The New York Post reports with alarm the following statistic.
Nearly half of all New York City public school graduates who head to local community colleges are forced into remedial classes to survive their first semester.
I suppose you expect me to view this with alarm, but I do not. Candidly, a major role of community colleges is to remediate what students didn't, for various reasons, learn in high school.
This was true when I spent two years teaching in a community college with a masters degree before working on my doctorate. I'm sure it is still true today many decades later.
One role of community colleges is to give young people a second chance to gain language and numerical skills. Other roles include (a) providing a low cost version of the freshman and sophomore years of a baccalaureate degree close to home, (b) providing vocational training for technician jobs which do not require a baccalaureate, and (c) providing opportunities for community members to pursue personal interests on their own time.
It is also true that a majority of those who pursue the "second chance" offered by community colleges do not succeed. Classroom education doesn't "work" for everyone, and the dropout rate at community colleges is quite high. In spite of which I support what they offer and what they help people accomplish.
