I enjoy Community's ridiculous setting a lot (ok, it's my favorite thing about the show. I've never warmed up all that much to *any* of the characters. Well, except the Dean.) I love the surrealism and absurdity of it, but you're right that there's a somewhat wincing quality, on the class level, to making it a Community college in particular. It could be a highschool or an elite university or even a hospital or any sizeable institution and the story and the atmosphere wouldn't really be all that different.