Imagine you and another applicant are competing for a job at the same company.

Both you and your competitor are well-qualified, but the company president hires your competitor because he spent all four years of college at a university, while you spent your first two at a community college.

This rarely happens. However, some students exhibit a similar persistent and irritating bias: Community colleges are inferior to universities.

“The quality varies between junior colleges,” said Danny Beeman, assistant undergraduate adviser for the NIU Economics Department. “But on the whole, I think they are as good as universities.”

Some critics even think that community college should be avoided like the plague, a leper or a Wisconsin driver; but is this view really justified? As a transfer student from Rock Valley College, the answer is no.

What is it about a two-year school that is so troubling to some? Is it the misconception that a lower price necessarily means a lower quality product? Is it the less-selective acceptance policies? If it is for either of these reasons, these worries aren’t warranted.

It’s true; community college tuition costs less than a university’s tuition does, but that doesn’t mean the education quality is that much lower.

“Students who transfer from two-year schools will not get the same experience that students have here but, historically, our transfers have performed very well here,” said Bob Burk, NIU director of admissions.

If the quality of the general education classes is not much different between the two, the criticism of community colleges being less selective is not a criticism at all. If a student graduates from a two-year school, they have the skills to be in college. If they drop out, they wasted a lot less money than they would have at a university.

This ability to save money on general education courses has opened the doors of NIU to many people.

“Community college gave me the opportunity to go to a major university,” said Joe Moreau, junior philosophy major.

In the end, people should evaluate a graduate’s worth on how well they did in the classes that are essential to their majors, not on which school they went to for general education courses.