Writing for RealClearPolitics, Michael Barone picks apart the President's "pivot to the economy" speech in Galesburg, Ill. Reading along, I agree with almost all of his points except one - a slur against community colleges - which I believe Barone has dramatically wrong.
Actually, public community colleges do well at training people for real jobs - that is their true focus. As a service, they also provide for transfer students the first two years of a baccalaureate program. All of this at dramatically lower tuition cost, and typically students live at home.
A public community college I live near when in CA has a police academy, a fire academy, trains heavy equipment operators, welders, farmers, wine makers, and many different medical specialties, up to the level of RN. That's only what I've seen and heard about without delving into their curriculum; I'm sure they do much more.
A third mission of so-called junior or community colleges is to enable adults who were teen screw-offs to have a second chance to learn basic skills. A fair number of public school dropouts discover - later in life - the motivation they lacked as teens. Learning to read or balance a checkbook in ones 20s or 30s is far better than never.
I expect I'm preaching to the choir, COTTonLINE readers probably know all of this. Nevertheless I had to get it off my chest.
