Why I'm Making My Son Apply to a Community College

and the three types of students who should NOT consider a two year option

Photo by Akshar Dave🌻 on Unsplash

When my son (currently a high school junior) and I started talking seriously about starting his college search process, I laid out a few ground rules:

• No schools in Florida, Alabama, Oklahoma, or Texas¹

• No applying to schools where he’d have to take out private student loans to be able to attend²

• He has to visit at least one small school in addition to the big schools on his list

• He has to apply to at least one in-state public university

• He has to apply to at least one community college

Today, I want to focus on that last rule and why I want my academically successful kid to seriously consider starting off at a community college.

First, a little context: my son currently aspires to be a high school teacher (and then, some day, a politician. We call this the Tim Walz effect) and knows that he can expect to get about $13,000³ a year out of his 529 plan. We’ve been super transparent with him about the dollar amount he can expect from us, the fact that he’ll only get financial support for four years (his sister is, you guessed it, four years behind him in school), and that he’ll almost certainly have to take out some amount of student loans, especially if he chooses to go out of state. He knows that he will not qualify for a Pell grant or most of our state financial programs, so he’s (so far) on-board with our goal of having him graduate with a total student loan debt of $40,000 or less.

The Cost Savings Multiplier

Given his financial realities, a community college could be a really smart move from a fiscal perspective. Annual tuition for the community colleges in our area is right around $7,000, so he wouldn’t need to take out student loans for his first two years. He also wouldn’t need the full $13,000 we have budgeted for each year, so he could roll that $6,000 over for his freshman and sophomore years. This acts as a savings multiplier because we would then have $18,000 to work with for his junior and senior years, thus lowering his need for student loans even more. In fact, if he starts at a community college and then transfers to one of our regional public universities (that have terrific education programs), where tuition and fees are at about $11,000 a year (with about $10,000 for room and board, if he chose to live on campus), he might be able to graduate with no student loan debt at all.

No Difference in Degrees

When I worked at a community college as an academic advisor, I met with a lot of future transfer students, helping them plan their path to the four year university of their choice. Occasionally I’d meet with a prospective student or parent who would have some anxiety about how starting at a two year school would be perceived by future employers, to which I responded “your bachelor’s degree diploma will not have an asterisk by it”. The students who start at the University of Minnesota as freshman and those who start as transfer students get the same degree, are both fully considered to be alumni, and have all the same access to career services, internship support, and networking opportunities.

I can confidently say, based on both data and years of experience that my son’s ability to find a teaching job after he graduates won’t be effected at all by being a transfer student.

Full disclosure: would I have more hesitation if he wanted to go to a highly competitive medical school or something like that? Maybe. But I also know that there are students who started a community colleges and go on to get accepted into quality graduate and professional programs every year. I also think that if he was someone who wanted to go something like medical school, he’d be even more grateful to finish his bachelor’s degree with as little student loan debt as possible.

Smaller Class Sizes

My son is very drawn to large public universities, which is great! There are a lot of things to love about a big public school. One thing that gives me pause, however, is wondering how he’ll do in a large lecture class. For a variety of reasons related to his particular temperament and brain chemistry, I suspect he’d find it fairly easy to zone out and not pay attention in a large lecture class where it can be easy to feel anonymous. I’ve worked at three community colleges and none of them have had a class larger than 75 students with the vast majority of classes being under 30. That size might be better for him, at least as he is starting out in college.

Sports and Leadership

I’m 99.3% sure that my son would choose a community college (or, honestly, any college in almost any location) if it meant getting the chance to keep playing soccer for a school team. He isn’t D1 (or D2) material at this point but a community or technical college might be an option.

Given my son’s interest in politics, it wouldn’t surprise me if he might consider doing student government while in college. This is another area where a big university might present some challenges. In some schools, it can be hard to get into student government or other leadership positions if you aren’t connected through the Greek system⁴. At community colleges, where students are more diverse and there are more part-time students, the pathway into leadership opportunities is wider because, truthfully, a higher percentage of their students aren’t as engaged in campus activities. Here in Minnesota, community college students can also get involved in a statewide lobbying group that gets a lot of opportunities to work directly with legislators and to shape state policy. That could be an amazing thing for him.

The Quality of Learning

In my higher ed career, I’ve worked for a large public land grant flagship R1 university, three community colleges, and two smaller private colleges. I’ve also taught classes at two of the community colleges and graduate classes at a private university. I’ve worked with faculty members and faculty unions from multiple institutions and I have seen first hand that there are EXCELLENT faculty teaching at all of those institutional types. I’ve also seen crappy teaching at both of the R1 universities where I did my own graduate work and at some of the community college campuses. Getting a job in academia is really, really hard in most disciplines⁵ and that means that smart and talented scholars are working at all types of institutions. I feel confident that my son can learn just as much in his general education requirement classes at a community college as he can at a large public university.

So… Why Wouldn’t He Choose a Community College?

With all of these great reasons and a mother who can be pushy persuasive, why wouldn’t this smart, practical kid (who loves saving money) choose a community college?

In a word: vibes.

The biggest barrier for him is that I think he has a very particular image in his head of what being in college will be like: he’s living in a residence hall, he’s surrounded by other 18 year olds who are his new best friends, he’s going to tailgates and cheering for the football or basketball or hockey team (ideally wearing body paint and getting shown on the JumboTron), he’s proudly rocking a school hoodie, and is in a place where there is stuff to do every day on campus.

And while there are some community colleges that have dorms, most don’t. There are some that have excellent sports programs, but they aren’t showing those games on TV. There will be other 18 year olds around on any community college campus but there will also be more adult students and part-time students and people who might not have his same interest in a “school spirit” kind of experience.

(this is actually one of the things I love about community college students - they really run the gamut from literally genius 14 year olds who’ve maxed out their high school math curriculum already to 65 year olds wanting to learn Spanish before going on a trip or middle age people looking for a second career or early 20s people who hated high school but are finally ready to try school again, this time on their own terms. I love them all).

Ultimately, my kid will have to decide if living the traditional college vision is worth the cost and the student loan debt, but making him apply to a community college and seeing the cost comparisons will at least, hopefully, help him make that choice with his eyes wide open.

I Love Community College… Except Not For These Students

Clearly I’m a big fan of the two year college and I do think more families should give them serious consideration. However, there are three times when I actively advise against starting at a community or technical college:

• Students who want to go into architecture: Architecture is probably the least transfer friendly major out there. Most architecture programs are five years long and sequenced in a particular way that makes it almost impossible to transfer into and not still have a five year program. Some schools have made some efforts to get better in this department but I’d still advise against it for a student who is set on that as their major.

• Students who have a lot of AP/IB/dual enrollment credit: There is a limit to how much credit you can transfer in to a four-year university and for students who are finishing high school with more than 25ish college credits (either from dual enrollment or via AP test), it might make make more sense to start at a four year since they would likely end up needing to transfer after a semester or a year to avoid taking more credits than will be accepted for their degree.

• Students who got large institutional merit aid offers from the four year school they plan to graduate from: While this has shifted a bit in recent years as some schools have gotten more active about recruiting transfer students, the truth is that schools do still tend to award larger merit scholarships or institutional aid packages (good old tuition discounting) to new freshman than to transfers. If a student has been admitted as a new freshman and given a nice financial aid package, it’s really important to find out what the school offers for transfers. It might not be as competitive, so it’s important to do the math on whether or not the tuition savings from starting at community college are enough to offset that and save the student money in the long run.

Questions about community colleges? Hit me up in the comments!

1. This list has grown since the election, sadly

2. Two red lines for me: No parent loans, no private loans. If we can’t make the finances work without having to explore those options, the school is too expensive for us

3. I wrestled a bit with whether or not to put in the actual amount of financial support we can provide. I wish it was higher, but we prioritized paying off my husband and I’s student loans before starting to save for college for the kids. I still feel like that was the right choice, most of the time.

4. “The Machine” at Alabama might be the most well known example.

5. Except, for a variety of reasons, nursing programs. It is borderline impossible for many schools to find nursing faculty, so if you are looking for career idea…