Talk:Community college/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Please explain the American use to Britons as well as the British use to Americans

Is this correct: in N. America some people go to a community college after the age of 18, and instead of uni? Njál 17:39, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Short answer? Yes.

Community colleges here serve a number of purposes but the two primary ones are training in a field that does not require a University Degree (police work, medical assisting, or some forms of nursing for example) or to allow a less expensive means to complete the first two years of a 4 year University degree. This was not the case in Canada, as there was no direct way of going directly form a Community College to a university, especially in Ontario.From personal experience, I completed a 2-year degree (Associate in Science) at a community college that cost $55-$60 USD a credit hour before transferring to a University for my last 2-2.5 years where it costs about $220 USD per credit hour. Some classes I took did not transfer (I changed majors) but 75 of the 90 credit hours did transfer and most of the non-transferring classes I took for fun and knew they wouldn't transfer.

Another advantage to the community college system here is that academic qualifications to enter are not as stringent. This allows someone like me who did poorly in high school to effectively have a second chance to qualify to enter the University. The community colleges also make it easier for people who elected not to go to college after high school to reenter the education system later on or to gain a lower level degree that increases their job prospects.

Oh... American schools go Kindergarten (age 5) --> Elementary School (Grades 1-5 or 6) --> Middle School (Grades 6-8) or Junior High School (Grades 7-8)--> High School (Grades 9-12) and end at about age 17-18 usually. There is no mandatory education after that point and graduates from high school may enter the work force, go to a Technical School (Job-specific/non-academic), go to a community/junior college (academic and job specific or academic only), apply for a university (bachelor's degree seeking), or perhaps perform military service.

Can't help with British schools... Deathbunny 23:42, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

The British use is much more loose. In some areas a community college offers education other than for school pupils, e.g. adult education, evening classes; in others it is merely a school as part of a wider community centre. Tafkam 21:58, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the American usage is even more complicated as it varies from one state to the next depending upon the quality of funding. Many American community colleges do provide adult education and evening classes as well as associate degrees. For example, Foothill College and De Anza Colleges, the community colleges serving the western end of Silicon Valley, serve 18-year-olds trying to get associate's degrees to support transfer into universities, as well as precocious teenagers earning college credit to accelerate their passage through their university years (that is, by graduating in three instead of four), professionals in their 30s and 40s earning certificates to update their knowledge and advance their careers, and retirees seeking to learn more interesting life skills like photography, foreign languages, computer art, etc. Plus both colleges have large gymnasiums and Olympic-size swimming pools, and Foothill also has a full-size soccer/football field with bleachers, which serve users of all ages. --Coolcaesar 06:03, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Please add something to explain this at the start of the US section of the article, though. As a non-American, after reading the article I was still confused as to what age the normal students of these colleges are/where they normally fit into the education system. The only comment on age in the Enrollment section appears to be about the extreme cases, not what's typical.

Older Comments

The second half of this page duplicates City University of New York but is incomplete. Also, community colleges are better compared to senior colleges than universities. They usually grant an associate degree as opposed to a bachelor degree. This entry needs an overhaul. RoseParks

Yes. That's the thing about Wikipedia though--you don't have to content yourself with observing that something needs done--you can just jump in and do it!

I wasn't sure what the point of the lower portion of the article was, so I left it. if you know better, have at it.

I have tried to draw the distinction better with my recent edits to the top part. You use the term "senior college." I have never heard or seen that term used, though it does seem complementary to a term I have seen used, specifically, "junior college".

I'm afraid of getting lost in the complex muddle of terms, as junior colleges and community colleges are not necessarily the same thing, as a junior college might have a more regional (rather than community) scope.---- Clearly someone, or one of us, has some checking to do, before defining "community college." I am from NYC, where "community college" does refer to a 2-year or junior college with little sense of "community." RoseParks

As an employee and student of a community college, I feel somewhat qualified to write on the subject, so I rewrote the page and removed the duplicated New York material. Hopefully someone else will add more, but it's better than it was. HollyAm 01:48 Oct 14, 2002 (UTC)

Should we really have a list of community colleges in this article, or one at all? There are hundreds upon hundreds of them in the US alone, and listing them all here could get messy. Also, the list of colleges and universities already includes community colleges. --Kukuman 00:44, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

A separate List of community colleges article might be a good idea. While the List of colleges and universities does have community colleges, they are mixed in with the other colleges, and are thus harder to distiguish as being community colleges. A separate list could help better list them, especially since the current list here could end up being too big for this article. -- LGagnon

Done. --Calton 14:47, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It is also a good idea, however, we need to visit each States' board of community colleges website and see what is a community college under their jurisdiction. Example, North Carolina probably has loads upon loads of colleges. -- Zscout370 My Talk 16:47, 2 Feb 2005 (EST, USA)

Junior college now redirects here

Let's face it...what we are really talking about here is "13th Grade".

I change the junior college article to redirect here. Below is the text from the junior college article. Maybe some of it could be incorporated into this article.

A junior college is a two-year post-secondary school whose main purpose is to provide a method of obtaining academic, vocational and professional education. The highest certificate offered by these institutions is usually an associate's degree, although many junior college students continue their education at a university or college, transferring some or all of the credits earned at the junior college toward the degree requirements at the four year school.

The term junior college was previously used to refer to all non-bachelor's degree granting post-secondary schools. Over the last 30 years, the name junior college was often thought to have negative connotations with respect to the education received by the students enrolled in them. Since many public junior colleges in the United States served a more localized community, these schools began to replace the "junior" in their names with "community". With the advent of the term community college for public institutions, in the United States the term junior college is often explicitly used to refer to private institutions. However, the relative small number of private junior colleges and the continued use of the term in the names of many community colleges means that people often do not perceive a distinction between the two terms.

Junior colleges originated from the Chautauqua movement in late 19th century New York State. By the turn of the century, groups from established colleges and universities would travel around the nation, visiting small towns that did not have access to upper level schools, to offer eight to ten week course on subjects such as the arts, science and literature.

--Cab88 11:14, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

I am not sure if I can agree with the above redirect. The terms "junior college" and "community college" are perhaps almost interchangeable in the US, but this may not apply to other locations. In Singapore, Junior colleges work on an almost different system, and are not referred to by any other name. Shall I restore the JC article and expand it?--Huaiwei 16:43, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Maybe. Probably depends on whether other Commonwealth countries use the U.S. or Singapore meaning for "junior college." If it's just Singapore, we could explain the local usage in a note at the bottom of the community college article, but if this is one of the big Commonwealth v. U.S. issues, then the original article should be restored. I don't know enough to resolve this. --Coolcaesar 06:41, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Hmm...with regards to Singapore, there is probably enough material for half an article, considering it is so different from whatever exists in this article. I am not too sure if this is wholly a Commonwealth vs US affair, thou, but I do know JCs also exist in the commonwealth countries of Australia, Malta, India (btw...notice the article Junior College still exists!), but also in China, Japan and Taiwan. They dont exist in many commonwealth countries thou.--Huaiwei 08:06, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

In the UK it's called sixth-form college. — Insta ntnood 08:26, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, but we are talking about Junior Colleges here.--Huaiwei 09:49, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

What about an article for matriculation/pre-university education in all countries? — Insta ntnood 10:45, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

That's a really bad idea. Pre-university education between countries differs even more than their legal systems; one could write a book on the differences in educational systems. If you look at the articles on various legal concepts, some of them, like Contract, are turning into a huge mess because people keep adding all the variations unique to their own country. That problem is why some articles, like Tort, have already been split up. --Coolcaesar 02:12, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

The article on "Junior colleges" should cover it's use other then as a synonym for community college (common in the U.S.). Any relevant text from the above text I copied over should be added to this article. The article on "Junior colleges" should explain that it is about "Junior Colleges" as they exists in Singapore and elsewhere outside the US and that the US use of the term is covered in the article "Community college". --Cab88 11:40, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Alright, I will see what I can do. Alternatively, we can make "Junior college" a disambg page, and have seperate articles for JCs in different countries?--Huaiwei 12:13, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I came here looking for the meaning of "Junior College" in India, so of course a redirection to this article took me no nearer an answer. 192.55.52.1 20:45, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Also, referring to "levels" implied (to me) a hierarchy that I don't think was intended. I would use another word; however, I have not edited the article because I was unsure of the intent. 192.55.52.1 20:45, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Proposed merger with Junior College

Oppose - if anything, there needs to be a split & merge. The current entry is very confused, particularly where usage differs between different countries. I'd prefer to see this page remain as a brief explanation of the use of the term in different countries, with perhaps the US section containing a brief explanation and a link to Junior College. Tafkam 12:47, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Oppose - this term has a distinctive meaning in the UK. the article needs to be rewritten to reflect differences between the conception of community colleges in the US and the UK.

Who Cares - use common sense, not straw polls. --Haizum μολὼν λαβέ 06:19, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Depends - if there is a difference in what constitutes a junior college/community college in the US vs. other countries, then we should have separate articles for each type. One size clearly would not fit all in that case. But if there is no difference, then the articles should be merged. I will leave that to much smarter Wikipedia administrators. Quidam65 15:25, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Oppose Junior and community colleges are quite different. --Coolcaesar 07:50, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Comment - There should be a division based on national systems. I think the US system has the two being much more similar than other nations. I also think this article is an utter mess, the juco article isn't great, but better. I would support separating into articles on systems --in the US, for example, I would draw a line between Junior Colleges & Community Colleges vs. Technical Colleges, though they all might fit into a well organized article. --Bobak 16:00, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Strong oppose. They are not interchangeable, regardless of whether some community colleges use "junior" in their name. I do a lot of work in community college policy and no one in my field would ever confuse these two. Additionally, we cannot look at this article from an American viewpoint, and there is no doubt that community colleges and junior colleges are very different in other countries. Beginning 16:01, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Comment - I support Tafkam and Bobak's opinions. The US usage of the two terms should be merged into a single article, but there should be pages for "community college" and "junior college" describing all usages of the terms (and linking to more detailed articles where they exist). 203.33.3.10 05:47, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Oppose I oppose the merge. However, if a merge comes to be, I believe "community college" should be dominant. --68.196.104.31 (talk) 02:52, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Factual Accurarcy Dispute

The City University of New York system isn't really a system of only community colleges, but rather an umbrella organization of community colleges, four-year schools, grad programs, etc. Frankly speaking, CUNY is such a loose system that it would probably be considered an umbrella organization of universities in most places. I know it's a somewhat trivial change, but I wanted to give a chance to whoever wrote that to clarify what they were saying. I've never really heard of community colleges being called "city colleges" here in New York. In fact, that would strike me as very confusing since we have a pretty well-known public four-year college (within the CUNY system) called City College of New York. Bolwerk 09:15, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Biased

Why is it that every disadvantage listed ends with "However, blah blah blah why it doesn't matter"?

Article definitely reads like it was written by community college students. Tool2Die4 (talk) 20:53, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I concur. Unfortunately, I'm too busy cleaning up other Wikipedia articles and practicing law and trying to keep up with social functions to clean up this mess. --Coolcaesar (talk) 05:27, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Also, check this logic: "Research shows individuals with Associate's degrees earn less than those with Bachelor's degrees. However, because a correlation exists between years of education and earnings, this says more about years of schooling than the value of Associate's degrees or certificates."

This person must have taken logic at a community college, because if the un-cited research is accurate, at most we can conclude that there is a correlation between both type of degree (Associate vs. Bachelor's) and years of education. How does the additional existence of a correlation between years of education and earnings imply that this second correlation is the primary correlation, while the type of degree is less of a factor? It doesn't. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.193.168.178 (talk) 17:57, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

International differences

My suggestion is to rename this article Community College (USA and Canada) and then create a dab page for Community College that would point to the current page, the Malaysia page, a new Community Colllege (UK) page, and then any others that get written. All non-USA/Canada material (there's not much) would be moved to the appropriate page. Any comments? --Northernhenge (talk) 20:41, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Not a bad idea. The term community college while used in many different jurisdictions, tend to have different definitions and isn't really that generic. I would support such a move. - Bob K | Talk 21:03, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

What just happened?

Toussaint just split off the section on the United States into a separate article with no warning and for no apparent reason. There was no reason to split that off! --Coolcaesar (talk) 07:47, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

My changes, IMO, were done in both good faith and good reason: the United States section took up a completely unmanageable and disproportionate chunk of the parent article, so splitting it into a separate article seemed, and still seems, to benefit and better reflect the general worldview of the community college article and allow for both betterment and expansion on details in the US article. I don't see a need to merge the US article back into the parent article, as the US-centric article is now much better organized than it was as a mere section of the general article, and I would flatly oppose any move to merge on technical grounds. --Toussaint (talk) 19:20, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm curious to know what these "technical grounds" might be. I'd also like to point out that a large amount of space devoted to one of the largest countries in the world with one of the largest and most diverse educational systems in the world implies neither a deficiency in the rest of the content nor a situation in which other sections might never expanded. To me, your argument for the split seems either illogical or irrelevant. I would advocate for more time spent contributing and less time muddying the waters with unilateral decisions to split articles. --Aepoutre (talk) 23:58, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. Community colleges developed originally in the United States and continue to constitute the vast majority of such institutions worldwide. In my extensive experience, splitting articles unnecessarily tends to result in heavily redundant garbage over time (as new Wikipedia editors wander in and out without knowledge of the history of the articles prior to the split) which no one has the time or energy to clean up. See legal education in the United States, Legal education, Juris Doctor, Law school, and law school in the United States for a fairly typical example. Unless you can personally commit the time (as in two or three hours per month) and energy to keeping these articles in sync, I am going to merge them back in a few weeks. --Coolcaesar (talk) 00:18, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Okay, no reply yet. If I don't see anyone committing soon to maintaining the merge properly as I've noted above, I'm rolling it back. --Coolcaesar (talk) 07:11, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I think the current Community colleges in the United States article is both well written and comprehensive. It ought to remain a separate article. A brief introduction would be appropriate in this article rather than re-merging the section back into the present article. I am not sure if the argument that community colleges originate in the United States may be correct. - Bob K | Talk 12:46, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I think the current US-centric article is okay, not well-written, though it may well be fairly comprehensive. It could probably use some whittling to make it more concise, which would also aid in merging it back to this article. That seems to be the case in most of these situations. I don't see the need or merit in a separate article, either. In fact, I consider it more confusing, and it's also a pain in the butt to pipe links for every single CC in the US. --Aepoutre (talk) 23:50, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Merged with Community college research

Per the result of a recent AfD on Community college research, I have merged the content of that article into this one. You can see the discussion of that AfD here. Please feel free to edit the new material as you see fit. SnottyWong talk 00:41, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

What a mess!

This article is getting REALLY messy after Toussaint split off Community colleges in the United States. We have a paragraph of unsourced garbage about "comprehensive community colleges," which is actually a relatively obscure movement from the 1960s and 1970s (culminating in a number of well-intentioned "Comprehensive Community College Acts" in various states) that is WAY too much detail for a general overview (if that's what Toussaint intended this article to be). It's like when people say TMI when a kid starts talking about his bodily functions. I just checked the literature on the "comprehensive community college" through Google Books and it's definitely a historical thing, not the kind of thing actively discussed in Community College Week or other current publications. Next, we have a section on community college research, specific to the U.S., which should have been merged to Community colleges in the United States. Again, this is an example of how the United States is the only country in the world big enough to support well-developed sociology departments with specialists in sociology of education, which is why all the research in this field is coming out of the United States. We have the same problem with many other articles on Wikipedia for this reason. Check out List of sociologists and notice how nearly all of the sociologists who did their best work after 1950 are based in the United States. Anyway, there are two possible principled solutions for cleaning up this mess, as far as I see it:

Transfer the overly U.S.-specific content to Community colleges in the United States.
Merge Community colleges in the United States back into this article.

Although I personally prefer the second option, I'll side with the first one for now as that seems to be the easier option to achieve a consensus around. If no one comments in two weeks, I'll do the transfer of U.S.-specific content and clean this up. --Coolcaesar (talk) 03:05, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

College education in Quebec

Although the people in Quebec might call all colleges that are post-secondary/pre-university Cegeps, it is incorrect to do so. Only public colleges are Cegeps. Privately funded colleges are not Cegeps. Government colleges, like the music conservatories, are not Cegeps. They are all part of the college level of education in Quebec, but are not all Cegeps. Marianopolis College, Herzing College, O'Sullivan College are all post-secondary/pre-university colleges in Quebec, allowing one to receive a college diploma, but are private, therefore not Cegeps. Unfortunately for the 1 million plus English speaking residents of Quebec, the Quebec Ministry of Education Leisure and Sports does not have much available to explain the system well in that language, here is a ministry site that quickly explains the difference between public, aka CEGEP, and private colleges.

Is this term actually used in the UK?

I'm 26 and have lived in the UK all my life. I never heard the term "community college" until a few months ago on an American TV program. I would suggest that if the term is used at all it's not widespread.

I don't want to edit the article in case it's just me. So it would be good if some other Brits could weigh in and say whether they're familiar with the term or not.

82.40.252.13 (talk) 01:12, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

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U.S.

The section on American community colleges is written in a non-encyclopedic style. It needs to be changed to a neutral style and the writer's name removed. Kdammers (talk) 15:07, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Merge from junior college

That article appears unattended. -Inowen (talk) 06:21, 25 March 2018 (UTC)