PRO: Jonathan Jay Lando Dipratna
Is it one step forward or two steps back? Despite the previous sentence likely invoking thoughts of Paula Abdul, I intend to honestly and seriously discuss why community college is a viable option for higher education.
To begin, I would like to tell a personal anecdote. My reason for coming to this campus was that I did not know exactly what I wanted to be. Rather than just flounder, I attended classes trying to find my inspiration. I dabbled in classes for all the dreams I may have dreamed of pursuing. At the university level, I would have spent a lot of time and money into what ended up being years of growth and reflection.
That is what this place is to me, a campus home for potential; a chance for myself to find out who I am. Everyone has their reason for coming here to Skyline. Perhaps they could not afford to attend a university, they do not know what they want to do with their lives or maybe their grades were just not up to snuff; but this environment is a lower cost chance to be redeemed. And everyone loves a story of redemption through trials and tribulation.
As I mentioned previously pertaining to me exclusively, there is the chance to find yourself. While it is true that some people take longer than others to find themselves, here you do not feel the pressure as much.
I feel that the current higher educational system is flawed. People are living longer than ever but are still expected to finish school and get on with life and a career in your twenties. If you live to be eighty that means you spent one-fourth of your life forced to choose and learn what you are going to be doing with the latter three-fourths of your life. For some people that is fine but it is not for everyone.
At Skyline you see that variety of life. You can take a class and find yourself sitting next to a forty-year-old mother of two who awoke one day realizing her dream is to be a writer. Because of their competitive nature, debilitating costs and limited class sizes; at a university, you are less likely to find that.
I admit that some people never go on to the university level, but that in no way invalidates them. Everyone is on their own journey and some people who come here find out school is not for them and go pursue whatever it is that will make them the most happy.
My main point is that no matter where life takes you, it can either start or continue at the community college level. You can do what you want and you can fail or succeed, but no matter what you do or decide during your time here, you are always stepping forward.
CON: Shannon Elliot
Community college is a stepping stone to a higher education, a gateway to future careers and a better life, but only if you can get out of it. With ever-changing requirements to transfer and being told different things by different counselors, it is getting even harder to make your way out of the community College system.
Now it’s supposed to take one to two years to get out of the community college system, but I have noticed that it has taken and is taking my friends and myself far more then two years to get out of this system. I take part of the blame for not getting out in two years, but it is also a lack of knowledge on how to get out in a timely fashion. I have seen three different counselors, all of whom have given me different advice. Since I have started at Skyline, there seems to be more requirements to transfer.
But that is not my main problem with the community college system. As it is, the community college system feels like nothing more then glorified high school with ashtrays. There is no one pushing you to get out of the system, no incentive to leave and move on to the next level, thus not pushing for students to grow and want to leave the safety of the community college system into the cut throat world of the UC and state university systems.
My first two semesters at Skyline felt safe and if I just stayed here everything would be alright in my life. But after a year at this school, I began to feel the need to grow and start a life, which I could not do until I had a degree. Now 3 years and numerous counselor appointments later, I will be starting my final two semesters in the fall, or so I hope. Each time I go to a counselor, there seems to be some requirement that I have missed.
The longer students stay at Skyline, the harder it seems to get out, killing some people’s drive to leave the school. I feel that if students had an incentive to move on, the students would feel better about the education they are receiving. It would also thin the herd of people who truly want to be in school.
Take San Francisco State for example. They have a 60/60 rule which states that if you go over 60 units in your major, you must complete an extra 60 units outside of your major, thus costing the student, or their parents, a whole lot more money, almost forcing the student to focus on leaving school as soon as they can.
I feel that the community college system is failing its students in some ways, not forcing us to move on at some point, not giving us any incentive or push to move on to the next level. If the community college system put into place something to force its students to move on, I think it could improve itself a great deal, and it would feel less like a vast soul sucking wasteland and more like an institution of higher learning.