More than 20 years ago, I took a research course on the California education system at the University of California, Davis. Most of the other students were either seniors or graduates who had worked in other fields for a number of years. But almost all of them were planning to earn a teaching credential and become teachers.
About half had attended the university for four years, while the other half had attended community colleges for at least two years before transferring to the university. Of the latter, few had chosen to start at the community college level, but their life circumstances had made it their only choice. Nevertheless, nearly all of them were emphatic that they were happy, in retrospect, to have attended community colleges instead of the university for their first two years.
The said community college instructors were far more available and helpful in answering student questions, compared with university courses where lectures were given by professors to hundreds of students in a single class and questions were handled by teaching assistants, many of whom were foreign students who might not be able to communicate well in English.