Junior College......Where are the Accolades?

I have often pondered why Junior Colleges are not afforded the respect of other institutions of educaton. Personally, I received a great education at a Junior College while the war raged on in southest Asia. I found most of the professors and teachers to be dedicated and fervent educators. The cirriculum was challenging and rewarding. I would recommend Junior (community) College to anyone who is looking to further their education. Tuition was affordable when I attended and the books could be purchased used.

I was just at a conference at UCLA and the chancellor (Albert Carnesale) said that 40% of UCLA’s students were transfers from community colleges (as we call them in California) and that those students had academic performances that were equivalent of the entire student body. He did say that the transfers are not a random sample of course. They tend to be the smarter students from community colleges.

There are a few reasons:

  1. Junior colleges don’t grant the bachelors degree that many deem the minimum to be considered educated in an academic sense.

  2. Junior colleges generally don’t have the resources or the full-time prestigious faculty that the better four-year schools have.

  3. The number of students that start out a junior college and go on to get a bachelors degree is lower than those that start out a four year college to begin with.

  4. Many students in junior colleges are less qualified and less motivated academically than those at four-year colleges so that is believed to dilute the educational experience for everyone at junior colleges. You can guarantee that most Harvard students and faculty are taking things pretty seriously.

  5. Many junior colleges offer courses of study that are similar to trade schools - There is nothing wrong with that except trade schools are generally looked down upon as something lesser people do at least in the U.S.

Of course you can get a decent education at a junior college. The textbooks are the same in many cases. It is just that a really good 4-year school has both faculty and students that are highly focused on education and that tends to provide a really good environment for learning. Getting the same education a junior college where the standards are lower requires extreme discipline from a student that really wants to learn the same amount.

I think that is the critcical point. There are some students at junior colleges that will go on to do quite well at 4-year colleges. Most won’t however and most that I have met are just killing time because they don’t know what else to do.

My little brother was expelled from his senior year of high school because one of those ridiculous zero-tolerance policies that you always read about (his friend put an old, rusty farm tool in the back of his truck and the psycho principal freaked out and called the police). He went straight into junior college and then transferred to a large, four-year university after that. He is doing fine.

I certainly think that Junior Colleges have a place but, from what I have seen, the educational environment is nearly equivalent to a competitive four-year environment.

My stepdaughter did her first two years at a JC, then transferred to Berkeley. Now she’s working on a master’s degree at Columbia.

However, not all JCs offer the same extent of classes. At my SD’s JC, I believe they have most lower division math courses that you would find in a four-year college. But at another JC in the same district, they don’t. At still another there’s a strong emphasis on vocational education and trades.

I found a key difference between JCs/community colleges and universities. In my experience, universities have more professors who’re really there to do research, but are required to teach. In JCs, there’s not exactly a high research expectation, so people who teach there are there to teach. This is not to say there’s no bad JC profs (Lord knows there’s plenty) but in my experience 4-years have a higher percentage of reluctant, incomprehensible, overly-technical, or just plain bad-at-teaching profs.

Between that and the massive savings in buckage, JCs can be a very good place to start your college education. Personally, I was one of those smart kids who got terrible grades in high school because I just didn’t give a damn, so I didn’t get into a 4-year university when I graduated. I went to community college, and while I was there I learned how to be a student. Being able to choose my courses and be self-directed revived my passion for learning, and after three years at the community college I transferred to a good university, graduated magna cum laude with two degrees, and am now working on my PhD at a big private university.

This is, of course, not necessarily representative of how most JC students are. There are many students on the “10-year slacker plan”, for whom it’s just high school part 2. And there are many who get valuable trade training there – my JC, for example, had classes in everything from fire management to nursing to hotel management to aviation to welding to tech certifications like MSCE. And there’s also those who just take a class or two to learn something new, like ceramics, first aid, or conversational Armenian.

I really do wish they got more respect, and more funding. Around here the JCs have had to start turning people away because they can’t afford to hold as many classes – and I think that’s a damn tragedy, because they’re turning away people who have vital and immediate goals for improving their lives. People who want to get their GEDs, or certifications, or learn a new practical trade.

Dragonblink made an excellent point. I went to a community college because I couldn’t afford the out-of-state tuition at the big schools. I was studying computer science. A buddy of mine got into Stanford. We both took operating system design courses. He was lording it over me that he was getting one of the gods of computer science as his professor. As it turns out, he was in a class of 300 people, and the professor showed up twice. The rest of the year, he was taught by a grad student with no practical experience in the field. I, on the other hand, was in a class of 30 students, using the same textbook, taught by a qualified, credentialed professor who had actual operating system design experience. He never actually met his professor. I got personal attention from mine whenever I needed it. I learned more and paid less. You can’t beat that!

That and, for the most part, you need a PhD or equivalent for a full-time position at a university, but not at a junior/community college. So you’ll find teachers there who were perhaps either unable to or not interested in doing the advanced research necessary to get a doctorate, but who easily have enough expertise to teach at at least the freshman/sophomore level.

Another difference: junior and community colleges tend to have more non-residential (i.e. not living on campus) and part-time students. This has its pluses and minuses, but it probably means they identify less with, and have less affection for, the school they’re attending than those who live on campus for 4 years and participate fully in campus life.

Great post. Thanks for the story.

Unfortunately, some still view community colleges as “the 13th grade” rather than real colleges. It’s too bad, because there are some great programs, degrees and other avenues of opportunity for learning offered at comm. colleges. I went to one before I went off to a university, and I’ve been teaching at comm. colleges for years.

In my family, it’s not taken for granted that you will attend college. My mother is college-educated, but she made no provisions for me to achieve a higher education. So I was a seventeen-year-old responsible for making my own way into college, and I sure wasn’t capable of paying a 20k semester bill. So I went to a community college.

My college was wonderful. Unlike most CCs, it had dorms, so I lived on-campus. I made some special friends who have stayed in my life and in my heart years later. There were great teachers and not-so-good teachers, but I still value the education I received there because, well, it meant I wasn’t just another teenager with a GED who was gonna get married and pop out some babies, like every other girl from my rural hometown. Going to college meant that I could achieve my dreams, be the person I wanted to be, and do it all on my own. Would I like to attend a four-year someday? Of course I would. But I’ll never look down on my community college experience, or belittle anyone else for attending a CC.

I get into a lot of trouble on this. I know this is not the Pit, but I know quite a few parents who send their kids to community colleges to save money, but have no trouble buying luxury cars for themselves at the same time. For me, I keep my old Saturn and sent my kids to college debt free. I’ve learned to bite my tongue on this.

I know some people have bad experiences either way, but the upside of a four year college is better than the upside of a community college. My basic bio class was taught by a Nobel Laureate who always showed up - even in the quiz section once, filling in for the TA. I got to take a seminar with some of the gods of AI. I got to be interviewed by Marvin Minsky. I got to do my Bachelor’s Thesis on some real cool stuff.

My older daughter got to take a class in Hittite cuneiform because she wanted to. Try that at a two year college. She also got to sit in on the class of one of the founders of the field she’s interested in.

I would also point out that dorm life (or fraternity life) is very important, and living at home at a community college doesn’t give you that.

If money is really a big issue, I can see it. But my degree is worth every penny my father spent on it, and I’m sure my kids’ degrees will be worth every penny I spend on them.

Some 4-yr colleges are very picky about what credits they will accept for transfer. I remember Swarthmore not being very willing to accept courses from even UPenn. This isn’t necessarily an issue of academic rigor but of perceived academic rigor. There were also some shady issues here. If you were studying abroad and paying Swarthmore, your credits would transfer. If you took a leave for that semester, they wouldn’t always :dubious:.

Anyway, the point is that the 2-yr to 4-yr route sometimes cuts down on your options.

A family that lives near the parents owns a plane, but they says they don’t know how they’ll afford the college bills. But you’re right, that’s probably a different discussion for a different place.

On the flip side, I know a lot of people graduate from high school and have no intents of going to college, but their parents give them an ultimatum of ‘do something productive with your life or move out’. So the kid enrolls at the county college, but does a half-ass job because they actually have no desire to be there. This, therefore, drastically reduces the quality of the experienece for the people who are there who actually do want to be there. I think you’re a lot less likely to get this at a 4-year school than a 2-year.

Moved to IMHO.

-xash
General Questions Moderator

I started at a community college and I hated it, largely because of that. I pretty much had to start there, because of the low cost and the fact that they’d take anyone that had a pulse, and transferred out after 3 semesters. It wasn’t really a bad thing that nobody talked to each other, because the other students were annoying as hell. If it wasn’t the kids who came right out and said, “I’m only here so my parents don’t throw me out,” it was the thugs. And if it wasn’t the thugs, it was the girls who dressed up like they were going clubbing.

It was really dull, actually. It’s one of those places where you go to your classes, keep to yourself, and hear the occasional fight in the hallway, (verbal mostly, except that one time I heard, "Why should I calm down, you just PUNCHED ME IN THE FACE!). There were about five clubs, all of them Christian, Muslim, or Republican.

On top of that, I had to live at home, with a mother who wasn’t exactly willing to let go of her little girl – thanks to a chronic housing shortage at the school I go to now, I /still/ have to live at home, but at least she’s not so overprotective anymore. All in all, it was not a happy experience for me.