During the 1960s, vocational education experienced especially heavy enrollment growth. All the while, technological advances were producing increasing employment dislocation. The gap between the affluent and the disadvantaged widened; poverty in areas of economic depression could not be ignored. Congress responded by enacting the Manpower Development and Training Act of 1961 (MDTA), followed by the Vocational Education Act of 1963 (VEA). It is surprising to note that almost 50 years after the Smith–Hughes Act, in spite of all the intervening changes, the definition and purpose of vocational education as set out in the new VEA remained largely the same.