Why is there no community college?

Thursday, September 3, 2009

I was researching a project for a client this morning and was thinking "Hey, maybe I should grab a quickie class on PHP to beef up my skills. In fact, I should get in the habit of taking at least one class a semester just to to keep up with the industry."

So, I went looking and there isn't anywhere to do it! There is no community college around here. If I want to take a class at YSU I have to go through admissions and all that PITA crud and then there are probably prerequisites, if they even have a class on PHP. I certainly don't want to go to a votech and get ripped off. I just want to go to a nice little community college, get a nice little certificate of completion and be done with it.

Why, oh why, in the Mahoning Valley, of all places, is there no community college? No place for subpar high school students to get easy degrees - no place for secretaries to learn new skills one class at a time - no place for housewives to take cooking classes or knitting classes - no place for overachieving teens to get college credit the fast and easy way - no place for community CPR classes - no place for those with limited time and limited budgets to go and learn without getting ripped off in financial aid and loans (you know, the type of college you can actually afford to pay for out of pocket) - NOTHING. I even checked Trumbull county and NOTHING. What the hell!?!

So, here's another common sense proposal (that should have been done ages ago) to improve the Valley and the lives of its citizens: Bring in a GOOD COMMUNITY COLLEGE SYSTEM.

In the meantime, I guess i'll just have to settle for an online class and send my educational dollars elsewhere.

If anyone knows why we don't have something as fundamental as a community college in the Mahoning Valley or has any ideas on how to get one, chime in!