We’ve recently mentioned how community colleges are keeping hope alive for families that are struggling through the recession.

Today, U.S. News and World Report is giving you 10 Reasons to Pick A Community College.

It’s staggering to think about how many people are attending a community college in America:

[C]ommunity colleges enroll a full 44 percent of U.S. undergraduate students. That’s 6.7 million credit students, plus 5 million students who are not candidates for a degree, at 1,177 urban, suburban, and rural institutions.

While readers of this blog may recognize many of the points articulated in the list, this was my favorite one:

10. Good company. In case a student feels discouraged by the prospect of attending a local community college rather than his or her first-choice university, here are some people who are glad that they started in a community college: J. Craig Venter, the person who mapped the human genome; Richard Carmona, former U.S. surgeon general; Eileen Collins, the first NASA female space shuttle commander; Nick Nolte, actor; Harry Reid, Senate majority leader; and Nolan Ryan, retired baseball pitcher. Several Nobel laureates, state governors, members of Congress, famous sports figures, famous actors, and distinguished business executives got their start in community colleges, but so have many thousands of nurses, skilled technicians, artists, police officers, firefighters, and EMTs.

Posted by Jeffrey Kraus