#communitycollege

Folks, I'm still here. I have had less to say or share because the news has been generally overwhelming, and I have been recentering my focus (slowly but surely) on the good that remains. Kinda like looking up into the heavens at night, I realized I could suddenly see many tiny points of light amid the darkness. To that end, here's my update, my Three Good Things. 1) I've volunteered to work with the ACLU, both as a poll monitor in a different city for midterm elections, and also "as needed" for other future concerns. Training is planned. 2) My local branches of Indivisible are also gearing up for midtems, and are actively recruiting poll monitors for training to address the many possibilities, good and bad. I am considering attending this training as well, as it's closer to home, and poll monitors are needed badly here too. 3) My full-time job continues at a popular national thrift store chain that makes every effort to reduce carbon emissions, employee the health-challenged and those with recent prior prison records, and keep used clothing / furniture / household goods out of the landfills while giving back to the local community with inexpensive or free job training available to everyone. And an extra today: 4) Community college classes start again for fall semester in mid-October. I'm registered for two in-person classes, plus one that is entirely online. #threegoodthings #3goodthings#CommunityCollege #midterms2026 #pollmonitoring#aclu #indivisible #northcarolina#perseverance #survivingintheshadows #survivingtheabyss

The New Republic | The Ominous Big Tech Takeover of Our Community College System by J.J. Anselmi The ghouls of privatization have long had their eyes on the community college system. From Devry to ITT Tech, there have been countless versions of the for-profit junior college, and most of them have the same problems. The process to transfer credits from those schools to four-year universities is often a confounding mess for students. Most instructors at for-profit colleges work part-time and are underpaid, forcing them to teach classes at multiple schools to make ends meet, which makes it difficult to give students the time and focus they deserve. More often than not, these schools lure in students who would be better served by their local community college. As if the community college system wasn’t strained enough by these privatization efforts, the tech bros have recently swooped in and are striving to cause further disruption. Community colleges operate with a combination of taxpayer funding, donations, and tuition revenue. But Campus, a predominantly online school that markets itself as a community college, uses a different financial model. The school has been injected with venture capital funding from the likes of Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, and Joe Lonsdale. Thiel, Altman, and Lonsdale are the types of investor who fund enterprises that could serve a role in remaking the world more to their liking. Like virtually every other of these would-be overlords’ ventures, Campus is a play for even more power and control. And it’s a scammy one at that. Read more: https://newrepublic.com/article/208667/silicon-valley-disrupt-community-college #artificial-intelligence #big-tech #communitycollege #siliconvalley