Is it possible your community college was just unreasonably difficult?
Yes, infact I took French again at a different community college and passed.
The first community college I went too tried to cram 6 semester units into a single class. This still had the effect of derailing my life as I had to pick a different school to transfer to.
Isn't the requirement to have done a year or two of a second language in high school?
In ether case this isn't easily doable for people who come from unstable homes.
No language needed: Florida Institute of Technology, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Either 2 years in high school or 2 semesters in college, your choice: a STEM degree in a typical Florida state university
Some places require 4 years in high school.
In general, I think it's an ROI thing - the vast majority of non-technical degrees from low-tier schools have abysmal ROI. That said, ROI obviously depends on the I and the R - you intelligently kept the R down, and it sounds like you got a good I, so yeah, no disagreement. I just think you're very much the exception.
Then again I've worked many minimum wage jobs with master degree holders for
I literally couldn't pass French in community college and ended up going to a lesser school because of it. It's just not something I can do, at least in an academic environment.
That's said my life is much better for having attended college. However there's absolutely a max amount of money you should spend on this. Anything more than $40,000 for the full four years is too much. So if you do two years at community college, that's roughly $2,000 a year, 4000. Which leaves a budget of $36,000 for your last two years of college, of course this is just tuition.
That's very much doable, and even if you have to borrow the whole 40 it's not that bad. The real problems start when people spend $100,000 or so attending lowly ranked schools, AKA these for-profit institutions.