Since the days of the Founding Fathers, the American promise to its students has been: we'll warehouse you in crappy schools for twelve years, and then send you to the local community college, to get an associate's degree in "business services" or some other synonym for secretarial work and/ or air conditioning repair work.

Today, that promise is under assault. (The community college part, at least.) a new survey found that almost a third of community college students couldn't enroll in the classes they wanted last semester, because they were full. The way this will play out is all too clear: packed to the gills, our overwhelmed community colleges will increasingly force students to take classes "online," rendering their already-marginalized degrees all the more worthless. The only silver lining on this educational storm cloud is the fact that the students themselves are perfectly happy with this.

More than than 70 percent of students surveyed "believe that it is important to have access to high speed Internet in order to succeed at community college," the report states. "In fact, students tend to believe that high speed Internet access is more important for success than having access to advisors or relationships with professors."

So... I guess the only ones we should really feel sorry for are the community college professors. (More so than usual.)

[Photo: Flickr]