Posted on 07/11/2009 7:37:33 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Community colleges are deeply unsexy. This fact tends to make even the biggest advocates of these two-year schools — which educate nearly half of U.S. undergraduates — sound defensive, almost a tad whiny. "We don't have the bands. We don't have the football teams that everybody wants to boost," says Stephen Kinslow, president of Texas' Austin Community College (ACC). "Most people don't understand community colleges very well at all." And by "most people," he means the graduates of fancy four-year schools who get elected and set budget priorities.
Many politicians and their well-heeled constituents may be under the impression that a community college — as described in a promo for NBC's upcoming comedy Community — is a "loser college for remedial teens, 20-something dropouts, middle-aged divorcées and old people keeping their minds active as they circle the drain of eternity." But there's at least one Ivy Leaguer who is trying to help Americans get past the stereotypes and start thinking about community college not as a dumping ground but as one of the best tools the U.S. has to dig itself out of the current economic hole. His name: Barack Obama.
The President hasn't forgotten about the 30 or so community colleges he visited during the 2008 campaign. These institutions are our nation's trade schools, training 59% of our new nurses as well as cranking out wind-farm technicians and video-game designers — jobs that, despite ballooning unemployment overall, abound for adequately skilled workers. Community-college graduates earn up to 30% more than high school grads, a boon that helps state and local governments reap a 16% return on every dollar they invest in community colleges. But our failure to improve graduation rates at these schools is a big part of the achievement gap between the U.S. and other countries.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
mmm, no?
The author’s main argument is this :
COMMUNITY COLLEGES HELP GET STUDENTS READY TO WORK — FAST
The 1,200 community colleges in the U.S. are especially suited to helping students adapt to a changing labor market. While four-year universities have the financial resources to lure top professors and students, they are by nature slow-moving. Community colleges, on the other hand, are smaller and able to tack quickly in changing winds. They often partner with local businesses and can gin up continuing-education courses midsemester in response to industry needs, getting students in and out and ready to work — fast.
They then site an example that is being replicated all over the country :
For example, when Austin’s semiconductor industry started tanking in 2000, ACC quickly stripped down its chip-development courses and soon repurposed clean rooms for emerging green technologies. These days, it generally takes about six months of weekend classes to get qualified to be a solar installer, a job that can pay up to $16 an hour. But starting in August, a compressed weekday program — catering to the recently unemployed — will allow students to cram the same courses into just two months. To earn an associate degree focusing on renewable energy — enough prep for a job as a solar-installation-team leader, which can pay up to $28 an hour — an ACC student has to take a total of 69 credit hours of courses, including solar photovoltaic systems, programming, physics, algebra, English composition and lab work. Average cost per credit hour for most students at ACC: $54.
Ah. The elites have spoken.
Well, if a community organizer destroyed America, can a community college save it?
No.
But, that is not to denigrate Community Colleges completely. Just as it is true that there are plenty of successful and valuable people in industry who never spent a day in College, the same can be said of Community College.
Are they the ones who are going to achieve a breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion?
No.
Can they work hard in industry and contribute positively to the bottom line?
Yes.
With the semester cost of a College going anywhere from $20,000 up, this is the only opportunity for some people to better themselves.
I’ll take someone who is trying to better themselves over an arrogant ivy leaguer or a union slug who won’t touch a cardboard box because only the other guys are supposed to do it.
The first 2 years or so of college have become nothing more than remedial ed (and even then their English and critical thinking skills are atrocious)... making up for the lack of teaching in the high schools ... your typical 8th grader around 1900 had more classical education than 4 yr. college grads do today ... if the grading on the SAT wasn’t relaxed enormously in the 1980’s there wouldn’t be enough “qualified” students to fill 25% of the available slots.
To get back to the authors question , Can Community colleges save America ,, NOPE ,, they can get H.S. grads up to the level that they should have been at to graduate H.S. ,, and they can feed the 4 yr schools ... they can not save America because we don’t need more degrees ,, we need jobs and that takes entrepreneurs and less gov’t intrusion.
california’s 109 community colleges have been dumbed down over the last 30 years.
And my post does not indicate I am agreement with Hussein. I view this differently than he does.
He views it from a Marxist socialist perspective. I view it from a strictly pragmatic perspective.
Well said.
At least you’re not dead, Neidermeyer!
This is the press doing Zeros bidding. Lyndon Johnson did the same thing thirty plus years ago when the Community Colleges were created. They have the potential to help but were never a solution.
Well, I’ll tell you: I did all sorts of advanced graduate work and research at fancy medical centers with their elaborately-equipped and -funded research departments. And now I’m going back to a community college to get me some actual job skills.
This seems to imply the usual mantra that jobs are going overseas because Americans are too stupid and lazy to do them. Hogwash!! They're going overseas mainly because the tax system in this country discourages investment here. If you reduced the burden on businesses here not only would the jobs come back but employers would be encouraging people to get the training they needed.
I remember dropping Karate and trying to get into Medical Terminology. I spent the month pestering them, I had money paid, and they said no and kept the money without refunding.
Reason number one million I haven’t gone back.
I was amazed at the sophistication of the letters written home by American Civil War soldiers. Sometimes the spelling was a bit rough, but the manner in which ideas were conveyed was almost poetic. This indicated to me that the average American living in the mid-1800’s was pretty well versed in the Classics and was perhaps immitating certain styles (pretty successfully).
Nobody (even graduates from), looks at a Community College degree on a resume and thinks “Hey, this guy is competent”.
Oh....and guess where the early voting booths are during elections???? The lobby of the community college buildings where students and CC employees can vote to save and expand their domains!
The reference points I have are the writings of the day (mainly political writings) ,, knowing that most did not attend college ,, and the final exams from those one-room schoolhouses (some of which have been saved). The children of today are not challenged at all in school, of course the goal of public/government school is to create robots with minimal knowledge that will follow the RATS like lemmings. My 5 year old reads and we share pages out of the book “how things work” and I include him in repairs around the house , even if it’s only to hand me the correct screwdriver ... he will be a critical thinker ...
When the printing press was invented 300 years ago, it brought down the cost of books tremendously, but books were still very expensive items for an individual who was not wealthy. It took until the late nineteenth century to drive down the cost of paper and manufacturing books to make them a mass consumer item. Book buyers previous to that spent their money carefully.
I have heard that for many Americans migrating west in the 1800s, it was common for the families to only have two books. One was the King James Bible, and the other was the collected works of Shakespeare. Both of them are examples of an older English language, and difficult reading.
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