STOCK ISLAND CAMPUS, FL — Keys Construction crews are rushing to complete the new Lagoon Landing dormitory of Florida Keys Community College for the grand opening tomorrow.
Move-in day for the students is Saturday, just two days before classes start. It has taken five years to plan and build the new 43,000-square-foot, 100-bed, $8.2 million dorm. 78 students have already applied for housing there. About half are from outside Florida and most from outside Monroe County.
Most of them are from away? This is a COMMUNITY COLLEGE, the whole purpose of which is to serve people in what? Community colleges ought not have students from a thousand miles away, let alone have $8.2 million dorms for them to stay in.
We have a large international population at our college, too. It’s because they’re cheaper. Get the basics out of the way for a low price (still expensive for internationals, but still cheaper than a major uni), then transfer. But, yeah, it should be servicing the local community, and in our case, because it’s so big (almost 50,000 students, almost the same as the Univ. of S. FL), we do a pretty good job of offering education in areas for which our local community draws new hires from. There’s a push to make all the community colleges 4 year schools, though. Don’t really know how that fits into the scheme of things.