Community College: A Savvy College Decision 

By Paul Iwach, Noah Soto, & Reed Walters

Abstract

This essay will demonstrate the underlying majoritarian narratives that follow community college students and what the counterstories that limit and fight back against them are. The whole purpose of the essay is to answer the question “Why do students decide to attend a community college over other schools such as universities?” Uncovering that question entails collecting writing samples from community college students at College of San Mateo about why they chose to attend community college. With this data we collected we were able to identify that a cheaper cost of attendance was one of the main reasons why students made their decision to attend a community college. We also discuss how community college has a positive effect on individuals and how they provide a safe space for learning and education. To wrap up the essay we provide insight into how the community college stigmatization and narratives will be related in the future and we talk about how our research on this topic will further help develop the counterstory for community college students.

Introduction

 In today's society, a hierarchy exists between those who support a dominant mindset and those who oppose it. Critical storytelling tells the idea of how stories are morphed into narratives which aim to suppress a mindset, and the counterstores which exist to reveal the truth behind these stories. When it comes to deciding which college one is going to attend, the contrast between the dominant majoritarian narrative and the counter story is apparent when looking at the way that community college students are ridiculed for their decision. Despite the stories that judge community college students as slow, less motivated, or even less financially stable, the low cost of attendance and greater flexibility of community colleges inspire students to choose them over other schools such as universities.

Lit review

Delgado (1989) writes about stories and how everyone writes stories and has their own stories to tell. He then goes on to talk about how storytelling can get very personal in any situation. He says that most of the time when stories are written in a very personal manner that they are usually told by outgroups. Outgroups are people that are marginalized and whose voices have been silenced (Delgado, 1989). He also brings up the dominant group and how they create their own stories as well; they are known as the ingroup. Their stories are used to remind them of their relation to the outgroup, where the ingroup is seen as superior (Delgado, 1989). Stories from the outgroup are supposed to break down those of the ingroup. Community is a big focus on stories which is something that counterstories do well. Counterstories are used to show that there is an escape from the dominant narrative aka the majoritarian narrative. There is a big attraction for stories by the outgroup because they are able to create relatable scenarios for people that may have thought that their experience was isolated. Counterstories are supposed to help people create new ideas of what is possible and to try and break away from majoritarian narratives. Delgado’s ideas about majoritarian narratives and counterstories relate to our paper because we ourselves are challenging the majoritarian narratives that surround community colleges and are making our own counterstories.

Similarly, Yosso (2006) writes about majoritarian narratives and how they are used to emphasize the power people of a certain race or status have over the outgroup. She specifically talks about the majoritarian narratives against Chicana/o students and the belief that they don’t care about their education, which she says has been proven wrong by previous research. Another idea she talks about is critical race storytelling which uses the experiences of marginalized people to combat the majoritarian narratives placed against them. As Yosso writes, these stories aren’t used to prove the existence of racism, but are also used to fight it. She talks about how there have been critiques of race but those critiques were justified by saying that race doesn’t come into factor in the lives of people of color. There are also criticisms against counterstories because they distort the truth. But that claim proves that there was something wrong about that “truth.” She also explains the importance of counterstories and how they help society. Majoritarian narratives are used by the media to portray stereotypes and keep people out of power. She says that another problem with majoritarian narratives about people of color is that they themselves buy into those narratives because they can get social benefits from telling those stories. Counterstories are used to build community, challenge already perceived ideas, nurture culture, and promote education for people of color. Yosso talks about the importance of counterstories to fight majoritarian narratives. In her case she talks about people of color, specifically Chicana/o students and how their stories challenge preconceived notions about their culture. Her ideas relate to our project because we are also using counterstories to challenge the majoritarian narratives against community college students.

Gittell and Hitchcock (2019) discuss some of the benefits of community colleges, specifically in New Hampshire. The first topic brought up was how New Hampshire was going to freeze tuition in community colleges. It also brings up how even if some community colleges have tuition, there are financial aid options that reduce the already smaller cost. Since the cost isn’t as much as a regular university, it allows students to have more financial freedom in the future (Gitchell & Hitchcock, 2019). Furthermore, they discuss how there are good programs within community colleges. These programs usually align with employment demands. Another program they bring up is Running Start, which allows high school students to take college level classes at community colleges. Community college allows for low-cost, high-level education and sets students up better in the future since at a regular college, students would be paying sometimes 4-5 times more than at a community college. This article correlates with our project because we will be talking about the various benefits of community colleges and the reasons why students chose to attend College of San Mateo. One of the big reasons that was common in a lot of the data was that it is a good and affordable education.

Brower et al. (2021) write about intersectionality and how it is experienced by people with both a minority and socially stigmatized identity. It talks about how that intersectionality can have a large impact on students’ mental health and how fostering their intersectionality can help them succeed in their education. The article also talks about how community colleges are more likely to accept students who would experience intersectionality. They enroll more students of color, students who are economically disadvantaged, and students who just aren’t prepared for a four-year university. However, as they note, the students still have a difficult college process because of the deficits they face for just living their lives. The article gives an example of intersectionality. It talks about a man who was Black and homeless. He’s an example of intersectionality because he has a minoritized identity and a socially stigmatized identity. He went through community college all the way to achieving a master’s degree. Now, he encourages other homeless community college students to keep pursuing their education. The article relates back to our paper because it talks about how community colleges will more often have students from completely different backgrounds. These students come to community colleges for different reasons, but one big reason that is pretty common is that it is affordable and accessible to most people.

Similarly, Godrick-Rab et al. (2018) discuss how many college students are lacking in many basic needs. It talks about a survey conducted at several colleges around the country, and the survey has questions about basic needs and how the students meet or don’t meet them. They also note that they have been running these surveys over a couple of years. This article relates back to our topic because it talks about how many college students can’t afford to meet basic needs. By attending community college students might be able to meet those standards more than they would at a regular university because it is less expensive.

Methodology

 The many ways that we prepared our information came based upon a few methods outlined in Wallace (2023): “The research process generally has three phases- designing your study, conducting your research, and writing about your findings” (p. 143). Conducting our research served the greater purpose of exposing the majoritarian narrative surrounding community college students and the counterstory that aims to subvert it. We can learn through Yosso’s (2006) ideas that “Counterstories do not just respond to majoritarian narratives…instead, [the] counterstories seek persistence” (p. 72). These counterstories are not a way to list facts about a topic but instead exist to bring forth the truth behind a topic. Communities brought together by their shared experiences help provide a deeper understanding of why majoritarianism exists and what stories exist to counter them. Yosso states that “counterstories question racially stereotypical portrayals implicit in majoritarian stories” (p. 72). While Yosso has an emphasis on racial stereotypes, our class's understanding of her work allowed us to question the socially constructed stereotypes related to community college students and how counterstories are brought together via communities wishing to extinguish those stories. We go further into depth with how majoritarian narratives affect those that attend community college through our composite counterstory character. We created this character as a way to represent the collection of experience that students who attend community college have gone through and how those stories morph into what we know as the majoritarian narrative.

Following Wallace’s (2023) idea of how a research paper should be prepared for, we needed a primary source that would answer the prompt directly and secondary stories which help further support the idea of the counterstory. In order to collect the necessary data, we needed a strong primary source that would support our main topic. As a class each student was assigned to write a personal essay answering the question as to why each of us decided to attend a community college. After all the essays were written and turned into the professor, they were then anonymized and analyzed. Each of the twelve students taking part in this study were each asked the same question “Why did you decide to attend a community college?” In order to properly analyze these essays, we used a process called “coding” in which you sort topics and ideas from sources under one “code.” For example, some essays talk about family finances and dealing with their household finances so those sections of the essays get put under a code called  “money.” Many of the codes that we came up with before reading include topics like family, financials, judgment, and GPA/grades; however, the codes that recurrenced most often throughout the writing samples were “financials,” “Grades/GPA,” and “Judgment.” With these codes appearing frequently throughout each of the essays, our group was able to determine the greatest factor in students' decisions to attend community college.

Composite counterstory

            Senior year of high school, Raul is approaching the time when he will have to decide which path he wants to take after high school. Raul comes from an “average” middle-class family, with many siblings, attending public schools throughout his whole academic career, and having a financial pillow, allowing him to not have to worry about food on the table. Being surrounded by friends and family that are enthusiastic about universities and the titles they earn there creates a void in Raul when it comes to the decision of college. Most of Raul’s friends have applied and been accepted into big-name universities such as Texas A&M and UC Davis; however, those names do not have much importance nor weight for Raul. Time passes, and Raul doesn’t find the motivation to apply to universities and just ignores reality while summer passes by. This decision is later met with anger from both of his parents, leading him with only a handful of options. Raul’s top three choices he heard from his parents were community college, trade school, or the army. Of Raul’s desire for education, he chooses community college and attends a local college, College of San Mateo.

Before starting college, he remembers some of the majoritarian narratives that linger around community colleges and their students. Such narratives brainwash young minds into thinking that community college is just a “day care” for young people, or the education is lesser than a university. These narratives slowly start to crack and break away from Raul’s mind when he starts to observe his peers at CSM, the challenging work he has to do, and the similarities of his work compared to his friends who went to UCs. At the same time, Raul notices how privileged he is compared to his peers that have more worries and responsibilities than schoolwork. The more time Raul spends at CSM, he learns of all the aid opportunities, let alone the affordability of classes that is in place for all students regardless of their backgrounds. With all these new experiences and the knowledge that follows, Raul shares this information with many of his friends that went to universities and family to enlighten them on the reality of community colleges. The experiences and stories of his peers help change his view and even his friends and family’s perspective on community colleges and the false narratives that have been forced upon them.

Discussion

A common misconceptioon about community colleges is that they do not provide a stable place for students to earn a good education, yet in reality they do. Environment is an important factor in a student’s education (Isserles, 2021, p. 259). Furthermore, community college students, especially the most vulnerable and precarious, enter the college with a deep desire to feel validated and cared for. Both of these must be the focus as we tend to improve the college experience for our most precarious students.

In addition to the low cost of attendance, the learning environment is equally important. Community colleges provide a safe and secure environment for students to learn but also to feel a part of. Community college student’s learning and more specifically motivation are tempered by bias and stereotypes. Due to the negative majoritarian narrative, community college students can feel ostracized and isolated impacting their academic performance let alone their attitude towards education. 

Moreover, less fortunate students, whether they are low-income or no-income, community colleges allow students the opportunity of education (Brower et al., 2018, para. 3). Although higher education can be a path out of poverty for homeless community college students, these students face significant barriers to success. Compared with non–homeless students, homeless students are more likely to be students of color and first-generation college students and are more likely to attend community colleges than four-year institutions.

The student body at community colleges should not be compared to university students and cannot be held equal. Community colleges’ vast diversity allows students to flourish from different ranges of financial, racial, and ethnic backgrounds that connect the students by their shared experiences. Students are able to connect through what they have faced in life, whether those experiences are good or bad; moreover, classrooms should not only provide a safe place to learn but a secure classroom for the students to express themselves and their experiences. Marginalized students at colleges, community or university, are most commonly students of color, and disproportionate number of those students belong to a low-income or no-income families. 

Conclusion

The majoritarian narrative surrounding community college students portrays them as slow, undedicated, and not financially stable; however, community college students regularly choose them for their cheaper cost and more flexibility towards a student’s personal life. These points were found by the stories gathered from community college students and used as data to challenge the majoritarian narrative. Another way to look at the stories is to call them counterstories, which fight the dominant stories, in this case, the one’s against community college students. It’s important to break down the hierarchy that exists between people that attend community college and those who don’t. Also, an area of future research that will be fascinating to learn about is how much money community college students will save in comparison to regular university students.

References

Brower, R. L., Bertrand Jones, T., & Hu, S. (2021). Overcoming the “Trash Talk in Your Head”: Extending an Ethic of Care to Students Experiencing Intersectional Stigma in Community College. AERA Open, 7. https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584211006381

Delgado, R. (1989). Storytelling for oppositionists and others: A plea for narrative. Michigan Law Review, 87(8), 2411-2441.

Gittell, R., & Hitchcock, J. (2019, October 25). Community colleges' range of opportunities: Latest tuition freeze stresses their affordability. New Hampshire Business Review, 41(22), 16. https://link-gale-com.ezproxy.collegeofsanmateo.edu/apps/doc/A605790507/GBIB?u=plan_csm&sid=bookmark-GBIB&xid=4b12e142

Godrick-Rab, S. (2018). Still hungry and homeless in college. The Homeless Hub. https://www.homelesshub.ca/resource/still-hungry-and-homeless-college

Isserles, Robin G. (2021). The Costs of Completion : Student Success in Community College. Johns Hopkins University Press. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/smccd-ebooks/detail.action?docID=6745240.

Wood, J. L., & Harris, F. (2018). Experiences With “Acute” Food Insecurity Among College Students. Educational Researcher, 47(2), 142–145. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X17752928

Wallace, J. (2023) The people’s stories: Critical storytelling for social justice. Cognella.

Yosso, T. J. (2006) Why Use Critical Race Theory and Counterstorytelling. In J. Wallace (Ed.), The people’s stories: Critical storytelling for social justice (pp. 70-76). Cognella.