While new community colleges proliferated across the nation during the 1950s and 1960s, Indiana’s postsecondary educational leaders pursued an alternative route to expanding educational opportunity during the postwar years through extension campuses. The study reported in this article draws on archival documents to gain an understanding of the rationale and motivations for opposing community college development in Indiana during the 1950s and the 1960s. Two research questions guided this analysis. First, how did state and educational leaders frame the issues, problems, and alternatives related to the expansion of post–high school educational opportunities? Second, why did policy actors in Indiana choose strategies different from those selected by most other states?
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