In Praise of Community Colleges

Community College Times

U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan couldn’t wait to get away from the ‘little, podunk community college’ she had just graduated from to go to the University of California, Los Angeles.

‘I thought I would be rubbing shoulders with Nobel Prize winners and all sorts of elevated scholars,’ Ryan recalled during her stop at the College of Southern Maryland on April 2.

Instead, she had classes with 300 students that were mainly taught by teacher assistants. As a transfer student, she also felt alienated at the large university.  

‘I survived and I got my degree, but I came to understand that I had a much richer, more intimate educational experience at my little community college, which by the way had 800 students,’ she said, referring to her alama mater, Antelope Valley College (California). ‘And I had an English teacher by the name of Miss Foley who truly inflamed my love of poetry.’