VaHigherEd.com

Over the past two months, more than two dozen students have been highlighted in blog posts here at VaHigherEd.com. (To see them all, just select “student stories” under categories at the right.)

Their stories are varied; their backgrounds diverse. But they have one thing in common: they attend a Virginia community college. They attend community college to start a career, to start a college degree, to stay close to home, to save money. Some wanted a smaller setting — where the professors know your name. Some were homeschooled. Some plan to take advantage of guaranteed admission agreements.  Most agree the choice they’ve made has opened up opportunities for them they might otherwise have missed.

I’ve been priviledged to tag along with a few of them as they made their treks to the General Assembly, to share with legislators the differences that community colleges have made in their lives. Legislators were impressed.

It was a visit to Sen. Philip Puckett’s office that really it hit home.  It was the Senator who brought it up.  Glancing around at the students from New River Community College, he saw the results of an investment. 

“When Governor Godwin asked us to create the Virginia Community College System, he was asking us to make an investment,” said Sen. Puckett.  There wasn’t a ton of money laying around, he added, but they made an investment in the future.

That investment 40-plus years ago, in 1966, brought Virginia’s Community Colleges into being.

The students who traveled to Richmond this year — and thousands more like them back at the colleges — represent the investment paying off. They will change the commonwealth.

Here’s a little bit about what former Governor Godwin said back in 1966:

“If we look at the numbers of potential students, and if we also look at the relative costs involved, the implication is clear that a community college system is the quickest, and the most efficient, the most economical, in fact, virtually the only way the future of young people can be met.”

Governor Godwin, the investment is paying off, the future is being met. It is embodied in these students who have made “Everyday Day (a) Community College Day.”

Posted by Susan Hayden