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When speaking to students at his alma mater, Foothill College, Daniel Ramos Mejia shares openly about the 17 course withdrawals on his academic transcript.
Ramos Mejia earned associate’s degrees from both Foothill and De Anza colleges, where he was a first-generation college student with a long commute and a full-time job. At first, he struggled academically. But in his last quarter at Foothill, he walked into his linear algebra class, where his math professor Jeff Anderson was playing reggaeton music. They spoke after class, and something clicked.
With Anderson’s mentorship around time management and strategic career planning, Ramos Mejia earned a 4.0 GPA with a course schedule that included linear algebra, chemistry and physics. He transferred to San José State University for his bachelor’s degree, and on Anderson’s advice, applied for scholarships. He earned so much money – around $35,000, he estimates – that he quit his full-time job to focus on school.
With a nudge from Anderson, he applied for and soon began a research assistantship in 3-D bioprinting in a Stanford lab, where he worked for three years while at SJSU. Ramos Mejia is now a master’s student in bioengineering at Stanford, where he’s studying on a full scholarship through an ultra-selective fellowship of the National Science Foundation.
At community college, Ramos Mejia said he was allowed to “mess up” without paying a high financial cost. By working hard and absorbing wisdom from his mentors, he began a trajectory that vaulted him closer to his long-term goals.
The story of Ramos Mejia is a kind of Rorschach test, reflecting belief in the plausibility of the American Dream, the merit of community college, the opportunities of elite institutions, the significance of persistence and the influence of exceptional educators.
For advocates of Foothill, though, students like Ramos Mejia represent a democratic model of education. In an era of college admissions when selectivity is a selling point for many students and universities, Foothill-De Anza Community College boasts a different admissions record: it accepts the top 100% of students into its programs. It’s a point that can be easily glossed over, but one that administrators and faculty emphasized – repeatedly – with pride.
“Community college serves everyone,” said Simon Pennington, associate vice president of college and community relations at Foothill College. “We have everyone in our classroom, from 14-year-olds doing dual enrollment to people in their 90s doing personal development.”
While the Bay Area’s prominent four-year universities promise big-name professors and prestigious extra-curricular opportunities, schools like Foothill, which is part of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District, are focused on giving students a foothold in a high cost-of-living area.
Foothill serves students from a diverse range of socioeconomic backgrounds, Pennington said, and many students pursue their studies while working multiple jobs. Some students also face housing or food insecurity. In 2023, following the passage of a state law that required community colleges to establish a center addressing students’ basic needs, Foothill opened the Owl’s Nest Center. The center offers services including a daily food pantry, Wal-Mart gift cards, and resources for students facing housing insecurity, such as a recently-opened affordable housing development for students.
On a September afternoon during the college’s first week of classes, dozens of students dropped by the owl’s nest to grab a granola bar, weekly groceries, or to chat with the program coordinator of the center, Sonia Sánchez. Sánchez said that around 1,300 different students – around a fifth of Foothill’s in-person student population – take advantage of the food services per quarter. The center, Sánchez says, gives students the chance to focus on their future goals.
“[They can] focus on their academics because their stomachs will be full, or their basic needs will be met,” Sánchez said. “That will be one thing less for them to worry about.”
The college is increasingly focused on facilitating job opportunities with family-sustaining wages, Foothill President Kristina Whalen said. Teresa Ong, another top Foothill administrator, said that the college serves as a liaison between academia and industry. For example, after hearing that Silicon Valley-based semiconductor manufacturers Applied Materials and Infinera lacked skilled labor, Foothill created a semiconductor apprenticeship to ensure a talent pipeline.
“When cities say, ‘We’re going to launch a new industrial park for biotechnology,’ we need to be at the table,” said Ong, who serves as Foothill’s vice president for workforce innovation and economic development. “Because that just means you need a talent pipeline for whatever industrial park you’re going to build…and then we know our students will have a job.”
The college offers apprenticeship programs in trades such as plumbing, air conditioning and sheet metal which allows students to earn money working while taking classes two nights per week. Amid an increasing skepticism of the value of four-year universities and a burgeoning interest in the trades, Foothill’s Dean of Apprenticeships Chris Allen said that the programs are seeing more applicants. Allen attributed this trend to improved outreach from Foothill and factors related to artificial intelligence.
Foothill students can also obtain associate’s degrees in disciplines such as computer science, biology and media at a fraction of the cost of a four-year university. The college estimates that nine months of tuition would cost about $1,500 for California residents and around $13,000 for non-residents. Tuition and textbook costs are often waived for first-time, full-time students through the state program such as California Promise, meaning that many students like Ramos Mejia can attend Foothill tuition-free. In comparison, tuition runs $67,500 per year at Stanford and $17,500 for in-state students at the University of California, Berkeley.
With 2.1 million students enrolled at 116 community colleges, the California Community College system serves more than double the number of students of the University of California and California State system combined. Still, California community colleges receive less funding per student than any other public education system in the state, at $13,000 per community college student, $36,000 for a UC student, and $22,600 for a CSU student. That figure is also less than the $21,600 taxpayers spent on a K-12 student in California in 2022.
Even with less financial resources than four-year universities, Foothill has long been recognized for educational excellence and its industry partnerships with Silicon Valley companies. It was recently named the no. 1 community college in the nation by Niche, an education website, and the Foothill-De Anza district has earned the moniker the “Harvard of community colleges,” according to some internet forums.
The college has attracted a variety of students with different goals. This publication spoke to Vania, a psychology student from Iran hoping to obtain advanced degrees in neuroscience or counseling; Austin Fujii, a 19-year-old Palo Alto High School alumnus studying sociology who is an involved member of student government; and Cristian Ambriz, a 22-year-old graduate of East Palo Alto Academy who took gap years after high school before starting his associate’s degree in kinesiology at Foothill.
Foothill also offers students the chance to transfer their Foothill credits to four-year universities. Paco Li, 19, is an international student from China studying statistics and data science who hopes to transfer to UCLA after obtaining his associate’s degree from Foothill.
The college has transfer agreements with many four-year universities, including most in the UC and CSU system. These agreements guarantee admission to several schools if students fulfill certain GPA and degree requirements. For the most competitive schools like Berkeley and UCLA, Foothill has preferred admission agreements which increase their chances of admission to more than 75%, far higher than the general acceptance rate around 10%.
Current Foothill College student Maria Blaze, a San José native who attended Piedmont Hills High School, says that her Foothill courses and extracurriculars have equipped her with strong public speaking skills and experience in policy and advocacy work. Blaze, who is studying for a political science associate’s degree, was elected by her peers to serve as the student trustee of the college. In August, California Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed her to the California Community Colleges Board of Governors.
This past summer, Blaze was one of 25 Foothill students selected to attend Stanford Summer Session, where she took a biology class on a full scholarship. After graduating from Foothill, Blaze hopes to become a political commentator or run for office.
“Community college has genuinely changed my life.” Blaze said. “[I am] someone who graduated from high school with a 2.8 GPA and now is thriving in community college because of the resources that are provided. I am forever grateful for it.”
