The Seventeen Percent: Perceptions of Community College (1/4)

For Part 2/4, click here.

Community college is a great place to start college. The public may not agree, but the evidence tells us positive things. How can students change how community college is perceived? This site has multiple posts analyzing the benefits that community colleges bring, especially to healthcare students. Community college allow students access to a quality education without the monstrous price tag.

Community college is deeply stigmatized in American culture. This stigma assumes that community colleges do not offer rigorous courses and that affordability does not equate to quality. According to Steve Robinson, the President of Owens Community College in Toledo, Ohio, states in anInsidehighered article, “Intellectually a lot of people understand our value proposition, and we’ve made a lot of traction, but we need to get out from a bunch of outdated assumptions about community colleges.” Community college students must exhibit their success and the benefits they received from their college to disprove these assumptions.

It is deeply important to tackle this stigma because more than 40% of undergraduates attend community college. According to Gail O. Mellow in, “The Biggest Misconception About Today’s College Students” community college students make up more than 40% of undergraduate students, “Of the country’s nearly 18 million undergraduates, more than 40 percent go to community college.” Though community college students make up such a large proportion, it does not seem that way. Many students do not bring up where they go due to this stigma. The best way to get students talking is acknowledging the stigma and moving past it.

Some of you may disagree that there is a stigma, and that this stigma is rooted in cultural and sociological environments. This is true to a certain extent, I feel a stronger stigma due to my cultural and previous academic background. But this stigma is shown outside of culture through how much money is donated to community college. Mellow reveals that,

Last year, more than $41 billion was given in charity to higher education, but about a quarter of that went to just 20 institutions. Community colleges, with almost half of all undergraduate students, received just a small fraction of this philanthropy.

Though community college systems educate almost half of the undergraduate population, they receive little money to fund their schools. In order to diversify how donation dollars are given, current and previous community college students must make themselves known to officials and donors.

Community college students are extremely diverse in age, race, and background. There is really no “typical” community college student. According to Mark C. Rowh Ed.D, the vice president at New River Community College, described the “typical” student,

High school students who are getting an early an early start on their postsecondary careers, college graduates who already have a bachelor’s degree but want to change career directions, employees of organizations that are sponsoring their professional development and others with entirely different goals or life situations. (5)

Simply, community college students can come from any age or background. It is important for us to change this stigma in order to increase funding for community colleges and improve the reputation of community colleges to the general public.

Community college students, such a large part of the American education system, are underfunded and underrepresented. There is a large amount of evidence that points in the direction of how community colleges are beneficial to the students that attend them. My introduction to these benefits broadly goes over those benefits. The next three parts of this four-part series intends to exhibit those who advocate for community college, what I personally think of community college, and how students should take action to better represent community colleges.

Works Cited

“Inside Higher Ed.” A Community College President’s Campaign against Stigma about Two-Year Institutions, http://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2019/02/18/community-college-presidents-campaign-against-stigma-about-two-year.

Mellow, Gail O. “The Biggest Misconception About Today’s College Students.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 28 Aug. 2017, http://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/opinion/community-college-misconception.html.

Rowh, Mark. Community College Companion: Everything You Wanted to Know about Succeeding in a Two-Year School. Jist Works, 2011.