Community College Offer a Step into Higher Education

 By Mark Higgins 

Massasoit Community college is now considered a premier community college in Massachusetts, according to GlassDoor, but that has not always been true.

Massasoit Community College offers a full range of degree programs, transfer and support services, including an extensive Academic Resource Center, and credentialed certificates in a wide array of fields. 

Massasoit first focused on hiring the correct faculty and instituting proper programs to improve
the student experience at the institution, according to the Massasoit website.

Over the last five years, Massasoit has made its professors more readily available, decreasing student to teacher ratio from 27-to-1 in 2016 to 12-to-1 in 2021. There are also over 574 staff members which is 299 more members than the industry average, according to the Community College Review.

Brendan O’Brien, a former Massasoit student now at Providence College, said that the faculty was a big reason for his success in higher education.

“If I had to describe myself, I was lost. I just dropped out of Mass Maritime and did not know what I was going to do. The faculty at Massasoit helped me find attainable goals and showed me how to reach them. I worked with several teachers who supported me and the faculty made the transition from Massasoit to Providence college easy,” O’Brien said.

Massasoit also instituted online, asynchronous, and weekend courses to improve the flexibility of schedules for their students, according to the Massasoit website.

Former 2020 Massasoit graduate and current New England Lumber warehouse manager Ryan Carroll said that the flexibility he received at Massasoit helped him maintain a good work-education balance.

“When I decided to attend Massasoit, I already had a full-time job to pay for my living expenses. I was really worried about money. Massasoit helped in a huge way by being able to take my classes online and asynchronously I was able to keep my full-time job and receive my associate's degree on nights and weekends with no commute,” said Carroll.

Massasoit Community College offers hundreds of courses in dozens of subjects all with flexible scheduling.

Several students said they are pleased with the high number of subjects and courses available because they allow them to try different classes until they find the right fit.

According to the Massasoit webpage, Massasoit offers a variety of courses primarily in Arts, Humanities & Communications, Business Administration & Management, Culinary & Hospitality, Education, Human Services & Social Sciences, Health & Public Safety, Science, Technology, Engineering & Math (STEM).

“I went through multiple different subjects before finding out what interested me, I went from sciences to religion and philosophy courses until finally finding that what I was really interested in, finance,” said O’Brien.

Stonehill College admissions department has seen a large number of these community college applicants and says the numbers are rising after the pandemic.

“Over the past several years, we’ve seen about 20 to 25% of our transfer applicants coming from community colleges. This number was a little bit lower during the height of the pandemic and has increased to this level over the past several application entry points,” said Scott Seseske, Stonehill College’s dean of undergraduate student admissions.

Seseke said the community college students may have attended school longer when they apply, the acceptance process is the same as students coming out of high school.

“We consider each student’s academic preparedness based on the courses they have taken in high school and/or college, the grades they have achieved, the statements they provide within their applications, and within the context provided by their recommenders (counselors, professors, teachers, etc.). Again, when a student applies to Stonehill from a community college, they are considered in the same manner as all of our other transfer candidates during that particular application cycle,” said Seseke.  

But, in Massasoit’s early years, it suffered from poor management, lack of educational diversity, and lack of flexibility in class times, said former students.

“I attended Massasoit from 1986 to 1987 before transferring out. In my opinion, it was run very poorly. Transferring over credits was very difficult, it never seemed no one was ever there to help me but rather just to pawn me off to the next person,” said Doug Maclean, a former Massasoit student,. 

In the 1980s Massasoit did not have the same flexibility in schedules it does today.

“When I decided to go back to school, I was very excited, that excitement went away very quickly when I realized I would have to quit my job as a landscaper. The courses I was required to take were only offered during the morning which was the same time I worked that meant I could not possibly balance both,” said Maclean.

Attending Massasoit community college was difficult for many students, they often had issues finding information or classes on subjects that interested them because of the lack of diversity of courses Massasoit offered, MacLean said.  

Maclean, who later graduated from Syracuse with a biology degree, said that he was not able to take the necessary courses at Massasoit at the time.

“When I was in high school, I was always very fond of science classes, so when I decided to advance my education further it was under the assumption that I would be able to study the sciences at Massasoit. However, when I attended the school all they offered were very basic courses nothing that would actually improve my standing or knowledge of the subject,” said Maclean.