In her article, “Two Years Are Better Than Four,” Liz Addison argues that community colleges are important because they offer the opportunity for self-discovery that so many today long for. It is commonly argued that colleges don’t have any worth because they expect students to have already gained knowledge and experience before attending. In Addison’s opinion, while this may be true for some four-year universities, community colleges don’t have such unrealistic expectations. When talking about four-year universities Addison says, “prove yourself worldly, insightful, cultured, mature, before you get to college. Yet, down at X.Y.C.C. [a community college] it is still possible to enter the college experience as a rookie” (Addison 213). Because …show more content…
A lot of people want to learn, but don’t think that going to a university is right for them. This may be for financial reasons or just because they think that it’s too much for them. This is where community colleges come in. Instead of focusing on finances or background, they accept people and teach them where they’re at. This is similar to the speech made by Sir Ken Robinson called “Changing Education Paradigms” when he talks about the education system needing to change their priorities. This is furthered by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus in their article “Are Colleges Worth the Price of Admission?”. They criticize colleges for not changing their priorities to value undergraduate learning. Community colleges do so by valuing the education of the individuals over other factors. In David Foster Wallace’s speech to a class of graduating students, called “Kenyon Commencement Speech”, he also talks about an important part of education being an awareness of one’s surroundings. If this was a colleges attitude, would it value teaching people as the greatest priority or whether or not a student can afford to learn and has previous knowledge of such? The way that community colleges respect student learning shows their difference in priorities from a college