Go to Community College

Tue, 24 Jan 2023 07:46:00 -0600

I am a strong proponent of going to community college instead of jumping right into university. If you live in the United States, your entire primary and secondary school education is centered around getting you ready for university. This may seem hyperbolic, but as I went through the public education system every course seemed to have a college preparatory angle to it. If you didn't grow up in America, the "ideal" path after secondary school is paved like this: graduate from high school at the age of 18, get into a good 4-year university, move away from home the fall after graduation, have the College ExperienceTM, and leave with a Bachelors degree.

So naturally, when I found out that only 40% of adults held a college degree, I was a bit surprised. However, my surprise waned after leaving high school. Many of my friends and peers went to 4 year colleges in pursuit of the college experience only to drop out after 1-2 semesters. This was not because these people were dumb or incapable of completing a 4 year program; rather, I believe, it more had to do with lack of direction, poor discipline, or disinterest in school.

I want to note that, that these are not not personal attacks against these people. In fact, those attributes are fairly normal to have at the age of 18. You shouldn't be expected to have your life figured out. As a person who took the community college route, I want to explain my reasoning for why I believe community college is a great option for many people.

Before getting into my defense of community colleges, I have a story about how this system fails students. My high school advisor once told me she had a student who was falling behind. As a caring teacher, she reached out to him to see what the issue was. In her conversation, she asked this student what he wanted to do after high school, he responded bluntly, "I want to work on cars."

Motivated by this students response, at the next staff meeting, my advisor mentioned this story and suggested that, perhaps, the school should talk to students about other post-secondary options. For example, trade school or professional programs. There response was dismissive and frustrating to say the least: "we push college here."

When she relayed this story to me, it opened my eyes to how negatively our education system treats other types of post-secondary education. Granted this is an anecdotal example, but it goes to show that the fact that it exists at all is concerning.

Now, onto community colleges.

Money

Let's have a conversation about money. In the US it is impossible to discuss college and university with out talking about loans, scholarships, grants, and other mechanisms of payment for post-secondary education. This is, of course, because university is expensive. It is prohibitively expensive. If you want the whole College ExperienceTM, let's be realistic, we are looking at the cost of a down payment on a house. If you decide to live on campus, a typical college bill includes:

At a community college, you will pay for tuition, a modest student fee, and potentially a parking pass. For me personally, I paid 3 times less for the same credit load at community college when I transferred to university.

Here's another point, there are many classes that you will have to take regardless of your major. Examples include:

It doesn't matter what major you choose, chances are, you will have to take these courses, and it is better to take them at a lower price point than pay a university 3 times as much to have grad student teach you intro to statistics (no shade thrown to the graduate students. They're trying their best).

The bottom line is, if you plan accordingly, going to community college before attending a university will reduce the total amount of money you spend on college. Also, if you graduate community college, but decide university isn't for you, you now have a degree. If you had spent 2 years at university and decided to quit, you would have no degree/certificate to show for your money.

Room to experiment

Given the lower cost, you have more liberty to experiment by subject. You can take classes in subjects you might be interested in for far less. Suppose you are not sure if you want to go into computer science or biology. At community college, you can take both a biology and computer science class for the price of one university class. So, if it turns out you didn't actually like computer science, then you've lost out on a lot less.

Quality instructors

There is a false notion that community college instructors are some how lesser than university professors. This is nonsense. First, if it's credentials you're after, all instructors at community colleges must have at least a Master's degree, and many of them have PhD's. But really, I'm not that interested in credentials. I want to get away from this idea that more degrees equals better instructors.

I think most students can attest to the fact that the intersection between most brilliant professors and best teachers does not have much overlap. At most large universities, the focus of the professor is on research. As a result, their classes can take a backseat. This is unfair to students who, in my opinion, pay extortionate rates to attend these top universities. Community colleges, on the other hand, hire teachers. It is rare that a community college engages in research, so the faculty's main goal is to educate students. There's not much more to say on that front. It's simply a matter of incentives: universities pay professors to do research, and community colleges pay instructors to teach.

I also want to mention that the people who are community college professors tend to have industry experience. In a university setting, most professors have spent their entire lives in academia. There is nothing inherently wrong with that; however, if you want to work in the private sector or in government, it is better to have someone who has worked there to guide you than someone who has thrived in a university setting. In fact, at the community college I went to, I had a professor who worked at NASA and a another who helped maintain/develop Target's database systems for their online store.

The point is community college professors are there to teach, and often times, they have real world experience to backup their material.

Different students

While community colleges primarily provide an academic education, attending a community college will also give you a cultural education. Because of their cheaper tuition and flexible schedules, community colleges draw from a different student base than universities. There, you will meet professionals, single parents, immigrants, trade works, among others. The nice thing about this is that you will meet different types of people. You will be introduced to different religious backgrounds, political opinions, and cultural values which is just as important as your academic education.

For all their talk about diversity, universities don't have much by comparison. Most students are from upper middle class backgrounds and fall between the ages of 18-25 years of age. I won't go into much detail here, but I strongly believe that intergenerational learning environments are much richer.

Concluding remarks

I don't want anyone to come away from this thinking that I hate universities. I don't. I have many criticisms, but I think they are still useful institutions that can provide great opportunity and research.

As I've alluded to before, I've attended university, but I attended university after I went to a community college for two years. I strongly believe, for the reasons stated above, that community college enriched my education and has made me more successful.