Demand for the Lower Costs of Community College Programs

Community colleges have traditionally offered lower-income and non-traditional students a lower-priced, commuter-friendly, and part-time alternative to pricier online college degrees and full-time four-year colleges and universities. But the two-year community college degree has posed the same drawbacks as two-year online college degrees: When going up against four-year degrees in a job search, two-year degrees simply aren’t as competitive.

Four-Year Community Colleges Offer a Cost-Convenience Solution

Now, however, students are finding a growing number of four-year degree options at community colleges. As more community colleges respond to increased student demand for affordable higher education, expanding their programs to include four-year bachelor’s degrees and applied baccalaureate degrees, new and returning students are increasingly able to obtain the academic pedigree of a four-year degree with much of the flexibility offered by online college degree programs but at the lower cost of a community college education.

Bachelor’s Degree Programs at Community Colleges Expanding

Florida currently leads the nation with 14 community colleges authorized to award bachelor’s degrees, reports The New York Times, with 12 schools already having done so, in fields including fire safety management and veterinary technology (“Community Colleges Challenge Hierarchy With 4-Year Degrees May 2, 2009). Nationwide, 17 states, including Nevada, Texas, and Washington, have granted community colleges the authority to award associate and bachelor’s degrees.

In some states, community colleges have even become four-year institutions in order to facilitate their new longer programs. At Miami Dade College in Florida — formerly known as Miami Dade Community College — more than 1,000 students are currently enrolled in the school’s bachelor degree programs. The average age of these students is 33.

LaKisha Coleman, a Miami Dade student who will graduate with a college degree in public safety management this spring, recommends the school to family members for its advantages over a traditional four-year degree program at a state or private university.

“It’s much cheaper, the teachers are good, you can do it in the evening while you work, and everyone’s very helpful,” Coleman told The New York Times.

Applied Baccalaureate Degrees Another Burgeoning Community College Offering

In the current economy, at a time when students have fewer financial resources to cover their college costs and job prospects are uncertain, the applied baccalaureate degree is becoming a popular option for students, says Debra Bragg, the director of the Forum on the Future of Public Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Usually focusing on applied academics or applied sciences and technologies, an applied baccalaureate degree is a four-year bachelor’s degree that may be earned at both two- and four-year institutions, including technical colleges and community colleges. Unlike bachelor’s degrees at some conventional four-year universities, however, the applied baccalaureate degree counts technical and associate degree–level courses as degree credits, allowing community college students to keep their course costs low and minimize their need for student loans or other financial aid.

“Applied baccalaureate degree programs at community colleges can be used by students looking for a career that is emerging, or for adults who have earned college credits in the past and are looking to re-enter college, often to advance their careers to a supervisory level,” Bragg explains.

Since 2000, the number of states offering an applied baccalaureate degree has doubled, reports the University of Illinois. Currently, 39 states offer the degree.

The applied “real-world” focus of applied baccalaureate programs and coursework is aimed at grooming students to fill projected workforce needs in areas of the country where large concentrations of jobs have been lost due to outsourcing, a shrinking manufacturing base, or a shift in local industry.

“An applied baccalaureate degree represents a viable pathway for someone who previously hadn’t thought about earning a bachelor’s degree,” says Bragg, “but now sees it as a necessary step to getting and keeping a good job with benefits.”

But one of the more expensive pieces of college living is the books.

But why buy, when you can get em’ for free? I found this site that has over 50 places where you can find free books.

Link - Free Books - 50 Places to Find Free Books Online

Now if they only had a list of 50 places that would write my papers for me.

A guy who reuses paper towels and and seperates 2-ply toilet paper into two 1-ply rolls.

I personally have used the method of squeezing ketchup packets into my bottles of ketchup so he can’t be totally insane…right?

Ask any college student.

Use a bong and you will automatically want the ramen.

So here’s a way to have the best of both worlds.

Step 1: Cook up some ramen

Step 2: Clean your bong

Step 3: Pour the ramen into your bong

Step 4: Smoke the bong

Step 5: Cough

Step 6: (optional) Eat the ramen

Step 7: …I forgot

Heh, “bong” is a funny word.

I’m still hungry.

Actually, I thought it could but it would be more of a idiotic comedy than a romantic one like this movie featuring Brittany Murphy who is more adorable than usual in the trailer.

She plays an American woman stranded in Tokyo after her boyfriend leaves her and decides to study under a Master Ramen Chef as a profession.

Who comes up with this stuff?

Well the trailer doesn’t look horrible and is possibly something you could take a girlfriend to.

Cure for Throat Inflammations

Dog Dung

“Album graecum” is the dung of dogs or hyenas that has become white through exposure to air. It is used in dressing leather, and was formerly used as a medicinal drug, often mixed with honey, to cleanse and deterge, chiefly in inflammations of the throat. Externally, it was used as a plaster, spread on skin to close and heal wounds.

Cure for Stomach Aches

Monkey’s Gall Bladder

The monkey’s gall bladder was a common folk medicine in China often used for a wide range of disorders including eye diseases, stomach complaints and even a child’s tantrums. Many ancient cultures used monkey blood for increasing the strength and stamina. It was also believed to have anti-aging effects. Over the centuries, people of various cultures have experimented with monkey blood and meat for anti-aging effects. Some even went to the extent of transplanting monkey gonads. In some of the places in Indonesia even until now, monkey brains are consumed as health remedies, impotency cures or as gourmet treats.

Cure for Impotence

Frog Juice

They call it ‘The Peruvian Viagra’ and they say it’s great for you if you have a low sex drive. It’s the best aphrodisiac. ‘Extracto de rana’ (Frog juice) is in very high demand at local markets of Lima, Peru.

It’s also heals stuff like asthma, bronchitis, sluggishness, but who cares about those. As long as it gives you a good boner. The main aphrodisiac effect probably comes from one of it’s ingredients called Maca, which is a South-American plant known for it’s erotic powers.

You go to the market stall and you pick your frogs from a tank. The vendor takes them out and bangs them against the table to kill them. Then she peels the skin off them and she fills the blender with hot white bean broth, some honey, raw aloe vera and a generous portion of maca. Then she adds your plucked frogs and she turns the blender on. And voila, a delicious warm glass of frog juice.

Cure for Eye Infections

Bat’s Blood

Ancient Egyptians had a high incidence of eye infections and resultant blindness because of their near-constant exposure to sun, sand, and sandstorms. In order to combat the blindness suffered by so many people, Egyptian doctors applied the blood of bats to their blind patients’ eyes. Since bats were thought to have excellent night vision, it was assumed that this treatment would transfer that quality to people who put it in their eyes or injected it in their ears.

Cure for Malaria

Spider’s Webs

Back when ague, a form of malaria, ran rampant through many parts of the world, various treatments were used to control the disease. One of the strangest was consuming tablets of compressed spider’s webs. The supposed medicinal qualities of spider’s webs have apparently been lost to history. Some variations of this treatment involved eating the actual spider - sometimes while it was alive.

Cure for Aging

Beer Bath

In the town of Chodova Plana, Czech Republic, is located the world’s first “beer health center”, where they offer a soothing hot bath containing healing mineral water and a dark bathing beer. This “curative therapy” claims to have rejuvenating effects. There is also a bathside bar so you can sip beer while soaking in it.

Cure for AIDS

Having Sex with a Virgin

Surveys suggest that up to a third of South Africans believe in an ancient and bizarre “cure” for AIDS. This “cure” involves having sex with a virgin in the belief that it will cleanse the body of venereal diseases like AIDS. This myth made South Africa the world’s highest incidence of rape, taking the problem to the most despicable crime: an alarming high rate of child rape.

Cats Boiled Alive.

If that isn’t horrifying enough, the chefs beat the cats with a bat because “the more torture the cats recieve, the better they taste”.

The cats are beaten until unconscious, thrown into hot water, then skinned and boiled again.

Doglovers rejoice.

Menus offer cat meat, cat brains and cat intestines.

I think I’ll just stick to ramen.

- source

A 1-micron wide bowl (the bowl was carved from silicon using a metal particale beam) was filled with the “noodles”.

To give you an idea of how big this 1-micron bowl, you could fit 100 hundred of these bowls of ramen in a human hair follicle.

The noodles themselves are 20-nanometers thick and are made of a soup of ethanol and catalyst to form carbon nanotubes.

I doubt they are as delicious as the real thing.

Beer bongs are for drinking.

And Ramen Noodles are for eating.

So why did it take this long for students to come up with the idea of Beer Bonging Ramen Noodles?