When I wrote regularly for various magazines about schools, editors occasionally assigned articles about community colleges. With no personal experiences at these schools, I reached out to academic experts, community college presidents, and other advocates to do my research. Not surprisingly, they only told me the good stuff, so I wrote several articles talking about all the amazing opportunities at these special schools. 

Then my son signed up for one class at our local community college in the Fall of 2021 after finishing high school. Accustomed to more highly resourced four-year colleges, I was shocked by this two-year college’s lack of administrative support and shoddy website. Also, I had to manage a major learning curve about the hurdles for getting support for students with disabilities at college, and the necessity of the accuplacerexam. Still dealing with COVID restrictions, much of the college remained online. My views of community colleges did a 180, and I wrote several negative newsletters about our experiences. 

Two years later, my son has nine community college classes under his belt and is ready to go full time to finish his IT degree. I’m running a webinar tonight with administrators at the local community college to share information with parents and teachers. Now, I’m more accustomed to the downsides, and have returned to my original excitement about how these colleges can provide a low cost, low stress education for our kids.

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