At the beginning of the 20th century, less than 1,000 colleges with 160,000 students existed in the US. The number of colleges skyrocketed in waves, during the early and mid 20th century. State universities grew from small institutions of fewer than 1,000 students to campuses with 40,000 more students, with networks of regional campuses around the state. In turn, regional campuses broke away and became separate universities.

      To handle the explosive growth of K–12 education, every state set up a network of teachers’colleges, beginning with Massachusetts in the 1830s. After 1950, they became state colleges and then state universities with a broad curriculum. Major new trends included the development of the junior colleges. They were usually set up by city school systems starting in the 1920s. By the 1960s they were renamed as “community colleges.”

      Junior colleges grew from 20 in number in 1909, to 170 in 1919. By 1922, 37 states had set up 70 junior colleges, enrolling about 150 students each. Meanwhile, another 137 were privately operated, with about 60 students each. Rapid expansion continued in the 1920s, with 440 junior colleges in 1930 enrolling about 70,000 students. The peak year for private institutions came in 1949, when there were 322 junior colleges in all; 180 were affiliated with churches, 108 were independent and non-profit, and 34 were private schools being run for-profit.

      Many factors contributed to rapid growth of community colleges. Students parents and businessmen wanted nearby, low-cost schools to provide training for the growing white-collar labor force, as well as for more advanced technical jobs in the blue-collar sphere. Four-year colleges were also growing, albeit not as fast; however, many of them were located in rural or small-town areas away from the fast-growing metropolis. Community colleges continue as open-enrollment, low-cost institutions with a strong component of vocational education, as well as a low-cost preparation for transfer students into four-year schools. They appeal to a poorer, older, less prepared element.

     Travel back in time to 1662, when Catherine of Braganza (daughter of Portugal’s King John IV) won thehand of England’s newly restored monarch, King Charles II, with the help of a very large dowry that includedmoney, spices, treasures and the lucrative ports of Tangiers and Bombay. This    41   made her one veryimportant lady: the Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland. When she relocated up north to join King Charles,she is said to have    42   loose-leaf tea as part of her personal belongings; it would also have likely been part ofher dowry. A fun legend has it that the crates were marked Transporte de Ervas Aromaticas (Transport of AromaticHerbs) – later    43   to T.E.A. That last bit probably isn’t true (    44       believe the word ‘tea’ came from atransliteration of a Chinese character), but what is for sure is that tea was already popular among the aristocracy ofPortugal due to the country’s direct trade line to China     45    its colony in Macau, first settled in the mid-1500s(visit today to sample the other end of this culinary exchange, the Portuguese pastéis de nata, aka egg custard tarts).