Metropolitan Community College - Kansas City

Date: Mar 07 2008
Major: Biology (This Major's Salary over time)
The metropolitan community colleges provide a mediocre education for a bargain price. A great deal of the staff is part time; many of the professors are full time teachers for local k-12 schools. Longview is by far the best of the community colleges in KC, it is in a GREAT area and the layout is decent.

I find it frustrating that most of the folks attending class at LV (regardless of time of year or time of day) are recently graduated high school kids who are only taking classes to keep their parents insurance or because “my mama want me to go to college. “ Incorrect grammar used intentionally. Unfortunately because LV is part of the MCC network many inner-city uneducated kids attend class there, many on state and local subsidy. A great deal (30% if not more) of the students have bad attitudes and do not take college seriously. Tardiness and no-shows are all too common. If any instructor enforced the attendance policy they would lose 20% of their class within the first month.

Education at Longview will NOT prepare you for a four year college; this is due to the fact that everything is set up like high school. Students often feel as if they are completing the 13th and 14th grades there. Local high school students refer to Longview as “Division 3, a throw back to a set up that LSHS, a local high school once had. Essentially freshman and sophomores attended high school in buildings classified as “division 1, juniors and seniors, “division 2. Longview is so reminiscent of high school that “div 3 still sticks even though LSHS has since done away with the divisions.

Again in tune with the high school theme, at least half of the administration staff treats students with little respect. Im not sure if this is because they realize that the education they provide is so affordable, or if they think they can get away with it because recent high school graduates are used to being talked down to, the jury is still out on that one.

While the quality of their instructors is all over the place, I have run into more instructors with an “Im here for a pay check, nothing more attitude than those who are truly passionate about what they do. This Im sure is because as mentioned earlier an awful lot of the instruction staff is adjunct. Thats not to say there arent great instructors, you just have to find them, they are quite rare.

I hate to sound so negative, but I call it how I see it.

Bottom line: Longview has a great campus, mediocre instructors (check ratemyprofessors.com to find the good ones), on average sub-par students, and is a great bargain when compared to traditional institutions. If you choose to attend Longview, just remember not to let yourself get lazy, it will catch up with you once you move onto a 4 year.