Private Versus Public Education: A Comparison of Community Colleges and Vocational Schools

Vocational schools that focus on providing training for professional careers are becoming extinct and rapidly being replaced with Community College programs. Community colleges offer more courses and are partially publicly funded. Vocational colleges are saddled with broader guidelines and fewer students so they cannot compete. However, there is another side to the story. State wide policies that fund and favor Community colleges over private Vocational schools are simply an extension of the public education mentality all too often prevailing in our educational system. And the loser of this lopsided battle between public and private schools may very well be the working adult seeking to begin a new or second career.

Both Vocational Schools and Community Colleges are monitored by similar State agencies in many states. However, those same State agencies apply often utilize two sets of guidelines for the two types of schools. For example, Community Colleges and Vocational Schools are both required to limit programs in order to avoid competition with existing private or public curricula unless an impact study is conducted that demonstrates that the surrounding community can offer two of the same programs in a given community. Vocational schools are held to a strict adherence of this law whereas Community Colleges are given more latitude to ignore State issued cease and desist orders.

For example, the local Community College in Jackson County Oregon has been given more than one cease and desist order by the State of Oregon to stop offering competing programs with the local Vocational school. However, the President of that same Community College has chosen to ignore those State issued orders and has decided to continue offering the duplicated programs. After all, there is no immediate penalty for Community Colleges who fail to abide by State agency rules so why should the Community college stop offering the technically illegal programs?