After graduating from St. Edward High School in Elgin, Conor Clarke thought his path to college was clear.If you're thinking about college and there are those who look down upon you for going to a community college, here's one reason not to listen to them. Yeah you might not be ready for a university, and that's understandable. Still it might certainly help your decision if aside from looking at whether you're ready or not, you have to just as easily look at the costs. It's not about whether or not you're smart, it's about the money.
Clarke wanted to go to DePaul University. He applied and got accepted. But then he hit a roadblock - the tuition.
Not wanting to put himself into staggering debt, Clarke enrolled at Elgin Community College instead. He plans to finish there this year and then go to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to complete a degree in advertising.
"I probably saved myself $80,000," said Clarke, a West Dundee resident. "And I've had a good experience here. The classes are small and the teachers are 'real' professors. Since most people take the same classes during the first two years anyway, this made a lot of sense."
With the economy down and tuition at four-year schools shooting up, more recent high school grads are turning to suburban community colleges as an inexpensive way to get started on a degree.
Final enrollment figures for this fall are not yet available, but local colleges say they're expecting to see jumps of between 2 percent and 5 percent in their "full-time equivalent" enrollments: the number of students that would be enrolled if each took a full course load, which recent high-school grads typically do.
The increases are not surprising; college officials say it's common for enrollments to go up during tough economic times.
Other stories of interesting on community colleges from the Daily Herald:
Colleges tell state, we need money!
More banks backing out of loans for community college students
I know they may be labeled "City Colleges of Chicago" however they are Chicago's community colleges. These stories may also affect them anyway. It's probably not much different between the suburbs, the rest of the state, or the city.
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