Is a community college education a bad one?

I believe if you do the reasearch you will fine the majority of nurses attended community college.

With that said. It depends entirely on the individual school. You can have two or 3 community colleges withing a few miles of one another, all under the same system, and one may be better or worse.

I have see situations were the community college was better than the university or the private school and visa versa.

I don't believe you can make a blanket statement an be correct.

Graduated from a community college 13 years ago. My associate degree has taken me from med/surg to ICU, CCU, CVICU, Trauma, neuro, a specialty flight team, air ambulance, Critical care travel RN, Clinical coordinator 325 bed specialty care center and reference and staff RN sub-acute. I am going to go back to school only because I want to teach nurses so I need to advance my degree a bit.

There are too many factors involved to say that one type teaching facility is better than another. If you make the best of what you have to work with then all should come out fine in the end.

I volunteered at a hospital in my area for 4 months before I even applied to nursing school, just to "make sure" it's what I wanted. ALL OF THE people I came in contact with - floor nurses, nurse managers, patient care assistants, dept. secretaries, etc. said to go to our local CC, because you get a GREAT education there, and anywhere around here will hire you in a second as soon as you graduate from there. And they have a 98-99% pass rate for the NCLEX, if I remember correctly. The waitlist is 2.5 years long though!

I am biding my time, hoping it will move along faster (as others drop out, etc...) and taking my pre-requisite classes.

The actual program is 5 semesters, however, with all the prerequisite classes needed, add another 3-4 semesters on there, so it's "like" getting a 4-year degree, sometimes more.

I hope to work for a large university hospital here when I graduate, and go back for my BSN. We'll see though. :)

I love my CC. I took classes there off and on ever since high school, when I thought I was going into accounting. It's just a great institution, period. Well known in our area for being a great place to go to school. :)

In a word: NO.

The community college I go to supposedly is the only nursing program in the state that has a 5 star accredidation. It has the highest rate of passing NCLEX even over the bigger universities. I love the CC setting, smaller classes, more personable not to mention wayyy cheaper. I transfered to this CC from a CC up north. I think you get more personal assistance and your proffesors know who you are. We only have 8 students to a clinical group so you get more hands on training. You do not get lost in the shuffle so to say.

People call them 2-year degrees but the actual nursing part of it is 2 years. It takes at least a year and a half to get your preqs out of the way most take 2 years so by the time your done its a 3 1/2 year or 4 year degree.

I would very gladly trade the fact that my first 6 months on the floor went easier to be able to get into a masters program without spending 2 more years and thousands of dollars to get a BSN now.

one thing i think has not been talked about is you, the individual. we all have different learning styles. some need a very structured enviornment others do better in a not so structured enviornment. some do better with reading up on this or that procedure others remember the procedure better if they are shown it and see it. but to very honest they are all basically the same. i think looking at the pass rates is not a good way to evaluate the program. better to see their pass rate and drop rate togather. i know of one school their pass rate is 99% for the past 3 years, but over 50% of students fail in each class. so they are only sending the top 10% of their students off to take the boards. not much teaching going on at that school.

in general JC'S turn out better nurses on the floor. i have asked this question to many many hospital staff and managers and just about all say JC grads adapt to bedside nursing with relative ease. they say the BSN students have a harder time in transition from school to work. what you get out of the program you enter is mostly up to you. from some they will learn more from home study than any school, brings up the question whats the best learning mode to meet your learning needs.

Community colleges generally offer a 2 year degree... which I have found to have more clinical time but less theory time than a 4 year program. Many, many nurses are from a community college, and many of our hospitals would have an even higher shortage if there were no 2 year programs.