Community College Hats

Community colleges have spent decades as the butt of late-night jokes. PBS NewsHour called them the Rodney Dangerfields of American higher education, and some schools have even dropped "community" from their names to dodge the stigma. These hats take the opposite route and wear the label like a varsity letter. The pride has numbers behind it. Aims Community College in Colorado reports that 91 percent of its students graduate without debt, and California's Contra Costa College once wiped out the remaining balances of more than 60 graduating students, about $214 each on average. That is the spirit of I WENT TO COMMUNITY COLLEGE AND I OWE NOTHING and SKIPPED THE DEBT, KEPT THE DEGREE: same credits, no mountain of loans, and a savings account to show for it. The old jabs get flipped too, from the 13th grade jab to a valedictorian speech and the strip-mall campus to the Ivy League of the strip mall. Fans of the cult sitcom Community get their own flags, GREENDALE COMMUNITY COLLEGE and the fandom's rallying cry, SIX SEASONS AND A MOVIE. Every design is custom embroidered on an unstructured dad hat, with two plain badges for graduates and a gift-ready pick for the proud parent of one.