<p>Or are a lot of community college students just not cut out for higher education?</p>
<p>I'm attending a community college for the second summer. Last summer, I took Biology and Gen Chem I, this summer I'm taking Human Development and Microbiology. In three out of four of these classes, I have found the majority of the students to be lazy or just really not cut out for higher education. </p>
<p>This past week, we had a Human Development exam, and a couple of the students showed up, SHOCKED that we were having a mid-term. ***! It was on the syllabus, he mentioned it the last couple of classes. Not only that, the averages have been a 32/50 and a 38/50 on two VERY simple tests (I got a 49/50, and, after the "two point curve" a 50/50 on the first exam). I'm not saying this to be rude, but I'm not a genius. I consider myself to be of average intelligence, and I'm just shocked at some of the unintelligent people I encounter at community college, many of them wanting to go into intense medical professions! Some ask silly questions such as "how many points (out of a ten point quiz) can we miss to get a C?" Never mind that that quiz is online, can be taking twice, AND shows all the answers the second time around!</p>
<p>And then there are the students who complain about things being so hard, the older students that "hog" all the professor's time knowing that there are other students waiting behind him/her, students that get ****ed off if they lose .25 points (yes, this DID happen), students who get upset over "unfair test questions" when the answers were, word for word, in the textbook...it just amazes me!</p>
<p>Community Colleges typically have a higher proportion of students who don’t fully understand the expectations and demands of a rigorous college education. This is obviously because most community colleges have noncompetitive enrollment policies, i.e. anyone can get in. You are going to experience this more in the introductory general education courses required of all students; as you advance to higher-level courses, the students who do not take their studies seriously will no longer be there. I can guarantee you that the students in your Microbiology class are going to be far more competent, serious and studious than your Human Development classmates. At my college, prospective nursing students must take a sequence of Chem-Cellular Bio-Anatomy-Physiology-Micro. Typically, only one-third of the students who started in Chemistry complete the Microbiology course; but that one-third is all good students.</p>
<p>I think your observation is correct that most students at community colleges are not really college material. As ALF noted, community colleges generally admit everyone who applies and many students have little idea of what is expected of them at the college level and many simply lack the cognitive skills to do college level work in addition to often being poorly motivated. While there are some very intelligent and highly motivated community college students who were accepted or could have been accepted by four year colleges but who are going to community college to put themselves in a position to get accepted as a transfer student at a four year college or university they did not quite make it into as freshmen admits, these are a minority of all community college students. Most have just graduated from high school, were no accepted by any four year institution, have poor employment prospects with only a high school diploma and no serious vocational training and believe that attending a community college will in itself improve their prospects in life and they have nothing better to do anyways. The students who fall into this category but express the belief that they will be doctors some day simply have complete lack of awareness as to what it takes to become a physician and do not understand how far short there performance falls short of these standards. </p>
<p>As ALF said these students are concentrated in the more basic courses and you generally just have to put up with them until you get to more advanced courses where the students will be more intelligent and more motivated.</p>