With TV cameras rolling, Calbright student Jeremy Cox explained how he learned about Calbright, and why he enrolled.
“I found out about Calbright at the park,” he said. “I’m a stay-at-home dad, I was taking my child to the park, and someone I was talking to about my future goal—which is transitioning out of hotel/restaurant management and into computers—said that you should look at this college. It’s online and it’s self-paced. I went home and looked at it and I was sold immediately: I can study at two o’clock in the morning and also I don’t have to go to an actual physical location to attend a classroom. It’s all done at my house.”
Cox is now Calbright’s student body president. He and Calbright President Ajita Talwalker Menon joined LA Times Today to discuss Calbright’s progress and the student experience.
“Calbright is an all-online, free and flexible community college,” Menon said, serving people “who really face barriers and are unable to attend traditional college,” helping them develop “in-demand skills for an evolving workplace.” She noted, “We have the rigor of higher education but we take all of the logistical hurdles that families and people with other responsibilities face in accessing education out of the equation.”
Calbright programs can be completed on a student’s own schedule, in less than a year. Programs award graduates with a Calbright certificate of competency and then covers the cost of exams to earn pertinent industry credentials, like the CompTIA A+ or Salesforce Administrator certificates. By the end, students are ready for a new career in technology – and Calbright helps them with their job search, too.
“We meet our students where they are to complete their goals on their time frames,” Menon said.
And as interviewer Lisa McRee noted: “It’s free to students.”
