[pc86]

Auditing classes, when allowed, gives you access to everything being enrolled typically does, for the same cost, without any grade associated with it.

And your academic "record" only matters if you plan on getting additional advanced degrees in the future. If you have a degree or two already you lose nothing by having a half-dozen Fs from community college classes a decade later.

[kstrauser]

And that's only if someone found out you were enrolled in that community college in the first place. Unless you're applying at, maybe, the NSA, no HR department is going to call around to all the local schools to see if perchance you took a class there.