what is the best COMMUNITY COLLEGE in the UNITED STATES?

http://www.westcoastroads.com/california/images101/ca-125_nb_app_grossmont_college_02.jpg

real inadequate and dislikable spanish teachers, but a solid B-grade vegetable lasagna with bread stick meal deal in the cafeteria (most days)

GO GRIFFINS!

* Bob Mackie, Fashion Designer
* Bruce Merrifield, Nobel Prize Winning Chemist
* Dick Williams, Baseball Manager
* Eddie Van Halen, Rock Musician
* George Reeves, ( a.k.a. Superman)Actor
* Howard Packard, Industrialist
* Jack Larson, (a.k.a Jimmy Olson)Actor
* Jackie Robinson, Baseball Legend
* Jaime Escalante, Teacher
* John Singleton, Filmmaker
* Joyce Kennard, State Supreme Court Justice
* Michael Cooper, Laker Player
* Nick Nolte, Actor
* Octavia Butler, Science Fiction Writer
* William Holden, Actor

no mention of diamond dave, but i'm not sure that he graduated.

Notable alumni

Nobel laureates

* Julius Axelrod 1933 - 1970 Nobel laureate in Medicine
* Kenneth Arrow 1940 - 1972 Nobel laureate in Economics
* Herbert Hauptman 1937 - 1985 Nobel laureate in Chemistry
* Robert Hofstadter 1935 - 1961 Nobel laureate in Physics
* Jerome Karle 1937 - 1985 Nobel laureate in Chemistry
* Arthur Kornberg 1937 - 1959 Nobel laureate in Medicine
* Leon M. Lederman 1943 - 1988 Nobel laureate in Physics
* Arno Penzias 1954 - 1978 Nobel laureate in Physics
* Robert J. Aumann 1950 - 2005 Nobel laureate in Economics

Rhodes Scholars

* James T. Molloy 1939
* Lev A. Sviridov 2005

Fulbright Scholars

* Vera Grant 1995
* Vivian Ka 2000

Truman Scholars

* Charles Claudio Simpkins 2005

Politics, government, and sociology

* Herman Badillo 1951, former Congressman and Chairman of CUNY's Board of Trustees, an architect of the University's academic rebirth
* Daniel Bell - sociologist, professor at Harvard University
* Bernard M. Baruch - Wall Street financier and adviser to American Presidents for 40 years, from Woodrow Wilson to John F. Kennedy
* Abraham D. Beame 1928 - mayor of New York City, 1974 to 1977
* Stephen Bronner - political theorist, Marxist, professor at Rutgers University
* Upendra J. Chivukula - first Asian American elected to the New Jersey General Assembly
* Henry Cohen 1943 - Director, Föhrenwald DP Camp; Founding Dean the Milano School for Management and Urban Policy at the The New School
* Felix Frankfurter 1902 - justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, January 30, 1939–August 28, 1962
* George Friedman - founder of Stratfor, author, professor of Political Science, security and defense analyst
* Nathan Glazer - neoconservative political pundit
* Irving Howe - coined the phrase "New York Jewish Intellectual"
* Ed Koch 1945 - mayor of New York City, 1978 to 1989
* Irving Kristol - neoconservative pundit
* Abraham Foxman - National Director of the Anti-Defamation League
* Robert T. Johnson 1972 - Bronx District Attorney
* Melvin J. Lasky 1938 - anti-communist, editor of Encounter 1958 to 1991
* Guillermo Linares 1975 - the first Dominican-American New York City Council Member
* Colin L. Powell - Former United States Secretary of State, 2001 to 2005
* Julius Rosenberg - infamous convicted spy during the Cold War
* Robert F. Wagner Sr. - United States Senator from New York, 1927 to 1949
* Michelle Wallace 1975 - a major figure in African-American studies, feminist studies and cultural studies

The arts

* Maurice Ashley 1993 - the first African-American International Chess Grandmaster.
* Paddy Chayevsky - famed playwright and screenwriter, wrote Marty, Hospital and Altered States
* Ira Gershwin 1918 - American lyricist, collaborator with, and brother of George Gershwin
* Marv Goldberg - Music historian in the field of rhythm & blues
* Hazelle Goodman 1986 - Stage, screen and TV actress, was the first African-American to hold a leading role in a Woody Allen film, Deconstructing Harry.
* Arthur Guiterman, humorous poet
* Luis Guzmán - actor
* E.Y. "Yip" Harburg 1918 - American lyricist (The Wizard of Oz, Finian's Rainbow, others)
* Judd Hirsch 1960 - American actor
* Zero Mostel 1935 - actor
* Edward G. Robinson 1914 - actor
* Richard Schiff 1983 - Emmy award winning actor and a star of The West Wing (his character, Toby Ziegler, also attended CCNY)
* Eli Wallach 1938 (MA) - actor
* William Gati, AIA 1981,1982,1984 (BS, BArch, MArch) - Architect and Educator
* Ernest Lehman 1937 (BS) - Screenwriter ("North by Northwest," "The Sound of Music," "Sweet Smell Of Success," "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?")

Literature and journalism

* A.M. Rosenthal 1949, former Executive Editor of The New York Times.
* Oscar Hijuelos 1975 - won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
* Mario Puzo - bestselling novelist, screenwriter The Godfather
* Walter Mosley 1991 MA, best-selling author whose novels about private eye Easy Rawlins have received Edgar and Golden Dagger Awards.
* Paul Levinson - author of The Plot to Save Socrates and The Silk Code (winner, Locus Award, 1999)
* Michael Oreskes 1975 - Executive Editor of The International Herald Tribune
* Henry Roth - novelist Call It Sleep, considered one of the best novels on the Jewish immigrant experience.
* Alan Abelson 1942 - columnist, former editor, Barron's
* Upton Sinclair 1897 (BA) - Author ( The Jungle (1906) )
* Dan Daniel 1910 - Dean of American Sportswriters
* Gary Weiss 1975 - Investigative Journalist, Author ( Born to Steal (2003), Wall Street Versus America (2006) )
* Jack Kroll 1937 - culture editor, Newsweek
* Stephen Shepard 1961 - editor in chief, Business Week
* Robert Scheer
* Bernard Malamud 1936 (BA) - Author ( won the 1967 Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award for his novel The Fixer, and another National Book Award for The Magic Barrel, also wrote The Natural (1952) )
* A.H. Raskin, former labor editor, The New York Times.
* Anatole Shub
* Robert Sobel 1951 (BSS), 1952 (MA), best-selling author of business histories.
* Meteorologist Joe Cioffi went to KRIS-TV in Texas and WVUE-TV in Louisiana; He did the weather for News 12 in Long Island and he is now currently doing weather for WPIX-TV in New York.

Science and technology

* Solomon Asch - psychologist, known for the Asch conformity experiments
* Julius Blank - engineer, member of the Traitorous Eight that founded Silicon Valley
* Adin Falkoff - engineer, computer scientist, co-inventor of the APL language interactive system
* George Washington Goethals 1887 - civil engineer, best known for his supervision of construction and the opening of the Panama Canal
* Dan Goldin - served as the 9th and longest-tenured administrator of NASA.
* Robert E. Kahn - Internet pioneer, co-inventor of the TCP/IP protocol, co-recipient of the Turing Award in 2004
* Gary A. Klein 1964 - research psychologist, known for pioneering the field of naturalistic decision making
* Leonard Kleinrock 1957 - Internet pioneer
* Solomon Kullback - Mathematician; NSA cryptology pioneer
* Michael A. Liguori 1979 - listed among the New York area's 100 best primary care doctors by New York Magazine
* Albert Medwin 1949 BSEE - engineer and inventor, developed CMOS integrated circuit technology
* Lewis Mumford - historian of technology
* Charles Lane Poor - noted astronomer
* Howard Rosenblum 1950 BSEE - NSA Engineer; developer of the STU (Secure Telephone Unit)
* Mario Runco, Jr. 1974 - astronaut.
* Jonas Salk 1934 - inventor of the Salk vaccine (see polio vaccine)
* Abraham Sinkov - Mathematician; NSA (National Security Agency) cryptology pioneer
* David B. Steinman 1906 - engineer; bridge designer (Class 1906)
* Leonard Susskind 1962 - physicist, string theory

Business

* Robert Catell 1958 - CEO of KeySpan.
* Andrew Grove 1960 - 4th employee of Intel, and eventually its president, CEO, and chairman, and TIME magazine's Man of the Year in 1997, who donated $26,000,000 to CCNY's Grove School of Engineering in 2006.
* Stanley H. Kaplan 1939 - founded Kaplan Educational Services.
* Jack Rudin 1941 - real estate developer.
* Frank J. Sciame 1974 - architect and developer
* Linda Kaplan Thaler 1972, the CEO of the fastest growing ad agency in New York, brought us the Aflac Duck.

Sports

* Red Holzman 1948 - legendary basketball coach for the New York Knicks.

Fictional

* Lennie Briscoe (unknown) - character from the TV show Law & Order
* Brian Flanagan (unknown) - character from the 1988 film Cocktail
* Gordon Gekko (unknown) - character from the 1987 film Wall Street
* Toby Ziegler (unknown) - character from the TV show The West Wing
* Nancy (unknown) - character from the 1971 film Bananas

SMCC is supposed to be good.

I went to CCSF for a while and I really quite liked it!

yes - revive inspired by watching "Community"

Seriously CCSF was pretty rad, for filmmaking at least, cool super-8 stuff, equipment cage that was actually friendly (!) right across from classroom. Nobody really gave a shit so those of use that cared about what we were making could really go all out.

I remember at the mall in/near Lancaster, PA there was this shopfront that said Lebanon Valley Community College on it. I wasn't able to discern at the time if it WAS the college, was a campus of the college, or was just some kind of marketing office for the college, but I rather liked the idea of a community college in a mall.

i talked to a technical college (they are VERY insistent about the distinction, apparently) math teacher today who said that there are financial aid eligibility rules going into effect soon in my state that will exclude all developmental/remedial (i.e. ~fourth grade up to high-school level algebra) math courses from receiving financial aid.

english/reading and writing, too.

since these students generally can't afford college without the financial aid, and certainly can't afford paying out of pocket for remediation which is already an enormous undertaking for them, this means they either

a) just can't go

or

b) will get pushed into the first college-level courses on offer, and almost certainly fail (thus being set back, dropping out, wasting the money etc)

the kicker: the departments that offer these courses would lose about half their enrollments (this guy said his math department teaches about fifty sections, half at remedial levels), and therefore be forced to lay off staff.

(there may be some pushback, but so far there's been a disconnect between the policymakers/lawmakers/whoever and the teachers who are able to point out, hey, people coming to technical/community college are not capable of doing this work at a college level even when they have high school diplomas, so either pay for these courses or you will be making tech/cc schooling effectively worthless for them.)

what?!
what state is this?!

MN - not sure what level of government is driving the changes, could be happening elsewhere

this is absurd
i hope it's not contagious because it would mean the end of my workplace

weird. My father taught math at a community college in California that recently got a large grant to tutor students in remedial math (as well as other college level math)

I live a block from PCC, but had only heard about Nolte as a "famous alumnus." I've taken some classes there but never considered myself a "PCC student."
― nickn (nickn), Monday, October 16, 2006 5:42 PM

Don't know why didn't mention this, but not only did I know about John Singleton going there, but I was in a film-making class with him.