When I was in high school, I never once seriously considered going to community college after I graduated. I wasn’t much of a free thinker in my adolescence and social pressure caused me to just go along with what my friends were doing. None of them were heading to Mercer after graduation. Looking back, I still remember the disparaging tone one classmate used when talking about Mercer as “M-triple-C.” Now I cringe at how we viewed community college.
I am a 2010 graduate of Ewing High School. After high school, I attended a four-year state school and eventually left without graduating. I took a break and worked at various jobs and have now enrolled at Mercer for my first semester.
One of my high school classmates, Elias Deleon, graduated from Ewing in 2011. He studied at Mercer for four years, finishing in 2015 with an A.S. degree and then transferring to Rowan University, where he graduated in 2017 with a B.S. in Biochemistry.
“There’s a stigma about community college, definitely,” Deleon says, continuing, “People say, ‘Hey, you graduated high school and now you’re going to the 13th grade.’”
That’s MYTH #1 about community college, that it is basically just an extension of high school. This is simply not true. Professors here don’t hold your hand through every assignment or project like a teacher would in high school. You’re given your task and then sent off to get it done. You have to develop independence and time management skills in ways that go beyond high school.
MYTH #2 is that people who go to community college don’t have the smarts to go to a four-year school. This is simply not true. There are plenty of intelligent people at Mercer who easily could have gone elsewhere if circumstances allowed. Most of the time, money is the issue.
According to Forbes, t
Sixty-five percent of college students graduated in 2017 with student loan debt, according to TICAS (The Institute For College Access and Success). They owed an average of $28,650, which is 1 percent higher than the 2016 average.
“I applied to TCNJ, Rider, Ramapo, Bloomfield, and Temple. I got accepted to all of them,” Deleon says. But because he graduated in the top 15% of his class at Ewing, Deleon qualified for the NJ Stars program which helps pay tuition of high achieving Jersey students who go to community college first.
Deleon says, “[NJ Stars] helped a lot with tuition costs. I’d say it covered at least 90 percent of it. I picked community college because it was cost effective.”
MYTH #3 is that students at community college aren’t very serious about their studies or are just there to fool around. Sure, some people are still looking for direction, but that’s not the norm.
“When I was [at Mercer], I focused more on schooling. I didn’t care what everyone else was doing. I was going there to study,” Deleon says.
One thing that is not a myth is that lots of students start at four-year schools and then find that for a variety of reasons it is not a good fit. They leave without graduating and then shift to community college. But because of all the myths and stigma surrounding community college education, students who go from four-year to two-year colleges often feel embarrassed, as if they have taken a step backward.
“I do feel embarrassed when I tell people I go to community college and then I’m immediately ashamed by that embarrassment,” said Morgan Teller.
Teller also graduated from Ewing in 2011 and went to The College Of New Jersey immediately afterward.
“I didn’t even think about attending Mercer right out of high school,” Teller said.
She left TCNJ without graduating and started at Mercer in the summer of 2018. Teller is currently applying to the nursing program at Mercer and if accepted, will start full time this fall.
“I’ve really enjoyed every class I’ve taken so far,” Teller said. “My professors have been so smart with a lot of offer.”
It is time to end the stigma attached to going to community college so that high school students don’t feel pressured by well-meaning parents, guidance counselors, and other students who just don’t know how valuable community college can be.
“With careful preparation, Mercer can be like a ladder to climb up to the next level of studies when you transfer out. I saw it like a base where you can climb up to reach your next goal,” Deleon said.
