5 Myths About Community Colleges

This myth is a little different than the other four because it isn’t just about beliefs people have in general. This myth has political pundits and organizations signal-boosting it. Their claims that “college is a scam” packages widely accepted and legitimate issues in higher education with cultural and political opinions that are not held by everyone. There are a lot of places to dig deeper into the political part of this if you’re into that. But this discussion is about your plans for your future. If you’re reading this, it might be because you’ve heard the idea on the internet or from someone you know that college is just a scheme to collect your money and put you in debt with no real return on your investment. While I’d like to show that there is no “scam” happening, it’s important to talk about the real issues that lead some people to construct that scenario and how it does or doesn’t relate to your educational goals.  

I’ll leave the claims attached to this myth that criticizes higher education politically out of this. You’re capable of making your own calls on that. What that leaves us is four major things to support the claim that college is a scam.

• The High Cost of College: We covered this already with Myth #1, but yes, this is a real problem. A four-year degree at a public university is much more expensive today than for previous generations. What caused this and how to fix it is being thoroughly debated. But, even if the exact right solution is agreed on and put into place, it will likely take longer than you want to wait to see results. 

• “Degree inflation”: This is the observation that a degree is becoming necessary for jobs that previously didn’t need one and that more advanced degrees are being required for jobs that previously required less time in college. In both cases, it’s argued that the type and level of learning required to get that degree frequently doesn’t come into play on the job.  

• Irrelevant degrees: This claim contends that the subjects of many college degrees are irrelevant to actual job markets and do not prepare students for real-world skills. This is where you’ll hear debates about the number of students obtaining degrees in academic subjects versus skill-based training and how that impacts their chances for employment. 

• Quality of Instruction: Another claim you’ll hear associated with this myth is the idea that college programs don’t actually teach you anything. This is often presented by some sources in such a way that suggests it’s true everywhere instead of just at particular colleges or classes. The argument is often framed as “I went to college, had a lot of fun, and graduated but didn’t really learn anything.” 

Let’s dig deeper into these claims and talk about how they might relate to your educational plans. Each one stems from real issues connected to colleges everywhere. But when packaged together as one big myth, it can cast a fog over your ability to find individual solutions to each issue as they relate to your plans.  

• The High Cost of College: As we previously explored, this is a serious issue. The rise in college tuition has been greater than overall inflation for decades. This results in you having a harder time paying for college and often going into life-impacting debt to get it done. This is a societal problem that very likely hurts you and many people you know. It also creates serious issues for employers, as they try to find qualified people to hire. That ripples out to the products and services they provide to you.  
  Fortunately, community college still stands as an option that can really cut down on how much money you invest in your education. One that even the signal-boosters of this myth cite as a great solution. 

• “Degree inflation”: While there are some hopeful signs that this might eventually self-correct, it’s still one of the biggest factors to consider when planning your educational future. It’s hard to pin this issue on colleges alone. There are many factors causing this, but the biggest one is probably the growth of technology in every industry.  As technology advances, even entry-level positions often require more specialized skills and knowledge. Another factor might be the misconception that those with a four-year degree have developed better social skills that will help them in their careers. Regardless of what causes degree inflation, it puts both employers in a difficult spot by making it harder to fill all the positions they need and graduates in a worse spot by constantly escalating the investments they need to make to live a good life.  
  Navigating how this might affect your goals is a great topic to discuss with an academic advisor when discussing things like the employment outlook of your program.  

• Irrelevant degrees: This claim is usually aimed at many university programs and is sometimes linked to some of those political talking points mentioned earlier. One so-obvious-its-insightful aspect of the argument is that some programs have wider employment prospects than others.  But to call those programs “irrelevant” is a little over-the-top and probably dishonest. Many people find themselves in some pretty unlikely careers. What’s important to know is how likely your path is and what you’ll have to accomplish to succeed in it. There are no risk-free goals.  
  What’s frustrating about this claim is that it’s very common for colleges to provide students with the useful and up-to-date information they need to make plans that reduce that risk and uncertainty. Green River College includes up-to-date information on employment prospects for each program that even tracks growth trends for the positions those degrees can get you.   

• Quality of Instruction: A lot of the discussion around this claim comes in the form of personal observations of the authors, instead of peer-reviewed studies. Some observations, like descriptions of “large class sizes at some schools” are widely known. Others, like “employers find college graduates unemployable due to a lack of necessary skills,” might be true for the employers selected to be the examples to support the argument, but do they represent the majority of employers and graduates? Check these claims for selection bias before believing them. 

There are some studies* *  that have data to support this claim, along with criticisms of those studies. These have sparked some useful debates among colleges as they plan changes to programs. But this just shows that the quality of instruction at all colleges is always something that’s tracked, debated and adjusted. As the world changes, what colleges teach about it changes as well. “Quality” in this case is always an ongoing process, not a destination.   
How well a college does with teaching the program you enroll in is a crucial factor for you to consider. But this is something to be judged college-by-college and isn’t an indictment of all higher education. There is a wealth of tools online and through high school or college academic advisors for finding out if a school meets the level of quality you need for your goals. Explore them and decide on your own. 

A “scam” is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “a fraudulent or deceptive act or operation.” This implies that scams are planned and intentional. Everything we talked about above is the result of things like economic and technological changes or the regular development of the content of an education. They’re all certainly related in a variety of ways, and there are definitely huge numbers of people making individual choices that drive them.

That word wants us to buy that there’s some shadowy villain behind all of the problems you might encounter with your college education. And maybe it’s comforting to personify the social forces underneath the problems as a villain. But “social forces” don’t plan or commit fraud. So, it might be satisfying on some level to have a single baddie to point to when you encounter those challenges, but does it show you a way around them better than addressing each issue as they apply to your goals?