Image courtesy MCT Campus

A student works on math problems at Oakton Community College in Des Plaines, IL.

“Community college is for people who don’t go anywhere in life.”

“Community college isn’t as good as a four-year college.”

“I don’t know why anyone would choose to go to community college.”

Words like these circulate high school hallways far too often. Community college and the students who choose it as a first step in their postsecondary education have been stigmatized for decades. But little do people know that 40% of traditional-age college students begin their postsecondary education at a community college. Of the 500 students in the class of 2014, 37 will attend community college this fall. To bring more acceptance to the road less traveled, here are the four most common misconceptions of community college and the truth to set them straight.

Myth #1: The only reason students attend community college is because they can’t get into a four-year university.

This simply is not the case. There is a broad range of reasons for attending community college. First, it makes sense economically. The average yearly tuition of a four-year university for the 2013-2014 academic school year is $22,826 for in-state public schools and $44,750 for private schools, according to the College Board. The average yearly tuition for a community college is about $3,000.

“I decided to attend CLC because I learned right away that I have to make my dollars stretch,” said LHS senior Anna Kraft. “Initially I was hell bent on going to University of Iowa, but then a few scholarships I applied for didn’t pull through. I realized that in order to go to Iowa, I was going to have to take on at least $37,000 in student loans each year. I know for clinical psychology I’m going to have to go to grad school for at least four to six years, so we knew that wasn’t going to be plausible. My parents were like, ‘You’re not going to want to do that. With the job market as it is, it’s not reliable, especially for a psychology degree.’ So I decided I was gonna spend the money on graduate school rather than undergrad.”

Community college is a great way for students to transition into a postsecondary education who may not be ready to leave home or have other extenuating circumstances, as is the case for LHS senior Carolyn McMahon.

“I decided to attend CLC because of my concussions,” said McMahon. McMahon suffered three concussions over the past four years, two of which resulting from stunting accidents in cheerleading. “I wasn’t able to do homework. I wasn’t able to do tests or quizzes. I dropped a lot of my classes and I was in a study hall period for about four out of the eight periods of the day. It affected me a lot. It was a better idea for me to stay local and to stay somewhere close. I am saving a ton of money, but I’m just not ready to leave yet.”

For some, community college is the best way to explore and discover different interests and talents. Not everyone can pinpoint what kind of career they want to pursue at seventeen and eighteen years of age, and simply need more time to determine what they’re really passionate about.

“I decided [on CLC] because I’m not 100% on what I want to do,” said LHS senior Sebastian Yates. “I figure if I go to community college, that’s where I can kinda figure out for sure what my major will be and I won’t waste any time at other universities spending all this money not knowing what I want to do.”

Myth #2: You can’t have a sustainable career with a degree from a community college.

Quite the contrary. According to American business magazine Forbes, some careers that only require an associate’s degree pay more than those that require a bachelor’s or master’s. Some of the top paying jobs that only require an associate’s degree include registered nurses, dental hygienists, radiation therapists, and air traffic controllers, with annual salaries ranging from $64,000 to $108,000.

“A lot of students don’t realize that careers like auto technology, mechatronics, [and] many vocational degrees require people who are really good at math, really good at details,” said LHS College Counselor Ms. Amy Belstra. “After a year of schooling, they then go out as apprentices, and those people make excellent money. [They] don’t have to say, ‘I wanna be a business major.’ Maybe you wanna run your own business, but you want to actually practice that trade. [Community college] is a great opportunity to do that.”

Myth #3: Community colleges have low academic standards and an inferior quality education.

Not true at all. Classes at community colleges are often smaller and have more open communication between faculty and students compared to traditional universities. Many community colleges also offer honors programs to give students the opportunity to enrich their education further.

“We’ve also had growing interest–which I’m very excited about–in [CLC’s] Honors Program, which is really cool,” said Ms. Belstra. “They have an honors scholarship for some students, so they’ll essentially go to school for nothing. They give you a stipend, you get a lot of perks with that. And it’s not that the classes are, like, super super hard or anything, but what they do is they just have higher expectations. There’s more analysis, that kind of thing. You might write the same number of papers, but you’re just held at a higher standard. I think that’s an awesome opportunity.”

“You get really good quality teachers,” said Yates, who has been accepted to the Honors Program at CLC. “Sometimes at community college you do get the slacker kids, and then, you know, teachers sometimes get burned out from that because they don’t want the [slacker] kids there. But in these [honors] classes, because they know the kids are going to have high GPAs and are really gonna work hard, the teachers are willing to put in more effort and give good lessons.”

Community college isn’t just for those with sub-par GPAs either. Students from LHS who choose to attend CLC have GPAs at every part of the spectrum, ranging as low as 1.1 to as high as 4.0.

“I definitely think that people assume that community college is for those who couldn’t get into a more prestigious school, and I think that is a total misconception,” said Kraft.

Myth #4: Community college credits are difficult to transfer to four-year universities.

While one does have to be careful to ensure that they enroll in a course that will transfer to their intended four-year university, CLC graduates are able to easily transfer to other traditional institutions throughout Illinois and across the country. CLC has articulate agreements with both public and private colleges and universities, which guarantees full credit transfer.

In general, reports from state universities indicate that CLC transfer students perform as well as, or better than, students who began their studies at four-year schools. Furthermore, a five-year study of students transferring from two-year to four-year colleges and universities in Illinois showed that students who transferred with an Associate in Arts or Associate in Science degree earn higher grade point averages and have higher completion rates than students who transfer without a degree.

With myths debunked, why are we, as high school students, still afraid of considering community college as a viable option? When asked about his view on the stigma of community college, Yates was able to shed some light on the matter:

“I feel like it’s more common around teenagers now that everyone in high school is, like, so afraid of community college and think that it’s bad that if you go to community college, that you’re not smart enough or you’re not good enough for regular college. I figure, when you’re younger, you think it’s really bad, but later on you realize it’s not that bad. It just matters where you end up later.”