Episode 17: Community College (Part II)

I wanted to do a follow-up or a second part to the community college conversation.
I think there is something I wanted to clarify, but then secondly, a couple of points that I didn't hit that I think are useful and valuable and important to the overall discussion.
So first, a clarifying point.
And in listening back to that episode while I was editing, it occurred to me that some of the things I said, I said some things along the lines of, you know, it gave me a second chance in life and, you know, some things along those lines.
I just wanted to clarify any second chance that I needed in life was only due to my own shooting myself in the foot.
But there are many people who go to colleges, community colleges in particular, who come from, you know, rough socioeconomic backgrounds.
Any number of things that may have hindered them through the earlier parts of their life.
That wasn't me.
And I say this because I don't want it to come off in some way that's dishonest or that I'm telling a story that I'm not.
But what happened with me through my high school career, I was really given every advantage.
Generally speaking, and and by the time I had gotten through high school, I hadn't taken advantage of those advantages.
In fact, I had done everything that I could to almost destroy myself through my high school years.
So when I say that, you know, going to a community college gave me a second chance, I don't mean that I don't want to take anything away from people who worked much harder than I did in their earlier parts of their life.
Um, and then, you know, went to college or community college or otherwise and got that version of a second chance, right?
That that wasn't me.
What I really did was just kind of mess around too much and screw around too much in school until I got to college and then started really taking things seriously.
And what I mean by second chance is I could have easily gone down a different path where I never picked up that baton, so to speak, where I never got serious about my education, never took college seriously.
Maybe never went to college, you know, whatever.
And I could have ended up in a very different place.
And it was because of the fact that I did go to community college, that, that because of the fact that community college is, community college was there and was an option for me while other schools were still much more selective at that time.
Had it not been there and had the community college that I went to not been of a very high quality education, you know, I might never have gotten that, that liftoff.
And that's what I was, I just wanted to clarify that.
When I was listening to it, it all, I didn't want it to come off again, like dishonest or in some way taking away from people who had a different path.
And I think it could have been, you know, taken in that, in that way or, or almost sound like that's what I meant.
The other two things that I wanted to talk about that I think were, that I, that I didn't get to in the last part of this discussion.
One is sort of, it's a personal opinion and it's not the way the industry has moved higher ed in general.
And it's not even particularly practical, hence why the industry has not, you know, moved in this direction.
I feel like if you rewind in the history of higher ed, there was a time when the, I mean, even when I was growing up, sort of the message that we got as a generation about higher ed
is that it's a great place to go and explore oneself, particularly academically, intellectually, that kind of thing.
So if you don't necessarily know your exact path or career aspirations or otherwise in life, college is a great, was a great place to go to figure that out and to figure out what you might, what you might be interested in.
So taking, for instance, when I went up through, through college, I took a spattering of courses.
In the long run, I only ended up with a single major, but I was about, you know, a third of the way through four others because I was looking around, trying to figure out what interested me, what might be a long, a path of longevity for me.
And I think part of the problem with higher education, particularly at the four-year level, well, let me back up.
That has shifted.
That narrative has shifted over the years.
Now the narrative is much more about you should know what you're getting into and know what the earning potential on the other side of it is and will it be a good career and so on and so forth, at least at many schools.
And I think this is a purely practical thing.
If higher, since higher education has become so expensive, it does not behoove you to go into college with a half-baked idea of what you want to do.
You almost need, you need to know a lot more about that moving into it from the beginning.
Otherwise, you're going to waste a lot of money.
I think this is relevant to the community college conversation because since community colleges are so much less expensive and very mission-driven in a lot of cases,
I think it's one of the last places that a student or a person who doesn't necessarily know what they're trying to get into can still go and explore.
And I think that's really powerful.
To me, that was the biggest benefit of going to college was figuring some of that stuff out about oneself.
And I think that's been really lost over the last, let's call it 20-ish years.
But community colleges do, at least to some extent, still provide that service.
Where, yes, if you know what you want to do, it's a great place to get a head start and get moving.
And if there are certain certificates or short-term degree programs or whatever that maybe get you where you're trying to go, you can do the whole thing at a community college.
But if you're not sure what you want, it's in some ways even a better place for you to go because it's going to cost you a lot less money to explore.
Now, this is not a popular opinion.
Community college administration in general would like to move people through efficiently.
Two years, get in, get your degree, keep going, do not waste your time, do not waste your money, your coursework, whatever.
However, if you are going to explore anywhere, I'd say it's a pretty good place to do it.
And to me, again, speaking from a place of really extreme privilege throughout the course of my life, that's a huge part of what higher ed was about.
It was about, you know, you were kind of told what you needed to do all the way through elementary school, middle school, high school.
And then college, in my mind, was a place where you get to go and then explore what you want to do.
And you might not know that walking in the door.
So if you're a person or, you know, who's looking to try to figure some of those things out, again, huge, big recommendation for me is to check out a community college and do it there.
It's way lower risk.
And again, if you have a good one in your area, the level of education is easily just as high caliber as what you'd like to get at a state school or something like that.
The other thing I wanted to mention was more about a trend.
And higher ed does this kind of thing where they take terms and they kind of, they rotate through them and they get real semantic and persnickety about things.
But there is a sort of a path that I noticed throughout my time, both observing and working within higher ed in community college.
You used to hear about, it dovetails into what we were just, what I was just talking about.
You used to hear a lot about higher ed being about higher education.
It's about getting a general education and a foundation as a person.
Then I feel like we moved into a world, into a set of terminology where it was all about skills.
You needed to get skills, certain, you know, whatever skills you needed for your job.
Then for a while, I started hearing a lot more of the terminology around earning potential.
So it wasn't just skills.
It was what's your earning potential.
And then more recently, it has been, I've heard a lot more about social mobility, which is interesting because social mobility was sort of the original intent of things like community college.
When the whole institution was, you know, kind of coming up.
So it's almost become full circle.
But I wanted to call this out because, again, I think community colleges might be one of the last outstanding places where you really can talk about social mobility.
Because if you're a person who can already afford to go to a $50,000 a year school, you may not really be able to move much further up throughout the course of an education there.
On the other hand, if you are someone who needs to go to a community college because your financial options are limited, you stand to really better your position in life and in terms of social structuring.
And I hope that doesn't come off in some sort of negative or pejorative way or something.
I mean it with all the, you know, sincerity and optimism that I'm intending it to be.
If you can pay a lot less for a great education, then the barrier to entry to walk in the door is a lot lower and the ceiling becomes a lot higher.
And I think that's another one of just the amazing things about community colleges, two-year schools, is that you have this barrier to entry that's a lot more accessible to a lot more people.
And I think we're weeding out good people at higher levels of education these days, not because of their academic background or rigor or anything like that, but entirely because of social structuring and economic, you know, realities.
So anyway, those were just some closing thoughts that I had or some things that I realized I didn't talk about during the first part.
So I wanted to get those in the table.
And again, I can't stress enough, if you're looking into higher ed and you're not sure where you're going or you're just interested in exploring more, do not rule out the community college.
They are powerful stepping stones and in my opinion, one of the last places where in a lot of cases, what I think of as true higher education can still exist for the general public.