or steward/stewardess. 

What's so wrong with those terms? The negatives don't stem from the words, they stem from the meanings people assign to the roles...and in the case of community colleges...to the colleges. 

So when we call people or places something else, the old meanings attach to the new labels. It's "kind of stupid"...as you said.

IMO having strong 2-year options is preferable to yet another mediocre 4-year option, especially when UF is across town and you've designed yourself as a feeder program for it. That's double the debt for little value add. We should be turning more people toward less college, not more.