This is the first in a series of arti­cles high­light­ing places you might have seen (and some you might have not seen) dur­ing the typ­i­cal student-led col­lege tour, that are all wor­thy of a sec­ond visit.

The Library.

A Shangra-Li for all things writ­ten, recorded, or doc­u­mented, the typ­i­cal prospec­tive stu­dent should not dis­count the qual­ity of a par­tic­u­lar school’s library when decid­ing upon where to spend the next four years. Most tour guides will take their groups through the library’s entrance, guide them through one of the study lounge’s and then lead the group of out the library to ensure that there is time for the remain­ing sights on tour.

What most prospec­tive stu­dents do not real­ize is that they will be spend­ing many week­day, and week­end evenings, and early morn­ing hours in the library work­ing through chem­istry prob­lem sets, writ­ing final papers for the Phi­los­o­phy 101, or sim­ply rehears­ing group pre­sen­ta­tions. So as a prospec­tive stu­dent, it makes sense to head back and explore one of the places you will prob­a­bly spend more time in rel­a­tively to your own room. When eval­u­at­ing libraries (or mul­ti­ple libraries, as there are col­leges who fea­ture more than one library on cam­pus grounds) here are few points to consider:

• Library Hours: Dur­ing my first two years at Oxy, the library was only open until mid­night Sun­day through Thurs­day, and until 10 PM on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day. For the few times that I planned on work­ing through the night to com­plete a paper, it was an incon­ve­nience to pack up my stuff, and find another place besides my dorm to con­tinue the night’s work. For­tu­nately, at the begin­ning of my Junior year, Occi­den­tal Col­lege insti­tuted 24 hour library ser­vice Sun­day through Thurs­day. At many larger uni­ver­si­ties, it is stan­dard for the library to be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

• Study Space: Most libraries offer a wide range of spaces to com­plete your work. From long tables shared with other stu­dious peers, to indi­vid­ual desks located in the quiet, iso­lated, cor­ners where there is no cell phone recep­tion or WIFI, you are bound to find a loca­tion that best resem­bles your cur­rent study­ing set-up.

• Size: Not all libraries are the same—ex: The Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia at Berkeley’s main library (which hap­pens to be one of sev­eral libraries on cam­pus), with its museum-esque read­ing room, and Occi­den­tal College’s one and only Mary Nor­ton Clapp library. It should be intu­itively obvi­ous that larger schools would offer stu­dents mul­ti­ple libraries, or as Berke­ley calls them, Affil­i­ate Libraries, where as smaller schools might pro­vide stu­dents with one, main library, with a few major-based libraries  about the size of a stan­dard class room, hous­ing related jour­nals and magazines.

What makes your college’s library stand out from the rest? As always, feel free to share your two cents below.

As I set off for my own spring break trip to Lon­don, I started think­ing about the epic lore sur­round­ing SPRING BREAK for col­lege stu­dents. Hav­ing gone to col­lege in Los Ange­les, I observed my fair share of class­mates’ road trips to Mex­ico and Las Vegas. As for me, I usu­ally used the week off to see friends at home—but there is more to Spring Break than hang­ing out on the couch or the beach. First let’s talk safety, then other ideas for what to do with this mid-semester break.

Exer­cise com­mon sense and cau­tion wher­ever you go.
I’ve heard hor­ror sto­ries of col­lege stu­dents get­ting scammed by online deals to go to Mex­ico or some­where else for spring break for some sort of deal that turns out to cost dou­ble or some­thing along those lines. If it seems too good to be true, it prob­a­bly is. Some­one else I know decided that sign­ing up for his first credit card would be a great way to pay for a long-distance travel ticket, but quickly ended up with sev­eral hun­dred dol­lars in debt. And of course, any kind of travel opens up room for unhealthy behav­ior and acci­dents. Be care­ful, be sen­si­ble, and make a point to have fun with­out get­ting hurt. As I learned from some inter­est­ing post-break sto­ries that cir­cu­lated around cam­pus, what hap­pens in Vegas doesn’t actu­ally stay in Vegas.

Con­sider an “alter­na­tive” Spring Break.
More and more, col­leges are offer­ing short-term oppor­tu­ni­ties to do vol­un­teer work dur­ing the week of vaca­tion. Many stu­dents from my school went to New Orleans to rebuild houses with Com­mon Ground. Larger uni­ver­si­ties have cen­ters for social jus­tice or com­mu­nity work, like the Cen­ter for Social Jus­tice at George­town Uni­ver­sity, which can pro­vide rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion and even coor­di­nate groups of stu­dents for alter­na­tive Spring Break endeav­ors. Although I didn’t vol­un­teer with Com­mon Ground dur­ing Spring Break (I went dur­ing the last week of a win­ter vaca­tion), I can vouch for the fact that short-term, immer­sive vol­un­teer expe­ri­ences can be extremely worthwhile.

Explore the area around your col­lege.
You know that restaurant/bar/museum/gigan­tic music store that you always pass and mean to check out? Spring Break is an excel­lent time to explore the area around your col­lege and do all the things you nor­mally wouldn’t have time to do. For me, this meant excur­sions to the famed Rodeo Drive and spend­ing time at the beau­ti­ful Hunt­ing­ton Library. I rec­om­mend using a city explo­ration web­site like Yelp.com to plan an awe­some Spring Break with­out ever hav­ing to fork over cash for a plane ticket or a hotel room.

So what are your plans, Spring Break-ers? Exotic travel plans, see­ing friends, or maybe catch­ing up sleep and back­logged reading?

Matt and Eliz­a­beth have both writ­ten insight­ful pieces regard­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties and often gray areas that emerge when select­ing col­lege pro­fes­sors to guide the next semes­ter at col­lege. Check out "Can we 'red flag' pro­fes­sors?" and "Deal­ing with a Dif­fi­cult Pro­fes­sor" for more on these.

This post will be short and sweet.

How does a col­lege stu­dent even pick pro­fes­sors? Most classes stu­dents take dur­ing fresh­man or sopho­more year are offered in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent sec­tions, which include an offer­ing of dif­fer­ent pro­fes­sors and class time/days of the week. While pub­lic col­lege bud­get cuts may be low­ing the amount of sec­tions offered per class, it's likely that most say… Eng­lish 101 sec­tions will have sev­eral pro­fes­sors from which to choose. (Note: Not all college-level instruc­tors actu­ally have the for­mal title "pro­fes­sor" attached to their name, but for the intent and pur­pose of this post, "pro­fes­sor" will be used.)

Say you're look­ing at dif­fer­ent Monday/Wednesday noon-1:00 sec­tions for Eng­lish 101 for your fresh­man year. You can choose between pro­fes­sors White, Steltz­man or Var­jay. Who the heck are these peo­ple? What can I really tell from a last name alone? Worry not… you have tools to avoid pick­ing at ran­dom! Here are some ideas.

1. Ask stu­dents who've been there. Sopho­mores and juniors who've been through the gen­eral ed marathon will likely have strong opin­ions on pro­fes­sors they've taken. Grad­u­ate stu­dents are a good bet too, as they might have col­leagues who teach your classes or even teach one themselves.
2. RateMyProfessor.com — The ulti­mate resource for sub­jec­tive, bare-faced tes­ti­mo­ni­als of col­lege pro­fes­sors. You can search by either last name or school to pull up student-written pro­fes­sor reviews, ranks and rat­ings from every­thing from help­ful­ness to a chili pep­per "hot" factor.
3. E-mail pro­fes­sors. Espe­cially if you've never met her or him, shoot a quick e-mail intro­duc­ing your­self as a prospec­tive stu­dent and ask­ing for more infor­ma­tion on the class. Not only will the pro­fes­sor be impressed by your ini­tia­tive, but you'll get a good sense of their teach­ing and e-mail style. E-mail cor­re­spon­dence with pro­fes­sors is becom­ing a grow­ing trend, even for fresh­man col­lege students.

Hint: To find pro­fes­sor e-mails, sim­ply find the "Direc­tory" page on the college's Web site.

Get­ting into the right classes can be quite a dif­fi­cult task in col­lege, espe­cially in your first cou­ple of years, when you do not have reg­is­tra­tion pri­or­ity.  Since you do not get to reg­is­ter first, some­times you will find your­self in a class with a dif­fi­cult professor.

This is also the case when it comes to required classes, for a major or minor; but, you can find a way to sur­vive, and suc­ceed in the class.

So if you leave the first lec­ture in fear or dis­gust, know that there are ways to endure this tough situation

Use the TA

If you have a pro­fes­sor whom you find insuf­fer­able, con­sult the TA for fur­ther help.  If you have a dis­cus­sion sec­tion, it can be a great way to get clar­i­fi­ca­tion on dif­fi­cult or con­fus­ing material.

When I took Sta­tis­tics in my fresh­man year, I could not stand my pro­fes­sor.  She moved through the mate­r­ial far too quickly, and her strong accent caused me even more confusion.

For­tu­nately, my TA was fan­tas­tic, pretty much sav­ing my grade in the class.  His dis­cus­sion sec­tion made the mate­r­ial under­stand­able, and his one sec­tion more valu­able for me than the professor’s three lectures.

Go to the office

In a big lec­ture hall, pro­fes­sors can seem larger than life.  But remem­ber that they are peo­ple too, not fig­ures to be afraid of.

All pro­fes­sors have office hours, and most will make appoint­ments to accom­mo­date your sched­ule.  Talk to them, because they want to help you.  Even if their lec­tures are excru­ci­at­ing, they are likely approach­able one-on-one, and it is worth a visit if you need help.

I took my first upper divi­sion class in my sopho­more year, and my teacher was extremely dif­fi­cult.  Her lec­tures con­tained more infor­ma­tion than I could process, and her home­work assign­ments were very difficult.

But when I finally got up the courage to visit her office, she helped me with the sub­ject mat­ter, and remained patient with me.  So don’t be afraid or intim­i­dated, because they want to help you.

And if/when you do visit office hours, make sure you are polite, no mat­ter how insuf­fer­able their lec­tures may be.

If any­one else has advice on deal­ing with dif­fi­cult pro­fes­sors, please post below.

Hav­ing just had a visit from my par­ents to my new grad school home, I thought it might be worth­while to dis­cuss that first parental visit after a new col­lege stu­dent has got­ten set­tled. For some it’s dur­ing the actual Fam­ily Week­end, for oth­ers it might have to do with a hol­i­day, and some­times par­ents just plain want to see their a while after that hec­tic move-in day in August.

Most of my extended fam­ily lives in Los Ange­les, so the first time my par­ents vis­ited me after I’d started col­lege was actu­ally for Thanks­giv­ing. For some rea­son I became totally fix­ated on orga­niz­ing my desk to the extreme—like that was how they were going to know that I was okay and doing well in school. Suf­fice to say that my dad took one look at my array of pens and pen­cils, metic­u­lously arranged in order of color, and knew that I had put way too much extra effort into the sit­u­a­tion. Oy.

Tidy up—but don’t indi­vid­u­ally Windex the blinds.
I think that everyone—from the clean­est of the clean to the biggest slobs—makes some sort of extra effort when par­ents are going to visit their cur­rent abode, whether it’s a dorm room, apart­ment, what­ever. Make the bed, vac­uum, pitch the beer bot­tles, but noth­ing is worth freak­ishly scour­ing the tub or any­thing else that adds extra pres­sure to the impend­ing visit. And I did indi­vid­u­ally clean my blinds for my most recent parental visit. They didn’t notice. What a waste of 12 antibac­te­r­ial wipes.

Share your new life.
At first, I didn’t want my par­ents wan­der­ing around my dorm or stop­ping for a snack at an on-campus eatery. I felt pro­tec­tive of my new life on cam­pus and had a hard time real­iz­ing that they weren’t look­ing to judge my laun­dry facil­i­ties or qual­ity of food. They just wanted to see what I was doing and how I was adjust­ing to col­lege life. Par­ents care, worry, and fre­quently fret, and a sim­ple lunch on cam­pus so that they see that their kids are eat­ing more than fries and Easy Mac can go a long way. Over the course of my col­lege career, I showed my par­ents around cam­pus, intro­duced them to peo­ple I knew as we passed them, and revealed one my super secret library study spots (I fig­ured my secret was safe with them).

Own your choices.
My par­ents were a lit­tle con­fused when, after spend­ing half of high school as the edi­tor of my school news­pa­per, I decided to pass on even apply­ing to work for my col­lege news­pa­per. In my first two years of col­lege, I really tried to explore as many dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences as pos­si­ble, whether it was trad­ing in news­pa­per edit­ing for middle-school men­tor­ing or pon­der­ing a switch from my intended major (which I did end up doing).

I think that after work­ing so hard on col­lege appli­ca­tions for so long—which, as we well know, involves a great deal of plan­ning for the future and stat­ing life dreams and goals—I was ready to just explore and not mea­sure every­thing in terms of “the plan.” This was hard to explain to my par­ents, who just wanted me to do well, and I had to let them see that I was happy sam­pling some of what col­lege had to offer. The thing is, I did ulti­mately join the staff of my col­lege news­pa­per. By that point, how­ever, I did it because I wanted to, not because any­one else thought I should. Par­ents are sup­posed to worry-and col­lege stu­dents are sup­posed to explore and fig­ure these things out for themselves.

So how did your family's first cam­pus visit go? Any advice…or crazy stories?

Today, the Los Ange­les Times pub­lished an immensely infor­ma­tive opin­ion piece on the largely ignored impor­tance of com­mu­nity col­leges within higher edu­ca­tion, using California's 110 com­mu­nity col­lege sys­tem as an exam­ple. The authors (Camille Esch and Christo­pher Cabal­don) point out that not only are com­mu­nity col­leges crit­i­cal to the suc­cess of the four-year uni­ver­sity sys­tem, but that Gov­erner Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger must ensure that these schools receive at least some of the funds he plans to set aside for col­leges by 2014.

Here are some high­lights of the big role com­mu­nity col­lege plays in Cal­i­for­nia alone:

• Nearly 3 mil­lion Cal­i­for­nia stu­dents attend com­mu­nity college.
• Half of all Cal State stu­dents and 30% of UC stu­dents attended com­mu­nity college.
• Com­mu­nity col­leges are California's num­ber one provider of work­force train­ing (espe­cially for jobs that require tech­ni­cal skills, but not nec­es­sar­ily a bachelor's or higher degree).
• An increas­ing amount of low-income stu­dents, laid-off employ­ees, return­ing vet­er­ans, par­ents and adults seek­ing a career change attend com­mu­nity college.
• Com­mu­nity col­leges receive the least amount of fund­ing com­pared with every other edu­ca­tional insti­tu­tion, despite increas­ing enroll­ment (which will con­tinue, as no stu­dent is turned away from com­mu­nity college).

How­ever, the arti­cle takes a step back to widen the scope of the argu­ment for these two-year insti­tu­tions. Not­ing that they shouldn't expect to sim­ply receive free money for admit­ting leagues and leagues of stu­dents, these schools must step up to the chal­lenge of fun­nel­ing more of these stu­dents toward actual col­lege degrees.  Cur­rently, the mas­sive, grow­ing num­bers of atten­dees have low­ered the rate of com­mu­nity col­lege stu­dents who even­tu­ally receive degrees to under one-third.

Per­haps if com­mu­nity col­leges were val­ued more as an an inte­gral part of our sys­tem of higher edu­ca­tion, these num­bers would rise. How­ever, it's unre­al­is­tic to assume that these col­leges can increase four-year trans­fer rates and improve over­all per­for­mance with­out finan­cial sup­port. It's a con­stant push and pull, and hope­fully the greater reliance on com­mu­nity col­leges dur­ing tough eco­nomic times (and this sweet three-part series) has pushed the issue closer toward the spotlight.

If com­mu­nity col­leges are a prime gate­way to the degrees nec­es­sary for a robust, forward-moving Amer­i­can work­force, I'm all for it.

This arti­cle on com­mu­nity col­leges is part of a Bet­ter­Grads series on two-year col­leges. To read last week's post on the role of com­mu­nity col­leges amid nation-wide pub­lic edu­ca­tion bud­get cuts, check out last week's post: Com­mu­nity Col­lege Part 2 — A solu­tion to bud­get cuts?

If you're a high school junior, chances are your inbox and mail­box have been filled with let­ters from the mar­ket­ing depart­ments of col­leges across the coun­try. I also received those one page let­ters. And if you do not feel like wait­ing until the sum­mer before your senior year to fig­ure out whether you should apply to these schools, even better.

And so it was dur­ing the spring of my junior year in high school that My Dad and I decided to take a road trip and visit some schools in the area who had been so kind to send us boiler-plate intro­duc­tion let­ters. This time, "in the area" referred to schools beyond the city lim­its of Los Ange­les, namely UC Berke­ley, UC Davis, Sonoma Sate, and UC Santa Barbara.

Below you will find some obser­va­tions and tips from our trip should you choose to visit some schools dur­ing your spring break.

Call Ahead, but not before 11 AM

On the first day of spring break, my Dad and I left our house in the sub­urbs of LA at 5:30 AM hop­ing to arrive at UC Berke­ley in time for an 11:15 AM tour. We also planned on meet­ing up with a fam­ily friend's daugh­ter, a ris­ing senior, to get an inside per­spec­tive on the her­alded bay area uni­ver­sity. Her father told us that we should not call her before 11 AM, as, "most col­lege stu­dents do not wake-up until noon." We thought he was jok­ing until we called Jes­sica at 10:55 AM only to hear a groggy, half-conscious voice on the other end. While the "noon rule" does not apply to all col­lege stu­dents, the best way to avoid any faux-pas is to con­firm a visit a few days ahead. Because a non-groggy, well rested col­lege stu­dent makes for a much bet­ter host / hostess.

Sur­prises everywhere

Even when your col­lege friend gives you a high level overview of what you he / she plans on doing with you or show­ing you, be pre­pared for a sur­prise or two along the way. One of the most mem­o­rable moments occurred when vis­it­ing Sonoma State's admis­sion office. My Dad and I were hav­ing a lovely chat with one of the stu­dent work­ers when the con­ver­sa­tion tran­si­tioned to our week­end plans. Some how the stu­dent worker mis­took my Dad for a prospec­tive stu­dent too. Puz­zled, we con­tin­ued chat­ting as if we thought noth­ing of it.

Later that night we drove down the 5 free­way to UC Santa Bar­bara,  where I linked up with my buddy Jared (we played for our high school's vol­ley­ball team). Though he was two grade lev­els ahead of me, we man­aged to keep in touch after he grad­u­ated from high school. My dad and I joined him for Shab­bat ser­vices at Hil­lel. After din­ner, Jared took me to his frat house. We arrived around 10:00 PM and did not leave until 2:00 AM. I will spare the details but can share that there were a lot of peo­ple danc­ing in the back­yard and one creepy exchange stu­dent who tried to make small talk. The key take­away from this expe­ri­ence was that I was able to see and expe­ri­ence the col­le­giate social scene in full and spend some time catch­ing up with a close friend

So, can Can­cun and kick Key West. Spend­ing spring break look­ing at col­leges will make for a more worth­while and reward­ing experience.

What’s okay on Face­book and what’s not? As one Florida col­lege sopho­more found out, com­plain­ing on Face­book about a teacher can get you sus­pended from school (this occurred when she was in high school). The stu­dent has now won the right to sue to cover her legal costs and try to expunge the sus­pen­sion from her record.

When I started col­lege, Face­book was still rel­a­tively new and users had to have a uni­ver­sity e-mail address to even open an account. Now any­one can open an account and Face­book cur­rently reports that it has over 400 mil­lion users world­wide. Face­book is one of those amaz­ing feats of tech­nol­ogy that does great things—but also opens up the pos­si­bil­ity for sit­u­a­tions like the one in Florida. So what are we to do? Based on expe­ri­ences that my friends, class­mates and I have had, here are some key things to keep in mind when it comes to Face­book in col­lege (or any­time, for that matter):

No mat­ter how great that party was, make sure that any Face­book photo doc­u­men­ta­tion remains PG.
I used the “untag” option lib­er­ally when it came to pho­tos involv­ing alco­hol, even if it was a totally inno­cent bot­tle of beer—especially before I turned 21. I also learned not to be afraid to ask a friend to delete a photo alto­gether if I wasn’t com­fort­able with it. Pho­tos on Face­book have a way of turn­ing up else­where (for exam­ple, many year­book staffs are turn­ing to Face­book for extra pho­tos) so I truly believe that there is no such thing as a silly or overly cau­tious photo de-tag or removal.

Upset with a professor/classmate/club/internship/life? Write a jour­nal entry, not a sta­tus update.
I am amazed at how much peo­ple feel com­fort­able shar­ing with the world via sta­tus updates. A class­mate of mine was actu­ally known for her emo­tional, stressed-out sta­tus updates that some­times iden­ti­fied groups of peo­ple as the cause of her prob­lems (i.e. Depart­ment X, lab part­ners, etc) and still didn’t get the mes­sage even after this led to actual con­fronta­tions with some annoyed stu­dents in real life. If you wouldn’t say it in per­son, please don’t say it on Face­book! Yes, the prob­a­bil­ity of an out­pour­ing of online sup­port in regard to a crummy grade or dif­fi­cult class­mate is tempt­ing, but it’s not worth get­ting into the mess that Katharine Evans got into in Florida when her vent­ing actu­ally got back to the school. Going pub­lic with pri­vate thoughts and opin­ions is a game-changer and it’s really, really not worth the instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion of post­ing these sen­ti­ments online.

Explore the var­i­ous pri­vacy and secu­rity set­tings.
These set­tings span a much wider range of options than I first real­ized, so it’s worth check­ing out. For one thing, net­works vary dra­mat­i­cally in size, which may deter­mine whether or not you really want every­one in a given net­work to see your pro­file or just those on your friend list. Beyond that, I set my account so that only a hand­ful of friends can see pho­tos tagged of me (which helps solve the first issue I dis­cussed) and not every­one can access my con­tact information.

That’s how I face the Face­book issue (couldn’t resist)—what sug­ges­tions do you have for smart and sound Face­book use? Should Katharine Evans have been sus­pended? Why or why not? And while we're on the topic, fol­low Bet­ter­Grads on Face­book!

Every­one knows that pub­lic edu­ca­tion has taken huge bud­get cuts in response to the recent state of the econ­omy. As a result, pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties (read: the Cal States and UCs) can no longer accom­mo­date the same huge num­bers of stu­dents as before, while being forced to raise fees and tuition for exist­ing stu­dents. Many stu­dents get put on wait­ing lists for pub­lic col­leges or sim­ply can't afford the increased cost of attendance.

Part of the rea­son many stu­dents choose to begin their col­lege edu­ca­tion at a two-year local school is to save on costs. Espe­cially for stu­dents who are unde­cided about a field of study and aren't yet ready to com­mit to a spe­cific cam­pus for four years, com­mu­nity col­lege is a good choice to begin chip­ping away at those "gen­eral edu­ca­tion" classes, such as Fresh­man Com­po­si­tion, Speech 101, Crit­i­cal Think­ing 101.… You get the pic­ture. And while every col­lege has its own style and level of edu­cat­ing fresh­men and sopho­mores, you can get most of your basic require­ments trans­ferred to a four-year school, hav­ing spent the first two at a com­mu­nity college.

But what if com­mu­nity col­leges offered more than just a two-year degree? Tra­di­tion­ally, com­mu­nity col­lege offers a two-year associate's degree (AA), which can count toward the first two years of a bachelor's degree (BA) at a four-year uni­ver­sity, assum­ing that all of the first two years' worth of cred­its trans­fer suc­cess­fully. How­ever, with pub­lic col­leges expe­ri­enc­ing bud­get cuts across the nation, some com­mu­nity col­leges have begun award­ing four-year degrees to allow more stu­dents the oppor­tu­nity to receive a BA.

As of 2009, 17 states have already passed leg­is­la­tion allow­ing com­mu­nity col­leges to grant four-year degrees, most of them in indus­try fields such as nurs­ing or edu­ca­tion. These pro­grams would stretch the tra­di­tional two-year com­mu­nity col­lege stay to four, of course, allow­ing stu­dents to com­plete the degrees required for indus­try work for a much lower cost than before. These BA-granting com­mu­nity col­leges are still few and far between, but more are try­ing to jump on board.

Cal­i­for­nia, for exam­ple, has not yet allowed its com­mu­nity col­lege schools to offer BAs. How­ever, two assem­bly­men, Jerry Hill and Marty Block–a for­mer San Diego State Uni­ver­sity (Cal State) dean–have pro­posed mov­ing the state's 110 com­mu­nity col­leges in that direc­tion, accord­ing to the Ven­tura County Star. Com­par­ing the 32% increase in Cal State tuition that aver­ages between $3,000 and $8,000 per semes­ter with the inex­pen­sive $26-per-unit aver­age at Cal­i­for­nia com­mu­nity col­leges, this sys­temic change may serve many stu­dents falling between the cracks of bud­get crisis.

How­ever, its impor­tant to note that some tra­di­tional four-year uni­ver­si­ties are up in arms about allow­ing com­mu­nity col­leges to grant four-year degrees, stat­ing that this kind of move toward com­mu­nity col­lege BAs puts stu­dents at risk for receiv­ing "watered down" degrees, a critic stated in the New York Times last year. In response, orga­ni­za­tions such as the Com­mu­nity Col­lege Bac­calau­re­ate Asso­ci­a­tion argue that a BA is a nec­es­sary require­ment for a good job, and pub­lic edu­ca­tion should pro­vide stu­dents with the real­is­tic oppor­tu­nity to achieve that. Their moti­va­tion seems to be focused on employ­able majors, like the above-stated nurs­ing and teach­ing occu­pa­tions, so it's doubt­ful that many com­mu­nity col­leges will begin offer­ing bachelor's degrees in phi­los­o­phy, polit­i­cal sci­ence or poetry. Uni­ver­sity human­i­ties depart­ments, for exam­ple, needn't worry, in light of the moti­va­tions for com­mu­nity col­leges to begin offer­ing their own BAs.

While there are many angles to the issue of pro­vid­ing bachelor's degrees to com­mu­nity col­lege stu­dents, I think it's a pos­i­tive advance­ment for pub­lic edu­ca­tion which allows more stu­dents the oppor­tu­nity to equip them­selves with the skills and require­ments for start­ing a career.

Do you know of any com­mu­nity col­leges in your area that offer four-year degrees? We'd like to hear about it! Let us know in a com­ment below.

This arti­cle on com­mu­nity col­leges is part of a Bet­ter­Grads series on two-year col­leges. To read last week's post on my per­sonal expe­ri­ences with excel­lent stu­dents from these insti­tu­tions, check out last week's post: Com­mu­nity Col­lege Part 1 — Speech & Debate.

In honor of Sunday’s warm-and-fuzzy hol­i­day, it seems fit­ting to dis­cuss dat­ing in col­lege. The New York Times recently pub­lished an insight­ful arti­cle about how the skewed female to male ratios at most uni­ver­si­ties affect dat­ing cul­ture. Over­all, the ratio remains approx­i­mately 60:40 (female: male).

Any­way, as described in the NYT, this can make for a rather quirky dat­ing cul­ture on col­lege cam­puses. When I saw this arti­cle, I went “Yes! Finally!” because I think that dat­ing in col­lege is some­thing that a) every col­lege stu­dent has thought about and b) few col­lege students/alumni want to dis­cuss. It’s awk­ward. It’s uncom­fort­able. It forces us to acknowl­edge the expec­ta­tions that we had for col­lege that may not have been met. It’s real life.

I def­i­nitely had high expec­ta­tions for dat­ing and social life in col­lege. After years of read­ing Sev­en­teen mag­a­zine and absorb­ing all of the promises that pop cul­ture had to offer, I assumed that col­lege would auto­mat­i­cally include first dates, clichéd strolls on the quad, and essen­tially the first big roman­tic rela­tion­ship that so many peo­ple pre­sume comes with the rest of the higher edu­ca­tion package.

I was wrong. I quickly became famil­iar with “hookup cul­ture” and real­ized that actual rela­tion­ships in col­lege now seem to emerge from a com­plex gray zone of par­ties, group dynam­ics, and a lit­tle too much time spent on Face­book. It was way more com­pli­cated than what I was pre­pared for and, to be hon­est, kind of over­whelm­ing and stressful.

Read­ing the arti­cle from the Times, how­ever, brings it all back. Before read­ing the arti­cle, I never really thought about how the skewed female to male ratio could put women in a posi­tion of height­ened vul­ner­a­bil­ity, but it does make sense and it totally fits with behav­ior I saw all the time as an under­grad. I’ve seen some incred­i­bly smart, savvy young women com­pro­mise their choices sim­ply because they were afraid of los­ing a boyfriend or even poten­tial boyfriend—and then when I’ve talked with my guy friends about this, it’s like we’re liv­ing in entirely sep­a­rate worlds. I do believe that many of the dynam­ics described in the arti­cle do not derive from neg­a­tive inten­tions on the part of male col­lege students—from what I have seen, they sim­ply are not aware of how dif­fer­ent it is for the female counterparts.

The arti­cle cites soci­ol­o­gist Kath­leen A. Bogle, who com­ments that in uni­ver­sity set­tings with so many more women than men, “… [women] are com­pet­ing for men on men’s terms…Since col­lege women say they gen­er­ally want ‘some­thing more’ than just a casual hook-up, women end up los­ing out.”

This is an inter­est­ing state­ment and I would be cau­tious to “blame” col­lege men for the preva­lence of hookup cul­ture. I think it prob­a­bly resulted from a great many fac­tors. The most impor­tant point that I want to draw from this arti­cle is that dat­ing on col­lege cam­puses is sim­ply not what many incom­ing fresh­men expect. Then those expec­ta­tions often seem to get warped by what­ever dat­ing cul­ture exists on a given cam­pus. It dif­fers greatly from col­lege to col­lege depend­ing on size, loca­tion, and other fac­tors, but this is surely a topic wor­thy of fur­ther discussion.

The Times arti­cle also touched on the dif­fer­ences between var­i­ous types of schools and I think that it would be inter­est­ing to see par­al­lel arti­cles writ­ten specif­i­cally about these dif­fer­ent cam­puses: small schools vs. big schools, city schools vs. sub­ur­ban or rurally-located campuses.

Let’s hear what you think. How would you char­ac­ter­ize the dat­ing cul­ture on your col­lege cam­pus? What do you think of Dr. Bogle’s assessment?