As a recent community college graduate—and I mean very recent, I graduated on Friday—I’ve looked over the past three years and I have realized community college isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. The evil stigma that has been granted over the years to community colleges all over the country is hardly the case at all. Some may think that community college is made for the rejects and losers who couldn’t get it together in high school, but there are so many other factors that go into choosing a community college.
Most of the time the student body of a community college are people who just couldn’t afford a four-year university tuition. The constant struggle for most college kids is that they are poor during school and some students are too poor to even go to a prestigious school. It isn’t a factor of whether or not they were smart enough to get in, but whether or not they had the financial stability to go, even if they did.
Community college gives an opportunity to go to school and make moves to bigger universities and bigger degrees. I know that I definitely appreciate the fact that as opposed to four years worth of tuition that I would have been in debt with, I am only going to be two years in debt.
Another stigma behind community college is that the education level isn’t at the same stature. There are plenty of mixed reviews and opinions on this. In my opinion, I believe that for the general education that most students go to community college to get, the difficulty is around the same. I’ve had former UCLA professors teach my classes and professionals that need extra money that they take on a few community college courses to increase their income. But nonetheless, the same professor that used to teach history at UCLA now teaches my history class at my community college and the same professor that currently teaches at CSUB is teaching my communications course. And I think those rank around the same. What I will say is the workload is probably decreased.
And that’s because a large difference between a four-year university and a community college is the student body is vastly different. As opposed to the young twenty-somethings that grace the campus of a four-year, you have parents and full-time employees just trying to make it work. Every class that I have had these past few years has had a plethora of age groups and situations.
While there are many people that think that community college has no worth and isn't a true education, I would ask that you reconsider that idea. A community college offers a more economic situation to the expensive life of a four-year college student. I think that any education is a good and valid education and shouldn't be judged because of its expense or prestige.
At the end of the day, I don't regret my time at my community college and I'm leaving to a four year with no debt and a hundred opportunities, also three associates degrees. I was able to explore my possibilities and really understand what I wanted to do, and now I'm leaving focused, motivated and ready to take on whatever the world can throw at me, and I wouldn't change that for anything.
