Campus Tour | Orange Coast College

Orange Coast College’s 164-acre campus is located in Costa Mesa just minutes from Southern California’s beautiful beaches. Founded in 1947, with classes beginning in 1948, OCC has grown into one of the nation’s largest — and finest — community colleges, enrolling more than 25,000 students each semester.

OCC features exceptional facilities and the latest in technology and offers more than 135 academic and career programs, including one of the nation’s largest and most acclaimed public nautical programs. Nearly half the students on campus are enrolled in one of OCC’s Career and Technical Education programs.

OCC ranks first out of Orange County’s community colleges in the number of students it transfers to the University of California and California State University systems. Over the past decade, thousands of OCC students have transferred to UC and CSU campuses. Additionally, many Orange Coast students go on to transfer to private colleges and universities within California and across the nation.

A member of the Coast Community College District, OCC offers fall, winter, spring, and summer classes and is fully accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.

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Graduates of four-year universities flock to community colleges for job skills

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“There’s a lot of disciplines universities aren’t offering,” said Cecilia Rios-Aguilar, an associate professor of education at UCLA and director of its Higher Education Research Institute, who said it’s no surprise that college graduates who want more specialized training or career changes are turning to community colleges. “The universities aren’t keeping up.”

By definition, community colleges are more responsive to the needs of local employers than some universities, said Davis Jenkins, a researcher at the Community College Research Center.

“Certainly the regional universities should be more customer-responsive,” he said.

Source: The Hechinger Report