In the year 2020, forty percent of 18-24 year olds were enrolled in college in the United States. Of those remaining, 34% of them say they aren’t enrolled in a college because it's too expensive, and they’re right. According to Forbes, correcting for inflation, college is 150% more expensive today than it was in 1980. Of those lucky enough or indifferent enough to attend a four year college, 70% of them graduate with debt, and in many cases a debt that far exceeds what they’ll be able to repay in a reasonable amount of time. Typically a student loan is supposed to take 10 years to pay off, however research shows it's now more like 21 years on average. This is because of the direct relationship between increasing costs and decreasing return on investment. Today the ROI for a standard bachelors degree is lower than ever. Oddly, 70% of people are boxing themselves into a contractual obligation for a quarter of their lives and act as if there are no viable alternatives to the traditional college pathway, and to their detriment. Unfortunately it’s harder for people to accept their missteps than to alienate the minority to feel security in their decision making. As we’ll explore, the stereotypes surrounding community college are unfairly based in college admissions education and herd mentality.

Unduly, the burden rests on high school students who lack the information, foresight, and independence to conjecture a sensible plan for college, especially when college guidance counselors offer no more than qualitative information. Too late do students realize they were admitted to an expensive social club for better or worse, with a lot of debt, and cagey disincentives to stray from course whether it be unenrolling or changing your degree path.

Shockingly this isn’t even the worst part about four year universities, and it frankly has little to do with the universities themselves. Instead, the worst part is the aforementioned herd mentality associated with going to college. “Herding can be defined as the phenomenon of individuals deciding to follow others and imitating group behaviours rather than deciding independently and atomistically on the basis of their own, private information. [...] Keynes conceived herding as a response to uncertainty and individuals’ perceptions of their own ignorance: people may follow the crowd because they think that the rest of the crowd is better informed.” (Michelle Baddeley, NLM). People are evolutionarily designed to have better outcomes in a herd, so that's what we do, we group together with similar people and form a tribe. From opinions and beliefs, and yes college, people imitate their tribe to maintain or enhance status. Moreover, there’s a hierarchical structure to tribalism in which there is the full spectrum of socioeconomic diversity, but every tribe in this structure seeks to either maintain their position in the hierarchy or move up. "Establishing that desire for status is a fundamental human motive matters because status differences can be demoralizing" (Cameron Anderson, UC Berkeley) Couple that with successful graduates acting as social proof to bolster the institution and perpetuate the illusion of guaranteed success in the eyes of the average ignorant highschool kid and you’ve got a perpetual profit machine.

The point in this psychological tangent is hopefully clear in that lots of people attend four year colleges but it’s not necessarily the right choice for everyone financially, especially considering prospective students often follow the crowd unaware of the profit incentives of institutions powering the conveyor belt that are mainstream college pathways. If someone lives for the moment, parties, and loan payments without regard or care for future outcomes then college could be great. Though, I postulate that the outcome of the 70% being herded into college isn’t to the advantage of the individuals personal prosperity in the long term. Especially considering 50% of Americans aren’t satisfied with their jobs, and many must work for 21 years just to pay off their student debt. Unfortunately, as a stringent capitalist society we’ve prioritized the accumulation of private debts over the individual's prosperity and constructed a massive price barrier for something as fundamental to American life as a formal education. Because the mainstream is herded by private funding and institutional authority into four year colleges there are stereotypes attached to those who do not participate to the fullest extent. Some pertain to elitist acceptance criteria, some to financial status, and some to quality of education. Even when data suggest that the formal route is suboptimal for the large majority of people, emotional herd mentality and capitalist greed has more grapple than statistics on the matter.

So what is the quantifiably optimal route? If a student’s family has money, they should go to a four year college, they have nothing to lose. If a student's family doesn't have two years of salary set aside, they should highly consider going to a community college. To address the stereotypes surrounding those community college students, like all stereotypes, they are ill-informed, misguided, and possibly stem from poor decisions.

To change the perspective stereotype of attending community college lets first discuss the advantages of a community college compared to a four year. The first is obvious and it is the cost to attend. The cost to attend is about a quarter what it costs to attend an instate public university, and about a thirtieth the cost to attend an out of state or private institution. Related to the cost to attend is non-existent on-campus housing for community colleges. Many people want to leave home as soon as possible, a solution four-year universities provide -- at least for a while, that is. According to Pew Research 52% of young adults ranging from 18-29 still live with their parents due to overburdening debt and low income -- the highest it's been since the great depression. As a reasonable generalization, students would be better off living with their parents for two more consecutive years than having to move back in with them after graduating.

More on the cost of investing in an education; community colleges have an incomparable ROI. According to the Education Data Initiative, the average ROI for an associates degree over a 20 year period is 363.5%. Compare that to a bachelor's degree with a measilly 38.1% ROI over 20 years. But wait, it gets worse for the bachelor's degree when considering its ten year ROI of -41.1 percent! That means the average bachelor's student has to work full-time for 15 years to see a return on investment. OK, but bachelors make more money right? Of course they do, the reason the ROI is so poor is because traditional universities are absurdly expensive. According to Forbes the average salary of a person with an associates is $45,000 and the average with a bachelors is $60,000. That statistic alone isn’t all that surprising. Community colleges only offer two year programs, and the salaries reflect that so there's no argument to be made based on the average graduate salary, but there is an incredible advantage to be had when students transfer their credits from a community college to a four year institution and get a bachelor's salary for essentially half the initial investment.

Another common stereotype, one that stems from academic prowess and or elitism implicates the following hypothetical: “Alright, well you’re paying less money so the quality of the education can’t be great”. Yes, community college is inexpensive, but that doesn’t mean it's a bad education. One major reason for this, as previously stated, is that community colleges don’t offer housing accommodations. Think about the operating costs of a library and compare it to a library that has a hotel with food service attached to it. The difference in cost is quite large. That said, going to community college obviously doesn’t mean students won’t have living expenses, it simply means your living expenses won’t accrue interest or be taxed by private institutions, plus students can reap greater economies of scale if they belong to a household.

As for the quality of the education received at a community college, it’s overlooked. One of the main reasons Ivy league universities are elite is because of their intimate learning environments with a small student to teacher ratio and students who actually want to learn. Those exact characteristics can be found at a community college. People don’t enroll in community college because they have to, or their friends are going, they go because they actually have a desire to learn and see the value in education. At least at Pikes Peak, the scale of the class precisely mimics that of the Ivy leagues. Class discussions are commonplace, and no question goes unanswered. Sure, classes at Ivy leagues are often taught by the people who wrote the equations, or discovered a new law, but those people don’t teach entry level classes to freshmen and sophomores anyways so who cares if students learned it at a community college, especially if they plan on attending a four year after they graduate. If anyone truly cared about community college credits it would be college enrollment officers, but they don’t. In fact, as a transfer from a community college the likelihood of getting into a desired college is higher than coming directly out of highschool. As a testament to the fact, last year MIT admitted a student from a Boston local community college. He was one out of 13 transfer students accepted that year. To be fair MIT’s acceptance rate is one of the lowest in the world, let alone the transfer rate, but the community college transfer student is a testament that it can be done. I’m not directly comparing Ivy leagues and community colleges though, it's purely a juxtaposition to illustrate the differences between community colleges and the majority of other institutions wherein your classes feel like a concert at Red Rocks Amphitheater, where everyone anonymously shows up and nod their heads.

In conclusion, the broader college system takes advantage of highschoolers' ignorance and herd mentality for the sake of profiting. As a result of the hordes of students blindly accepting federal loans and being inadvertently punished for it, stereotypes stem from self affirmation that the individual made the only correct choice relative to their tribe. Consequently due to the emotion involved in creating those self affirmations, the majority of stereotypes surrounding community colleges are irrational and unfounded. As the statistics were presented, it is clear that the optimal financial path to higher education and long term wellbeing is through community college.

Works Cited:
https://educationdata.org/college-degree-roi
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2827453/
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-of-young-adults-in-the-u-s-live-with-their-parents-for-the-first-time-since-the-great-depression/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150506094925.htm
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/student-loans/college-tuition-inflation/
://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cpb/college-enrollment-rate
www.ramseysolutions.com/debt/how-long-does-it-take-to-pay-off-student-loans