With the price of four year universities these days, community college is a smart move financially.

CC is less expensive, you get all the prerequisites out of the way and it's a way to ease into the college environment.

I would've felt like a failure if I'd gone to community college because it'd been a huge goal of mine to move out of my house ASAP. If I'd gone to the community college right next to my house, I'd still be living at home. I'd always dreamed of going to a university and living in the dorms. It was a silly financial decision, but telling people I was "pursuing my dream" was the only way I could escape my terrible living situation without creating a nuclear family war. An extra bonus: people usually wasted an extra year at my local CC because classes filled up so fast and the scheduling was awful. Sitting around in school for an extra year because I couldn't get into the right classes would make me feel like a failure too. So my point is that there might be more to your bf's story, and he might not be a pretentious prick after all. Just ask him.