As university attendance rises, some stay home

To read this article by Kristine Abshier in fsunews, click here.

In high school, Brennan Hartke was a promising, bright student. Her grades were excellent, and a future at a four-year state university seemed likely. But Hartke chose otherwise.

Like many other students, Hartke saw the benefits of receiving her associate degree at a state college before transferring to FSU. And in her case, having the patience not to jump directly into a university paid off.

For Hartke, as well as many other students who choose to attend state and community colleges, staying close to home during her first years out of high school was a major benefit.

“[I wasn’t] ready to be out on my own. I could start attending higher classes while staying very close to my home,” said Hartke, who received her associate degree from Florida State College at Jacksonville.

Not all freshmen are ready for a large university campus experience that also involves an intense amount of anxiety, Hartke said. For some students, attending a state college near their family helps to remedy to stress that comes along with living alone for the first time.

But some students like Channelle Brown want to go away to a four-year university for specifically that reason: To get away from home. Brown chose to attend Florida State right after graduation from high school rather than attending a state or community college near her family.

“I wanted the full college experience: being away from home, new experiences, meeting new people […] I loved the environment of a big university away from home,” Brown said.

Although the prospect of coming to a large university like FSU can be exciting, it’s certainly more expensive than attending a state college. FSCJ students pay $92.10 per credit hour in state. Compare that to the $212.09 FSU students pay per credit hour.

“One advantage of starting at FSCJ is that tuition is less than most universities,” said Pamela Helton, a professor of music at FSCJ. “Students who struggle financially have the option of living at home to save money while being employed to pay for tuition.”

Because students usually don’t live on state college campuses and because the college is smaller than average universities, the campus life, or lack thereof is not appealing to everyone. Campus clubs exist, but are limited in comparison to FSU’s laundry list of student organizations.

“If I had stayed at FSCJ, I wouldn’t have met some of the best people, I would’ve missed out on some of the best memories like Marching Chiefs and Sigma Alpha Iota,” Brown says.

Although students are paying less, their experience at a state college is likely to be more personally tailored to their needs, Hartke says. For the first two years a state college student will be in class sizes anywhere from 15-25, as opposed to university lecture halls with 150 students.

“The small class sizes were a benefit for me. They were almost like trial classes where you could learn how to submit excellent papers, refine note-taking skills, work with teachers and study efficiently,” Hartke says.

Helton says attending state or community colleges offers students a chance to get closer to and feel more comfortable around their instructors.

“Students have a chance to be successful at a smaller venue which gives them time to mature and develop courage to meet the challenges of the larger institution… [it] helps the student feel that the professor is more approachable,” Helton said.

In years past, the glamorized idea of attending prestigious institutions began to falter. In 2009-2010 Forbes and The New York Times agreed: University name-dropping really doesn’t matter anymore. The Wall Street Journal jumped into the discussion, indicating that employers were beginning to prefer state universities to Ivy League schools.

The trend continues, as employers begin to pay less and less attention to where their applicants take general requirement classes or any other lower level course.

Hartke, a creative writing major, is content with the path she has taken. She is now enjoying her time at FSU, looking back at FSCJ with fond memories:

“FSCJ was a fantastic experience for me,” said Hartke. “I lived about one mile away from one of the campuses where I could walk or ride my bike to college. The class material was manageable but challenging.”