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Private colleges argue potential harms of 4-year community college degrees
(iowacapitaldispatch.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2026
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Wrong. University vs. college is not what you think it is. Universities offer masters and beyond. Colleges offer 4 year or below. Universities and colleges can and do overlap at the 4 year level, and that is a normal part of the dynamic.
At just about any 4 year institution a significant portion of the workload (could be as much as half of your job) is research. At a CC the job is 0 research and usually an unfortunately oppressive teaching workload.
The expectations of work done and credentials offered are significantly different. Is the research more at most universities? Yes. Was my job ever different at a college or university? No. I've only taught undergrads.
I could get a job at a ton of CC's. One offered me a position in my last search. For many CC instructor the reverse is impossible.
Here we used to have a University of California (UC) system that let people earn PhDs, which was separate from California State University (CSU) system. Up until a couple years ago, if you wanted a PhD, you had to go to UC. The CSUs were more vocational. Instead of building up the infrastructure, the powers that be decided CSU could start offering PhDs. The result, from my vantage point, has been a flood of dumb ass PhDs appearing. I guess the same will happen with Bachelors with CCs offering Bachelors.
Yes, this is the sort of duplication that I'm talking about.
And flooding markets with PhDs that can't support them as another major problem in academia.