Community Colleges

My mom, with five kids between 7 and 15, returned to community college and eventually became an RN and later got her Masters degree. It enabled her to leave my father and support herself. It was a life saver for her.

 

I don't doubt, nor discount, the success stories that come from community colleges.

Community college is a great value, and is the kind of thing where you can get out of it what you put into it.

But, it's also not for everyone. We already have nearly 9 million people attending community college, and many of them aren't earning a certificate or a degree. I'm not sure the answer is to send more folks to community college, or to make it free for those attending.

Success is somewhat self selecting. And, choosing to return to school, pay for it, and complete a program is a good indicator that someone is prepared to succeed. That person would be desirable to employers. (And, similarly, the recent high school grad who attends community college, pays for it, and earns an associates degree, would be a good candidate for a four year school/BA program.)

Flooding community colleges with new students might devalue the experience, and dumb down classes.

Students, especially older, motivated students, want to be around like minded students. Putting them in class with a bunch of lookie loos, who are only there because it's free is going to slow down the learning, and turn people off.

 

There's absolutely nothing wrong with community colleges. They're a key element in a strategy for an individual to economize on his/her higher education. Here in Texas, for example, our outgoing governor's push for the higher education system to come up with a $10K degree would/will depend very much on community colleges.

All that said, too much of a good thing ain't always wonderful. CC's don't have very good completion rates, and tuition -- which is either free or almost free for students from economically challenged backgrounds -- really isn't the main reason for that.

 

You just did a better job of saying what I was trying to say.

 

California announced a plan to offer 15 bachelor's degrees through community colleges, one each at 15 different sites. (If you want to meet chicks, enroll at Foothill College in Los Altos, home of the dental hygiene program.)

15 state community colleges get OK to offer bachelor’s degrees - SFGate

They're mostly the kind of things a technical school might have offered back when those were big, and it's primarily a way to help people avoid those ridiculous for-profit "universities."

 

It's a very intriguing proposition by Obama. I think people have to be wary that this is not a fix all idea. But I think the potential is there for it to have quite a positive effect on the work force. Safe guards do need to be in place (perhaps the "loan" is held in trust and forgiven upon completion with a diploma/certificate to encourage graduation and help prevent some abuse of the system), but I think they are manageable. I think more important, however, would be if they could force a rollback in tuition at the university and state school level so that students who do go on and get a bachelors or higher degree are not leaving school six figures in debt, thus making that education more attainable to the lower middle class.

I, for one, went to a community college and have a diploma in journalism, that's it. Though I was never a big booster of the quality of education I recieved, it still got me into the industry I wanted to be in and almost 13 years later I'm still going and do not feel I've been held back by it.

 

Going to the JC was the natural progression for me. It was 6 blocks from my house and I went to all the football and basketball games when I was a kid. In fact, my junior high was across the street and one spring my last class of the day was in a room with a window that overlooked the baseball field across the street. I got busted more than once for not listening to the teacher because I was watching the baseball game.
I got a lot of my gen ed classes out of the way, was SE of the school paper and, today, I have more friends from my JC years than from the big, downtown university to which I transferred.

 

I think the deal is -- and forgive me DQ and YF, if I'm not saying what you've been saying (and I think I am) -- is that this is a solution to a problem that isn't really a problem.

 

It's not meant as a solution. It's meant as a tactic. And, on that level, it's a pretty good one.

 

Generally speaking, I'm in favor of community college as a concept -- if one had been available to me, there's a much greater chance I would have completed a four-year degree. I wasn't financially committed to general ed classes at the then-prevailing rates.

That said, I'm not sure creating 13th Grade is the best idea. We need to do a better job as a society steering those who are interested in work and making money toward cost-effective and respectable programs for them to do just that. We need good plumbers, painters, welders, technicians and mechanics, and if these folks also are taught general business principles, so much the better; they'll be set up for great success in the life.

The idea that everybody needs a four-year degree, to me, is patently silly and a prime cause of why the middle class is in the state it's in -- too much money that could be spent elsewhere is being put toward college degrees that might never pay off.

Addendum: We also need to NOT give high schools more excuses to not teach basic skills that should be taught in high schools, but are more and more being deferred to college.

 

You're overlooking the fact that in order for it to be free, the student is going to have to work to stay there. I think it is more of an incentive than paying your own way in a lot of cases. If your parents are footing the bill, the incentive isn't the same for young people to get their money's worth. As I said, I had to keep my grades up to be reimbursed by my company, and it most certainly motivated me to do as well as I could. The way my company did it made more sense than just setting a GPA. If I got an A, that class was fully reimbursed, 80 percent for a B and so on.

 

I graduated from an ACC school and then attended a tech/
community college and shortly thereafter taught CC night school. I benefited from the North Carolina system which has long been a strong network of tech and CC schools based on the early Calif model. That CC's and their students stand to receive more federal support is, given my experience (made six figures for a number of years because of my tech training), great news for our economy and communities. Smile at the focus here on 'completion rates'; twiddle down that logic and it gets us back to that same 'ole suffocating fat-assed feudal smell. Before you talk 'rates', take a look or visit your local County or CC or Tech school and speak with some of the instructors. I guarantee you will be impressed. I live in Anne Arundel Co Maryland and the CC here could almost be a university.