When a work injury forced carpenter Dave Rynders to find a new career, he decided he’d like to be a nurse and registered at his local community college in San Diego to begin training.

Jennica Dinnell turned to her local community college as a way station toward her dream of attending the University of California, Santa Cruz, to become an artist. With the price of four years of UC tuition too steep for Dinnell, she planned to complete her first two years close to home, then transfer to Santa Cruz for her junior and senior years.

For Jose Sosa, the Los Angeles Trade Technical College where he enrolled to be a chef offered nothing less than the promise of a new beginning. A former gang member, the thirty-year-old Sosa decided to make a new start away from la Vida Loca after being the victim of a drive-by shooting and later starting a family.

These three stories—featured in the Learning Matters documentary “Discounted Dreams”—only hint at the range of challenges that the nation’s community colleges, sometimes called the stepchild of American higher education, must overcome for their 6.6 million students to realize their varied dreams.  Read more...