10 years ago, this allowed for earning an engineering degree for $2k a year, or $8-10k.
In my experience, community colleges were very much viewed as remedial. I’d guess that many of the classes were taken by students who had failed the equivalent class at university.
I took Physics at both the community college and university (I was afraid that the community college class would not prepare me for later classes). The differences were stark: At university, lecture was 3x a week by the professor (who did not speak English), recitation by a TA (who did not speak English), and lab by another TA. There were 3 sections with 400 students per section. The professor had one hour of office hours for all 400 students in my section. At community college, my professor lectured, ran the lab, ran recitation. He went to a top 5 school, was an American, and was a great teacher. The class had 2 sections of 30 students. He ran weekend reviews for tests, if needed, and had open office hours all day. His tests were very difficult and required mastery of the subject matter.
I dropped the university class after I realized it was of much lower quality than what I had already received, for 1/5th the price, no less.