A group of contemporary historians has recently accused community and junior colleges of not offering the American masses new opportunities of upward social mobility, but instead of serving to divert them away from four-year colleges and universities. In particular, historians have taken issue with the efforts of David Jordan, of Stanford University, and Alexis Lange, of the University of California, who allegedly were skeptical of the intellectual capabilities of the masses and advocated the establishment of public junior colleges to free the universities to pursue higher tasks of research and advanced professional training. While revisionist historians have performed a service in challenging the overly idealized accounts of the origin and early development of junior colleges in California, their interpretations are rife with distortions. No revisionist, thus far, appears to have used vital primary sources such as the Jordan Papers, the Lange Papers, all of Jordan and Lange's published writings, Merton Hill's unpublished essay on California's early junior college movement, and all relevant California state government reports. A thorough review of these works illustrates that, rather than being academic elitists, Jordan and Lange were concerned about the newly emerging American universities' emphasis on research at the expense of teaching, and hence favored linking junior colleges to teaching-oriented high schools instead of research-oriented universities. Because high schools might emphasize teaching at the expense of scholarship, Lange and Jordan felt that the junior college might evolve as a hybrid institution with some of the university's concern for scholarship and some of high school's emphasis on effective teaching. (KP)