Is Community College Really That Rough? A Parent’s Honest Take After Her Son Enrolled
It’s 10:17 p.m. and I’m folding hoodies at my kitchen table when I hear Luka’s truck pull into the driveway. His first semester at the local community college is halfway over, and I’ve been waiting up because he texted an hour ago that he’d be home after working on his truck with a classmate. A crumpled $118 energy bill falls out of the sleeve of his old work hoodie—he moved into a tiny studio off campus two months ago, and he’s been handling all his own bills, something he never would have done if he’d moved into a dorm last fall.
When Luka graduated high school with a 2.8 GPA and turned down the acceptance he got to the small private regional college we’d toured, I panicked. Every thinkpiece I’d ever read, every offhand comment from other parents at soccer games, said community college was rough. It was for kids who couldn’t cut it anywhere else. It was unstructured, underfunded, full of people who didn’t care, and most kids dropped out before getting a degree. I spent two weeks arguing with him about it, pointing out that we could take out loans for the four-year school, that he’d regret “wasting time” close to home. He just shrugged and said, “I don’t even know what I want to study. Why would I pay $40k a year to figure it out?”
He walks in now, flops into the chair across from me, and grabs a chocolate chip cookie from the tin I left out. I ask how his week went, he says it’s fine, then mentions the mess with his math class. His first section had 48 students crammed into a room built for 30. The professor didn’t post office hours, and didn’t answer emails for three days when Luka reached out asking about extra help. One guy stood up halfway through lecture last week, yelled that he’d paid for a class not to stand in the back squinting at a whiteboard, and dropped it right there. Luka ended up switching sections two weeks in, but the only open slot was at 7 a.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays.
That’s the rough part, I’ve learned. I always pictured the “rough” community college experience being fights in hallways or trouble in the parking lot, the stereotype I grew up with. That’s not what Luka’s dealing with. The rough stuff is all about stretched resources. The advising office has one advisor for every 350 students, so Luka waited three weeks just to get an appointment to sign off on his class schedule. The rough part is that he had to come up with $270 for a basic set of wrenches for his auto tech lab, because the program’s budget got cut last year and the college doesn’t provide tools for students anymore. The rough part is that half the main parking lot’s been under construction for six months, so he has to leave 20 minutes early every day and park half a mile away, even when it’s pouring rain. Most of the time, it’s not the people that make it hard—it’s that the school doesn’t have enough money to give everyone the support they need.
Over the past few months, we’ve figured out small, concrete things that cut down on a lot of the stress, and other parents can copy these easily. A month in, when Luka was still waiting to hear back from his advisor, I drove over with him between classes and we found the advising office in person. We asked for his advisor’s direct email and cell number, not the generic department inbox everyone gets. Now Luka gets a response within 24 hours, instead of waiting a week. That 15-minute stop made a bigger difference than any number of angry emails we sent to the general account.
We also started a tiny community college emergency fund, putting just $50 a month aside for unexpected costs like tools, last-minute book fees, or bus fare when his truck breaks down. Before that, any unexpected expense would throw his whole budget off, and he’d have to pick up an extra shift that made him miss class. It doesn’t take much to build this up, and it keeps small problems from turning into big ones that make him want to quit. I also stopped brushing off his small complaints. When he first started talking about how annoying the parking was, I caught myself saying, “Well, this was your choice,” which was the worst thing I could have said. Now I just listen first, then ask what he thinks he can do, instead of jumping in to fix it or judge. Last month, when he wanted a better math professor for next semester, we sat down together and checked open sections on Rate My Professor, and he found one with a 4.5-star rating that only has 25 students. He registered that day, and he’s already looking forward to it.
I’ve been surprised by how wrong my old stereotypes were, too. Luka’s auto tech class has 18 students. There’s a 36-year-old single mom getting her degree to be a diesel mechanic, because it pays double what she makes at the local daycare. There’s a retired high school teacher taking the class just because he always wanted to learn how to fix his own pickup. There’s another 19-year-old kid who got a full ride to a four-year school but came here first because he didn’t want to be in debt before he even started his career. Most people show up, work hard, and care a lot more than I expected they would.
It’s not all struggle, obviously. Luka’s auto tech professor is a former mechanic who ran his own shop for 20 years, and he lets students stay after class to work on their own personal cars for free, gives them advice on jobs, and helps them apply for internships at local shops. Luka already got a part-time job offer at a shop starting next semester, something he never would have gotten if he’d moved three hours away for a four-year dorm.
Luka showed me his midterm grades last night: a B in auto tech, a C+ in math. That’s better than he ever did in high school, when he felt like just another number in an overcrowded classroom. He still talks about transferring to the state university’s engineering technology program in two years, and all his credits will transfer, so we’ll pay half the tuition we would have if he’d started there as a freshman.
Is community college rough? Yeah, sometimes. It’s not the rough I was scared of when Luka first enrolled, but it’s rough in the ways that matter: underfunded, overcrowded, you have to advocate for yourself harder than you would at a more expensive school. It’s also not the disaster I thought it would be. Luka’s learning more than just how to fix an engine right now—he’s learning how to pay his bills, how to speak up when something’s wrong, how to figure out what he wants without going into six figures of debt to do it. We don’t know if he’ll end up transferring, or if he’ll get his associate’s and go straight to work full-time. Either way, it’s working for him right now, rough edges and all.
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