Community Colleges are extraordinary, rivaling only branch public universities for their impact on American higher ed.

The obsession with elite universities in our elite publications isn't surprising, but it's bad journalism, bad opinion page editing (the NYT oped page has gotten much better covering community colleges, to their credit, in the last 5 years).

After branch publics are regional private colleges and small universities (usually professional masters programs) that dot the landscape, usually invisibly, teetering constantly on the bring of financial ruin while seriously changing people's lives through small classes and love.

I want to an elite school (Wesleyan), did my phd at a midwestern flagship public (UMN), taught for a decade at a small broke loving private college in Chicago (Dominican), and now am back in staff at UMN. I've never worked at a community college, but I've worked with them a lot.

nothing is more important to the shape of american higher ed. That our next first lady, Dr. Biden, works at one and wrote her thesis on retention of students at them is a great sign for the support of higher ed in the biden administration.

national higher education reporters should write about community colleges ten times for every time they write about harvard. The reverse is true.

there should be 10 opeds on regional public universities for every one on Oberlin or Wesleyan or Middlebury. The reverse is true.

Our discussion of free college must include tuition driven privates. Either include them or admit you’re going to drive them out of business.

When it comes to higher ed, the national and even regional conversations are consistently about the wrong kinds of schools. It’s understandable because the rich schools produce the powerful. But it’s not good journalism.