Tom Hanks praises community college experience in New York Times op-ed
The winner of two Academy Awards, four Golden Globes and five Emmys, Tom Hanks credits much of his success to his time at Chabot College, a community college in Hayward, California. Hanks is one of the highest-grossing actors in the history of cinema. As of 2014, his films, including Philadelphia, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan and Captain Phillips, have grossed more than $8.4 billion at worldwide box offices.
Excerpt from “I Owe It All to Community College”…
“I drove past the campus a few years ago with one of my kids and summed up my two years there this way: ‘That place made me what I am today.'”
You can read about Hanks’ positive experience at Chabot College in a January 14 piece he wrote as an op-ed contributor to The Opinion Pages in The New York Times:
I Owe It All to Community College
Tom Hanks on His Two Years at Chabot College
By Tom Hanks • Jan. 14, 2015
IN 1974, I graduated from Skyline High School in Oakland, Calif., an underachieving student with lousy SAT scores. Allowed to send my results to three colleges, I chose M.I.T. and Villanova, knowing such fine schools would never accept a student like me but hoping they’d toss some car stickers my way for taking a shot. I couldn’t afford tuition for college anyway. I sent my final set of stats to Chabot, a community college in nearby Hayward, Calif., which, because it accepted everyone and was free, would be my alma mater.
For thousands of commuting students, Chabot was our Columbia, Annapolis, even our Sorbonne, offering courses in physics, stenography, auto mechanics, certified public accounting, foreign languages, journalism — name the art or science, the subject or trade, and it was probably in the catalog. The college had a nursing program that churned out graduates, sports teams that funneled athletes to big-time programs, and parking for a few thousand cars — all free but for the effort and the cost of used textbooks. (Read more…)
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Dakota County Technical College
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