Can NBC’s upcoming community-college show reroute a tired conversation?
By Jesse Singal
May 13, 2009
NBC’s new fall sitcom, Community
This fall, Inside Higher Edreported last week, NBC will be premiering a sitcom this fall called Community which will follow the hijinks of a group of students at a community college. The network’s press release describes the show this way:
The student body at Greendale Community College is made up of high-school losers, newly- divorced housewives, and old people who want to keep their minds active as they circle the drain of eternity. Within these not-so-hallowed halls, "Community" focuses on a band of misfits, at the center of which is a fast-talkin’ lawyer whose degree has been revoked (Joel McHale, "The Soup"), who form a study group and, in "Breakfast Club" fashion, end up learning a lot more about themselves than they do about their course work.
The show’s trailer, in my humble opinion, has its moments but hints that the show will be a bit too obsessed with pop culture and the inevitable Breakfast Club comparisons:
Though the trailer and NBC’s language about the show certainly feed into tired stereotypes about community colleges being second-rate institutions, administrators at these schools aren’t unleashing a torrent of angry letters just yet. “It could be a great statement about the role that community colleges play in society,” said Betty K. Young, president of Houston Community College’s Coleman College for Heath Sciences, in the Inside Higher Ed article. “A few years ago, people pretended that we didn’t exist. Now, we’re going to become a prime-time television show. That’s amazing, and it’s recognition that community colleges are a uniquely American institution.” And Young is no pushover when it comes to defending community colleges—she once rode her Harley from Ohio to Hollywood to confront Jay Leno, who frequently made jokes at the expense of community colleges when he helmed The Tonight Show.
Young makes an important point. It’s a bit sad that anyone still has to point this out in 2009, but community colleges serve a vital role in American higher education, given that they make up 46 percent of all U.S. undergrads. And, as The Washington Monthlynoted in its 2007 College Guide, which included a list of the 30 best community colleges in the country, they often offer better value than their more prestigious four-year counterparts. Yet the discussion over higher ed tends to either marginalize or ignore them.
This ties into a broader issue, too, a sort of meta-discussion about higher ed. When we talk about colleges, what are we really talking about? There tends to be an undue focus on top private and public universities. “Going to college” in some circles, means going to Wesleyan or Oberlin, or the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor or the University of Wisconsin–Madison. (Assuming, that is, you weren’t lucky enough to get into an Ivy League school.)
And just as the financial meltdown was abetted in part by a business obsessed with analyzing everything from the point of view of those at the top of the heap, our discussion of higher ed reform has suffered from a similar tendency. Most mainstream discussions of college tend to assume that the “average” prospective college student will be looking at a certain subset of schools—namely, the biggest, most expensive, and most well-known ones. But the data don’t support this view. A more honest discussion would focus more on the roles of two-year programs, satellite state-school campuses, and other educational institutions tapped by the majority of Americans seeking postsecondary education.
Instead, we have a world of pointless rankings that ignores the reality most Americans face when it comes to higher ed. Where the general view seems to be: “The smart, successful students go to some schools, while everyone else goes to the bottom-feeders.” This narrative has helped to establish the current, two-tier system in which higher ed serves to exacerbate, rather than ameliorate, inequality.
Of course, NBC’s goal with regard to Community is simple: Make money. Maybe it will succeed, and maybe it won’t. It would be foolish to ascribe political or social-commentary motives to the program, especially given that the show may end up taking a far from progressive stance on its subject matter. But whatever it ends up being, it can hopefully help steer us away from the view that only misfits and losers belong in community colleges.
Jesse Singal is an associate editor at Campus Progress.
NBC’s new fall sitcom, Community
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