While stereotypes of partying frat boys, long-winded professors and class-skipping athletes persist on all college campuses, LSU President F. King Alexander said there is one stereotype crippling the number of transfer students to the University: the community college attendee as a second-rate student.
“This is a major weakness in Louisiana,” said Alexander, former president of California State University, Long Beach. “Fifty percent of our students in California came from two-year institutions. In Louisiana, it’s six.”
Alexander said he’d like to see the University’s number of transfer students grow to 20 percent and emphasized the importance of eliminating negative perceptions of community college students.
“The students [in California] were not stereotyped because they went to a community college,” Alexander said. “We had people stand up and say, ‘I’m a proud graduate of Cal State Long Beach and a proud graduate of Long Beach City College.’”
One of the better-recognized pathways for University studentship is the Tiger Bridge program, founded last year.
The year-long program allows high school graduates who were not accepted to the University to live on campus and access LSU resources while attending classes at Baton Rouge Community College. If students meet an established criteria by the end of their second semester, they transfer to LSU their sophomore year.
Daniel Fernquist was among the first members to receive an invitation to the program.
Fernquist had applied to the University after high school, but his grades prevented him from being accepted.
“The Tiger Bridge gave me a way to go to LSU like I wanted, even though my transcripts weren’t that good,” Fernquist said.
If Fernquist had not accepted Tiger Bridge’s offer, he said he would have enrolled in his hometown community college or enlisted in the military.
At an orientation last fall, Fernquist said a group of University seniors mocked him and his classmates.
“They kind of made fun of us because Tiger Bridge is the people that just couldn’t make it into LSU,” Fernquist said.
Though Fernquist completed the program and is now a University sophomore, he said his first-year experience as a Bridge student was marked by embarrassment and self-consciousness.
He never even told his then- girlfriend he was attending classes at BRCC.
“It made me feel a little less intelligent than everyone else that was there,” Fernquist said.
Biology sophomore Brooke Lawrence was in the Tiger Bridge class last year, and now serves as a mentor for current students enrolled in the program.
She said many students talk to her about the social difficulties attending a community college can present.
Lawrence remembers her first experiences as a Bridge student and the obstacles she overcame.
“In the beginning, it is a little hard because there is a divide,” Lawrence said. “I knew that people had those stereotypes that if you go to a community college, you’re not as smart as somebody that got into the University.”
For mass communication junior Sean Renshaw, grades were not the determining factor in whether he attended a state school.
Renshaw said he was accepted to the University as a high school senior, but chose to attend a community college in his home state of Florida to save money.
When Renshaw’s family moved from Fort Walton Beach to New Orleans a year later, he enrolled in Delgado Community College — a school he remembers as having a less-than-stellar reputation.
“People call it ‘Del-Ghetto,’” Renshaw said.
Renshaw said attitudes toward community colleges were no different in Florida than in Louisiana.
“I think you’re going to get that stereotype everywhere just because it’s not a four-year university,” Renshaw said.
Despite contradictory University perceptions, Fernquist, Lawrence and Renshaw agreed there is no noticeable difference in the quality of education provided by community colleges versus four-year institutions.
“It doesn’t matter where you go,” Lawrence said. “As long as you put in the work and time, then you’re going to get out of it as much as you put in.”