I would say there are pros and cons of community college. The pros are that it can be much cheaper than a traditional college and can offer great pre/professional training. The cons are that the standards for traditional education (english, biology, etc.) are generally not as high or stringent.
Community college is really a mixed bag, I think you really get out of it what you put in and its best use is for working adults going into second or third careers (pre/professional training), people taking classes for recreation, and for trad college aged students who lack the funds or are otherwise not ready for traditional college.
my mom has taken continuing education classes at a local community college for years, and she really loves it. she's also taken a few spanish and ASL classes recently. it's great because they have classes at night and on weekends so that she could easily fit it into her schedule, and their classes are tailored to what she needs - not an all-encompassing education, but information on a specific topic.
however, i never considered community college as an immediate avenue for myself. i knew coming out of high school that i wanted to attend a 4-year college or university, preferably liberal arts. i wanted the whole "college experience", dorms, meal plan, greek life and all.
Though I think having fun at college is the best thing you can do, especially if your the type of person that stresses and study like crazy.
agreed. have fun and try to open yourself to new things. make the most of every service available to you, especially the free ones, like the gym, pool, library, computer labs, printers, essentially free 1-credit courses, etc.
I agree with what most have said already; most of your criticisms of community college apply equally to universities. The only thing I've seen or heard of that is substantially different (and better) is if you find one of those small, private liberal arts colleges that bases their curriculum on small-classroom discussion (and I mean bases, not the cheap substitute that you get when you're required to attend discussions as a supplement to large lecture courses.) The problem is that those usually cost a lot more and they won't fulfill your needs if you want to study something business-related.
yes. i was lucky to be able to go to a small public liberal arts college (average class size under 20), which cost as much over 4 years as some of my friends have paid for a single year. we had a very complex set of non-major requirements designed to make us well-rounded students. in my opinion, my whole college experience was quite wonderful. essentially we went from freshman discussion classes to fulfilling our liberal arts requirements in fairly small (20-25 people) classes, then into early major classes (the largest class sizes, usually around 30 but peaked at 90 for intro sciences), then by advanced major classes you likely had several classes with just 8 or 9 people in them. many other programs, minors, study abroad, honors, and plenty of student organizations were strongly promoted as well. my life at college was very full of doing and very full of thinking, and i think that's what made it such a good experience. i was being challenged but also felt very supported, and i was very involved in the campus life. school was a very cohesive thing for me - a sort of safe h(e)aven - and i miss it very much. i'm in the process of applying for more school again!
but then, i just kind of love school in general, so i'm biased. :blushing:
the students who did not appreciate my school as much as i did were those who knew EXACTLY what they wanted to do and who did not want to study anything else - they got sick of the varied requirements - and those who really would have preferred to be more anonymous in class! admittedly, sometimes i really wished i could have slept in the back more often, lol.
