AZ parent just put a child through the public schools K-12 and then graduated U of AZ engineering BS without debt anecdotage:

The local CC is a disaster for teaching anything to do with that cursed label "STEM": math end-game beginning calculus is almost non-existent, other math classes focus on "business math"[1] and subjects such as real english skills or heaven forbid a foreign language are just barely rudimentary, which you can discover on your own by looking at the course availabilities, readily available online. Sure, you can get a nursing education, or law enforcement, but you can barely get any preparation at all for UA technical coursework. Some manage it anyway of course; when I was in the graduate math program at ASU in Tempe, the first PhD awarded in years started with beginning 1st year Algebra.

[1] "business math" I hardly understand myself, I really felt bad for the students. It makes no sense at all as a curriculum. But it does supply something for a market demand.

I suspect you know better than I do. 10 years ago I took a lot of the busy-work classes at GCC. And yeah, the education is not great. "Business math" and their persistent description of integrals as "the area under the curve" is infuriating. That said, STEM seems to be one of the programs where state universities are more appropriate in terms of earnings-to-cost benefit.

I'm from Chicago, have you been to one of our community colleges. They're not that great. I know, I went to one for a year before transferring to a more renowned college. Not to mention if you don't think the people around you in a community college setting are largely responsible adults optimizing their career/life paths, you are also wrong, these are well-known things that affect the quality and consumption of your education.