Rock Valley College Joins #CCMonth Campaign to Highlight Community Colleges

• Events
• 04/01/2024

Rock Valley College announced that it will join #CCMonth, a monthlong grassroots education and stigma-busting campaign coordinated by the Association of Community College Trustees (ACCT).

The primary goals of #CCmonth are to improve awareness of the economic, academic and equity advantages of attending community colleges, and to bust longtime stigmas wrongly associated with public two-year colleges. 

“The past year has proved beyond any doubt that our college is vital to our community and our state,” said RVC President Dr. Howard Spearman. “#CCMonth is an opportunity to celebrate the importance and value of our college to our community and to demonstrate how we are cultivating skills for the future.”

Public community colleges are a uniquely American educational model that was designed to guarantee access to affordable, high-quality higher education for all people. They are the primary educators of life-saving nursing and other healthcare professionals among many others. They also serve as an onramp to bachelor’s, master’s and higher-level degrees for many students, and particularly for the most demographically and socioeconomically diverse students. They guarantee fair admissions for all students. They offer supports for adult students who have to work to support their families. And without community colleges, many American students would not be able to access higher education at all.

In short, community colleges were created to serve the needs of their communities, and they do it exceptionally well.

Despite some ongoing stigma about community colleges, research from New America's annual Varying Degrees study and other sources reveal that the majority of American people hold community colleges in the highest regard among all higher education institutions with respect to being worth the cost of attendance, whether tax dollars should support them, and whether they spend their resources wisely and run efficiently.

Each year's #CCMonth campaign made millions of impressions across social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, and prominent supporters include the U.S. Departments of Education, Energy, Labor, and State; the U.S. Census Bureau; First Lady Jill Biden and former First Lady Michelle Obama; governors of Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, and New Jersey, and many others. This year, organizers are encouraging students and others to take the message to their favorite online social platforms to spread the word about the importance of community colleges in cultivating skills for the future, and the unique affordability that community colleges offer to financially challenged generations.