As Bet­ter­Grads will con­tinue to pro­duce col­lege admis­sions and acceptance-related posts for those anx­iously await­ing bulky pack­ages from first-choice four-year schools, we will not fail to serve those prospec­tive col­lege stu­dents look­ing to fur­ther their edu­ca­tion at a com­mu­nity col­lege. This will be a series of posts, and I encour­age read­ers to sub­mit their com­ments and feed­back regard­ing two-year schools.

Let's cut to the chase. Com­mu­nity col­lege has a bad rap. While I could have a field day list­ing numer­ous stig­mas and stereo­types about com­mu­nity col­leges, I'd rather divulge the impres­sive accom­plish­ments I've wit­nessed from my peers at two-year schools. While I bypassed com­mu­nity col­lege (adding onto my ever-growing stu­dent loan…) I look back on the debt and gen­eral edu­ca­tion classes and won­der if I wouldn't have been the same–or better–getting those first two years out of the way at one of these under­dog insti­tu­tions. Per­haps next week's post will detail some com­mon myths about com­mu­nity col­lege. For now, it's story time.

One Exam­ple of How Com­mu­nity Col­lege Stu­dents Hold Their Own

As a bud­ding mem­ber of my four-year university's speech & debate team, I prac­ticed my speeches and per­for­mances reli­giously lead­ing up to my first tour­na­ment as a var­sity com­peti­tor. Scan­ning the list of schools entered in the com­pe­ti­tion, I noticed sev­eral had the phrase "Com­mu­nity Col­lege" in their name. Com­mu­nity col­leges com­pete against us? I snick­ered. I chor­tled. I fon­dled elit­ist notions of supe­ri­or­ity, assum­ing the smaller, less-robust schools would bring weak com­pe­ti­tion against which I would pre­vail. Ha!

And it's exactly that kind of elit­ist think­ing that handed me a big, honk­ing piece of hum­ble pie.

Expect­ing to have the upper hand as a "real" col­lege stu­dent, I was sur­prised to encounter stiff com­pe­ti­tion at my first tour­na­ment. The com­mu­nity col­lege speak­ers were elo­quent, pre­pared, well-dressed, and many of them had been com­pet­ing far longer than me! A few com­mu­nity col­lege com­peti­tors boasted that they had trav­eled to Argentina the year before to com­pete in an inter­na­tional speech com­pe­ti­tion. I had only been to a nearby town to com­pete. I was befud­dled, instantly embar­rassed by my judg­men­tal atti­tude. In fact, nearly every tour­na­ment for the rest of the year was over­whelm­ingly dom­i­nated by com­mu­nity col­lege atten­dance, and I found myself fight­ing to be rec­og­nized and awarded as a mem­ber of a four-year university.

With only two years to cul­ti­vate their stu­dents, many insti­tu­tions like Glen­dale Com­mu­nity Col­lege, Los Ange­les Val­ley Col­lege, Mt. San Anto­nio Col­lege and Las Posi­tas Com­mu­nity Col­lege (to name very, very few) are churn­ing out some of the most pro­fes­sional, pol­ished and per­sua­sive college-aged pub­lic speak­ers in the coun­try. (That 'P' allit­er­a­tion would sound way cool if it were spo­ken… by a com­mu­nity col­lege speech com­peti­tor.) Instead of wast­ing away two so-called embar­rass­ing years at a com­mu­nity col­lege, these stu­dents take advan­tage of resources avail­able to them on their cam­puses. Con­sid­ered a "senior" by their sec­ond year, these stu­dents gain the advan­tage of own­ing a larger stake in their cam­pus, rather than get­ting lost in the mud­dled num­bers of fresh­men that can reach up to the tens-of-thousands at some four-year schools.

I had some exhil­a­rat­ing wins as a speech & debate com­peti­tor at my uni­ver­sity, but my suc­cesses some­times went largely unno­ticed by the tons and tons of other activ­i­ties my cam­pus offered to the 30,000+ stu­dents. My com­mu­nity col­lege cohorts, how­ever, had oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­nect with a larger per­cent­age of their stu­dent body, recruit­ing fresh, unsus­pect­ing new stu­dents onto the team, who oth­er­wise may never have encoun­tered speech & debate. For exam­ple, Glen­dale Com­mu­nity Col­lege began their student-run speech & debate team in 2004 with only three stu­dents. At the start of the 2010 sea­son this semes­ter, the team reached an all-time high of 50 speech & debate team signups, after much-deserved on-campus press cov­er­age for their impres­sive wins at the annual national tour­na­ment for four-year schools. I was so impressed by my for­mer com­pe­ti­tion that I wrote up this press release tout­ing their successes.

Speech & debate is one of this country's old­est and most respected aca­d­e­mic activ­i­ties, and it is alive and well among com­mu­nity col­leges in California.

While this exam­ple is highly per­sonal and spe­cific to my col­lege expe­ri­ence, it opened my eyes to the abil­i­ties of com­mu­nity col­lege and the types of stu­dents it can pro­duce. The many com­mu­nity col­lege stu­dents I knew back then are either now thriv­ing at four-year uni­ver­si­ties or just grad­u­ated, most of them with only two to three years of stu­dent loans to repay.

I don't regret my deci­sion to attend a four-year uni­ver­sity for all four years. I do, how­ever, regret writ­ing off com­mu­nity col­leges as unim­por­tant, as many of these insti­tu­tions offer oppor­tu­ni­ties to excel, thrive, and accom­plish great things.

More on com­mu­nity col­leges next week.

Have an idea for an angle on com­mu­nity col­lege? Leave a comment.