IRL, this is why conservatives are working so hard to turn community colleges into vocational schools as opposed to low-cost ways to transfer to 4-year schools.

History and systemic racism did a great job of making sure that going straight from HS to 4-year schools is only possible if you come from privilege (for the most part), and community colleges fought back to give all people access to traditional college education. So now, conservatives are trying to incentivize CC’s turning into vocational schools while pushing to cut their funding at every opportunity.

Source: I teach in a CC and have watched all sorts of right-wing talking points get pushed onto us under the guise of student success. Turns out, forcing unprepared students to leave cutting funding to their community college if they don’t finish fast enough is not really about student success; it’s about limiting their options. edit: they’re not truly forcing them to leave, just penalizing colleges if it takes students more than 3 years to transfer and trying to make it illegal to offer foundational math/English courses