A perception that community colleges are inferior to other institutions of higher learning is changing, educators told a Gleaner Editors' Forum yesterday.

While admitting that community colleges are still often seen as institutions for students who underachieve at the secondary level, chairman of the Council of Community Colleges, Jeanette Grant-Woodham, said students leaving the colleges were performing well in universities.

"I don't think they (community colleges) are being seen in the way that they used to be," she told participants in the forum, held at The Gleaner's North Street, central Kingston, offices. "It is very helpful that they don't pay as much as they do at the traditional universities, but they do value what they get in community colleges."

Howard Isaacs, principal of Moneague College in St Ann, shared a similar view. He said that while there is a view that persons who attend community colleges do so when they cannot get into the University of the West Indies or the University of Technology, the sector has been doing the country a real service.

"We are doing a service that is second to none, we are contributing significantly to developing tertiary education in Jamaica, but there is still that stigma," Isaacs lamented.