Sarah Henderson

Foothill Community College provides another option to conventional four-year universities

Palo Alto High School alum Samar Syed took a deep breath. This is it, she thought. With her heart thumping and pulse quickening, she anxiously eyed her new school. Foothill Community College looked nothing like the comfortable sanctuary she was accustomed to at Paly. Preparing to take a leap of faith, she stepped onto the Foothill campus.

Just last year, Syed encountered the difficult decision faced by many Paly seniors this past year: whether to attend a four-year university or a community college. She now remembers her worried disposition.

“I was nervous when I first went into Foothill because I did not know what to expect in a college atmosphere,” Syed says.

In the Palo Alto bubble, it is particularly common to find many students skeptical of community college. According to Paly career advisor Christina Owen, 15 percent of Paly’s 421 graduates enrolled in community college in 2009. While Syed was once also hesitant towards community college, attending Foothill has made her realize otherwise.

“A lot of people think it doesn’t ‘look good’ to attend a community college and I don’t want people to think that, because it’s not true at all,” Syed says. “People think that going to community college is an easy way out, that you do not have as much work as you would in a university and that the curriculum may not be as hard, but it’s the complete opposite. If you are focused and dedicated to transfer to a university within two to three years, then there is a lot of work to look forward to.”

Committing to a community college can offer many advantages. For instance, it is much easier to transfer from a community college to a four-year university than to be accepted into a four-year university straight from high school. In California, this can be discerned from the California Higher Education Master Plan, which was adopted in 1960. The plan calls for the UCs to give priority in admissions to all community college students, selecting their freshmen students from the top 12.5 percent of high school graduating classes and the top 33.3 percent of community college graduating classes. Therefore, transfer students are exceptionally prevalent in community college.

“Universities want transfers for a few basic reasons: first, many freshmen who enter big universities end up dropping out or transferring away, leaving spots that need to be filled by transfers,” says Paly history teacher Steve Sabbag, who transferred from Foothill Community College to the University of California at Berkeley. “If you’re a transfer, they also know you have a proven track record of success at the college level.”

Community college also permits students to explore many different majors to help them determine the field they are most interested in pursuing.

“Community college is a great place for someone who isn’t sure about their overall academic goals,” says Paly alum and Santa Barbara City College sophomore Ben Afshar. “It offers a wide variety of courses, so it’s a great place to figure out one’s area of academic interest.”

In addition, the class sizes are much smaller, allowing students to work closely with their professors and their peers.

“It’s easy to approach your professor when you have any questions,” Syed says. “It makes learning more interactive when your questions can be answered by the professors themselves.”

Paly history teacher Grant Blackburn transferred from Foothill to San Jose State University and has encountered a similar experience.

“I had lots of opportunities to ask questions in class and to approach my professors after class,” Blackburn agrees. “I also was able to get to know my fellow students more easily and that fostered a better learning environment. SJSU had classes that were generally 10-15 students larger and a few of my classes were in the huge lecture halls that approached 300-600 students.”

Sabbag concedes that the smaller class sizes also positively affected his experiences at Foothill.

“I tended to be bored with the classes that were very big, and loved the ones where I was one of 30 or so,” Sabbag says.  “In small classes, I could tell that the professors would actually look at me as they spoke and knew I was there, listening and learning. At Cal, I saw many huge classes for freshman that were enormous — hundreds of students spilled over to annex rooms on closed-circuit television.”

Another advantage of the community college system is its financial aspect. Not only do community colleges have lower tuitions, but they also offer a much broader, more accessible range of financial aid programs.

“Four-year schools can be very expensive and two-year schools offer the same, or in some cases, better education than a four-year school can offer, at a fraction of the cost,” Blackburn says. “I really think that unless you can really afford it , are tired of living at home or in the Bay Area or you know exactly what you want to do, community college is the way to go.”

Ultimately, attending communty college can yield some substantial advantages and can be accepted as a viable possibility for college-bound seniors, regardless of their academic achievements.

“I always recommend more Paly students consider community college, at every chance I get,” Sabbag says. “My greatest wish is that Paly students once again see the community college choice as a real choice, and not, as I perceive some to believe, that it’s for the less academically inclined. That’s a real shame.”