I disagree. I test very well but I don’t believe that makes me smarter than anybody else, so I don’t consider cc’s “below” me. Even if I did, there are many, many people who can’t afford to send their kids away to school and not all of them have a 4-year school within commuting distance. Those kids start out at their local cc’s.
You can find smart people just about anywhere, especially if you’re not afraid to widen your definition of what intelligence is. I don’t believe it’s something that can be measured by a multiple choice test, so attending a cc didn’t bother me. The best professors I had taught at the cc, and the students were not much different than those I found at either the public or the 2 private uni’s I later attended. They were a mix of people who had a variety of opportunities and experiences. The main difference was that many graduated with substantial debt and I graduated with almost none. CBS paid me just the same as the elite school grads, so I think I got the better deal.