Kudos to Community College
West LA Community College in Culver City, CA
In 1983 at the age of 25, working for essentially minimum wage as a community organizer, five years after graduating “cum laude” (with distinction) from the University of Michigan with a BA in Speech, I decided to take a mulligan of sorts and go to college again. Unlike the minimal planning I had done the first time, I had put much thought this time based on years of real-life experience into what I would study. I had met my life-partner Sally, and we were planning to be married in December, with the likelihood that we would raise a family down the road. My path forward took me to the humble community college, which I have grown to see as perhaps America’s most valuable educational institution.My goal for college this time was to get through as quickly as possible and come out the other end with a degree in a practical profession (computer science in my case) where there were plenty of relatively interesting, relatively high-paying jobs. Sally and I were both paid organizers for the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women, but we knew there was no way we could raise a family working some 70 hours a week