junior" with "community" in their names. This may give the impression that a junior college must be a private school, but only a small percentage of two-year institutions are private. The first "successful and persistent" junior college in the United States was the Auburndale Female Seminary founded by Edward Lasell (now called Lasell College), which offered a two-year college education as early as 1852 (in 1989, however, it began offering four-year bachelor's degrees and no longer offers any two-year degrees).