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You won’t BELIEVE these five hidden community college benefits!
Everyone knows community colleges are cheaper than just about any other option. But I’ve found that going to community college gave me some advantages now that I’m finishing my degree at a university.
1. Small Class Sizes/Lecture Hall Avoidance
Yup, this is something of a cliche, since just about every college pamphlet I’ve seen advertises a low student-to-faculty ratio, or something like that. But often, introductory classes at larger universities meet in lecture halls, with as many as a few hundred students in the room. Regardless of how many students there are per faculty member, larger schools often need to be efficient this way, especially in 100 and 200 level courses where the material is less in-depth. Meanwhile, I don’t think I ever had a class at my community college with more than 50 students, and usually that was closer to 30. The teachers almost always knew my name, and if I had a question, I could walk up to them after class and ask, rather than having to make an appointment, send an email, or visit office hours.
By the time you get to the university, you will have finished most classes that would normally take place in lecture halls at community college, and move on to the upper-level courses that usually have small class sizes. Going to community college allowed me to almost completely bypass lecture halls.
2. More Opportunities to Job-Shadow
I’m going into a somewhat medical profession, and all the professionals in that field in my college town are inundated with requests to job-shadow. Meanwhile, I was more or less the only undergraduate student emailing the professionals in my hometown. If you go to a college with a specialty program, the professionals in that town will probably be overwhelmed by college students. If you go to a community college, the local professionals in your field of choice will probably love to have you. This makes community colleges a solid choice if you are looking to choose a major or explore careers.
3. Great freedom in independent study opportunities
When I finished most of my degree requirements, my adviser suggested I pursue an internship or independent study. I spoke to the internship coordinator, who pointed out a few professors I had classes with in the past who would help me. The professor I asked was quite happy to help me, the study was quite easy to set up, and I had great freedom in what I would study and a lot of options for my final project.
Of course, there are opportunities for independent study at my university as well, but they are much more structured. Every senior in my major writes a final capstone paper, and there is an opportunity to do additional research as an independent study. This is nothing like being able to ask a professor “Hey, can you work with me on an independent study on subject X?”
4. Bypassing the freshman-year hurdles
At my school, like many schools, freshman are required to live in the dorms and buy a meal plan. Some people may like this idea, and I know many people choose to continue doing this post freshman-year. But the dorm lifestyle is one that is hard on introverts such as myself, and even though the meal plan food is good, there is great freedom in being able to buy, cook, and eat things that you choose to. As a transfer, I didn’t have to deal with freshman red tape, and was able to live off-campus and eat what I wanted to.
5. Knowing your interests, strengths, and weaknesses before spending a lot to go to school
When I started community college, I had a few vague ideas about what kind of classes I liked and disliked. Going to community college made my interests so much clearer to me, especially thanks to my independent study, in which I job-shadowed a professional in the field I wanted to go into. I probably would have started out a teaching major and then changed majors, had I gone into a bigger university right away, and major changes cost time and money.
I also learned how many credits I could handle, and how many hours per week I could work while at school, which is valuable information for further college planning.
Whether you choose a community college or a larger university, keep these factors in mind. I know that some students take summer courses from community colleges while home on break from their universities to get cheaper credits in a smaller class. That way, it’s possible to attend community college while also attending a larger university. Everybody has to get their gen ed credits done, and community colleges are, in most cases, the best way to do that.
This was originally a post on my blog, https://amateuradvising.blogspot.com/. Send the link to the future college students in your life, since what I’m writing is most helpful for somebody making their first few choices about school, such as high schoolers unsure what college preparations should look like. (At least, I hope it’s helpful.)
Published in General
I know of one community college that calls itself a university. (I can remember back in the days when not every college thought it needed to be a university.)
I love that nearly everybody in my hometown can spend a few years taking classes and then be about two years from nearly any career they choose. AA and AS degrees are a hidden treasure.
One of my best professors (at UNC -Chapel Hill) had been my father’s thesis adviser when he got his PhD in Physics. The professor would answer any question off the top of his head and he never said “you will get that next semester” I never got up enough nerve to describe the large part he played in many of my bed-time stories.
Probably more useful is my experience when I switched from a Physics major to Engineering and transferred to GWU. I was working full time (in Engineering) and took classes at night. The absolute best professors were those who had a “real” job during the day and taught at night. They were the most practical and focused professors I had. *
If you are majoring in social studies, I don’t have any advice (other than don’t), but if you are majoring in a technical field, try to find out how many professors are actually working in that field and take advantage of their experience.
* One of my favorite expressions was “In academics, we teach you how to optimize, but in industry, you need to “satisfize” and go on to the next problem.”
I am a pre speech-language-pathology major. With maybe two exceptions, all my professors are SLPs.
I only know of Community colleges from the comedy series Community which I love. Obviously that’s a very fictionalised portrayal but I’m sure it has to resemble it in some way.
One thing that confused me, Am I right in thinking in a Community college you can pick an assortment of courses to make up a degree, rather than in a University you pick your degree which is made up of different modules or subjects?
I’ve spent my 35-year career teaching at an urban community college, and I will happily add one more benefit of attending one of these local two-year institutions: the motivation of the students. They can be less academically-prepared than their four-year counterparts and since so many are non-traditional (older than 21, not full-time), they bring with them obstacles that most of us never considered during our college years. But the fact that they turn up and enroll — in spite of all this — means they truly want to be there.
Let me share a memory with you. Many years ago I was helping with registration and a man with soiled jeans and a worn baseball cap who looked to be in his 30’s came up to enroll in two classes. When he was shown the tuition amount, he declared he would pay in cash … and proceeded to dig the amount out of his pockets. He had enough (although it came down to some dimes and pennies) and he positively beamed as he walked away with his class schedule.
I will never forget him as long as I live. He is the student I looked forward to teaching every day. He is the reason I chose higher education as a career. And he is the reason I love community colleges.
At a four-year university, your courses are split into two types: Major courses, and General Education courses.
You have to pick a major and take most or all of the major’s courses. But your general education courses usually are more flexible. You have to get certain subjects done, like a math class, a science class, ect. You also have to take some general education classes that are required or recommended for your major. I’m not a psychology major, but I had to take a few psych courses as per required for my major. These psych courses also covered my social sciences gen ed requirement. But there was no recommendation for my literature gen ed, so I took Shakespeare.
Besides specific certification courses, community colleges usually just offer general education courses, and if you took two years’ worth and covered certain requirements, you got an associate’s degree. So I took the recommended general education classes for my later, state university major, while attending the community college. The rest of my community college courses were up to me as long as I got one or two classes in each subject. Now that I am at the state university, I don’t have to worry about general education, since I got those courses done, and am just taking major courses.
That’s really funny, and really speaks to what a resource these schools can be!
You are correct, however, that post was so awful, I’m not sure what sort of entry-level job she would be able to perform. Without her rich parents, I think she’d probably be pursuing a career in fast food.