My wife went to a CC before going to a 4-year university. The challenge of studying in a CC, at least to some students, is that CC's courses are not rigorous enough. The courses are on par with those AP courses. For instance, their Calculus class focused on derivatives and integrations, while spending far less time discussing fundamentals like definition of limits, convergent functions, series, or boundary conditions in differential equations. Needless to say, they touched little on proofs, either. Their linear algebra class focuses more on matrix calculation than properties of vector space. Similarly, there were few proofs in their Discrete Maths course, little discussion on computational complexity or computability in algorithms class, no comprehensive projects on data structures like balanced trees, or graph algorithms beyond simple search.

These are not inherent problems with CC, but lacking rigorous course does impose a challenge to the students who aspire to be transferred to a 4-year college to study STEM, as they often felt insufficiently equipped to take more advanced courses in universities.