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As promised, I wanted to post some of my thoughts on the new sitcom “Community.” This will be short, as I was fairly dissapointed with the amount of insight it had into the actual life at community college’s around our country. That said, I do think two things came across (which I’ll discuss here) and I am still hopeful that as the series goes along that there will be some more accurate portrayals that can help us in ministry.
First, briefly, it did portray the variety of ages and personalities attending community colleges. This is very true and easily seen. I’m hoping the show will depict more of the not so obvious aspects of community college atmospheres.
The show, of course, was character driven. What else can you expect. The second thing that the show was intentional about bringing out is the perception that community colleges are sort of a “less than” approach to college education. Having worked with many students attending these schools, I have found this to be fairly normal. Students do often feel like they aren’t “really” in college yet, that they’re somewhat behind in their education pursuits, or they feel like they’re having to compromise some things for a time. And most community colleges come with some sort of nickname that has been past down by the students emphasizing the reality that its not a full-fledged university but rather somehow just an extension of high school.
I do think this is true, but I also think this is changing – and will continue to change more and more. Community colleges are growing tremendously! The cost of 4 year universities are rising rapidly, which obviously contributes to this. I also think many high school graduates are just beginning to think about what direction they will head in which also contributes to the growth. Instead of paying huge amounts of money for this time of discovery, why not go to a community college and get some GE out of the way while you do? (more on that in later posts)
Anyway, hopefully this Thursday nights show will have more to write on. For now, here are a couple questions for discussion:
Do you find community college students having a “less than” mentality? Do you see them feeling like they are behind in education somehow? What other differences do you see in community college students from major university ones?
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[...] we’re on the topic of community colleges (see previous post) I thought I’d write briefly about some of the things happening on community college [...]