California’s For-Profit Two-Year Schools Are Kicking Community Colleges’ Asses
23rd August 2012
Read it.
There is a two-year college in California with a graduation rate of 72 percent. That’s a remarkable number. California’s community college graduation rate is a horrifyingly awful 25.3 percent.
Pacific College, though, isn’t a public school. It’s one of those for-profit schools that the Obama administration has tried blame for rising college debt and loan defaults. It’s a nursing school, too, so it’s a good bet those graduates are able to get jobs.
Funny how that works. People who are paying for their own education, as opposed to the drones who are leeching off of the taxpayers, tend to want to study something useful. Gender Studies and Queer Theory need not apply.
California’s community college system is a disaster. It’s heavily subsidized and cheap with no entry barriers. This may sound like a dream to those with no knowledge of economics (and those folks are certainly in abundance), but the reality is that California’s declining revenue has made it impossible for the state to keep up with demand, resulting in lengthy waiting lists for training for high-demand fields.
Waiting lists? For something the government provides for free? Who would have thought that would happen?
Then there are the thousands of folks who simply lack the aptitude for higher education, and we all get to subsidize this journey of unfortunate self-discovery.
Lucky us.
August 23rd, 2012 at 05:38
You can bet that California democrat totalitarians are scheming to find ways to shut these schools. Their existence is just too embarrassing to the teachers unions.
August 23rd, 2012 at 10:24
“Funny how that works. People who are paying for their own education, as opposed to the drones who are leeching off of the taxpayers, tend to want to study something useful. Gender Studies and Queer Theory need not apply.”
Either a gross mis-characterization, or gross ignorance.
Students at community colleges, at least those here in Michigan, pay tuition. The community colleges are subsidized, but so are the major universities. And ‘Gender Studies’ and ‘Queer Theory’ are not in the course bulletin. Other than technical and trade courses, they only offer the basic ‘core curricula’ of any school–English, writing, math, foreign language, and intro social studies courses.
People who attend community colleges do so for one of two reasons: They want to get a job in a specialized field–robotics, nursing, computer programming, web design, etc.–or they intend to transfer to a four-year school in future and want to get the general requirements out of the way less expensively.
The major difference between community colleges and a two-year private institution is that community colleges have an ‘open door’ policy; anyone can enroll. That unfortunately lets in “the thousands of folks who simply lack the aptitude for higher education”, but that doesn’t guarantee their grades. They figure out pretty quickly that they’re just not cut out for it, and leave. Or they stay and waste their money. (I did mention that they pay tuition, didn’t I?)
I would wager that Pacific College has either a pretty good vetting program or a pretty hefty price tag, or both. Their graduation rate reflects the fact that they winnow out those prone to fail before they start.
But to state that those who attend community college are somehow lounging about eating bon-bons while ‘leeching off the taxpayer’ is patently false. And you know it.
August 23rd, 2012 at 13:34
Just to add a little perspective:
“There is a two-year college in California with a graduation rate of 72 percent. That’s a remarkable number. California’s community college graduation rate is a horrifyingly awful 25.3 percent.”
This is misleading. The actual numbers reflect the number of students graduating from a 2-year college in three years,, not the total number graduating. Since many community college attendees don’t go full time, the chances of graduating from a two-year degree in two or three years is minimal.
I know from personal experience that my ‘two-year’ degree from a community college took me four years, and even then I had to get a waiver from the department head to substitute some classes for others on the graduation requirements. They didn’t offer every class every semester, and if class enrollment was below a certain number they cancelled. Then you had to wait until the next time it was offered…and so on, and so on…
So once again, in service to pushing a particular agenda the author ‘conveniently’ left out half the information. How very conservative of him.