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> What's the case against community colleges historically?

nothing, but they don't have slick advertising and promise you a $75k/year job, or aggressively recruit you by calling you non-stop and using manipulative pressure tactics like you're buying a $50,000 cell phone plan at a mall kiosk.

or aggressively recruit you by calling you non-stop and using manipulative pressure tactics

Wow, you just reminded me of something funny that happened about 15 years ago.

A younger friend of mine was interested in tech, and knew I was "good with computers". They had taken some online quiz, and said I should take it. So I took it, and filled out my info thinking I might win something (I was young, and didn't particularly care.) About 15 minutes later I got a phone call from a guy trying to tell me that I was in a dead end job, and that I would never be anything if I didn't go to the school he was pushing. I think I just laughed, and said something snarky like "at least I'm not calling people up selling things." Then about an hour later he called back from another number, and was making fun of my (admittedly awful) band, asking where he could buy tickets. I calmly just told him we would appreciate the support, and gave him our website. He just hung up in a huff, but it was a very weird exchange.

In any case, I am very surprised anybody ever buys anything from pushy salespeople. I always immediately equate it to a low quality product, or a business with questionable morals.

" I am very surprised anybody ever buys anything from pushy salespeople. "

Agreed. The irony is the majority of people do. Sadly, most people are irrational > 50% of the time. Sure. They are capable of being rational, but they don't exercise that capability.

And that doesn't exclude those of us posting on Hacker News.

Never mind pushy. How do rude salespeople even exist?

I have never even liked the concept of a salesperson, as distinct from a vendor's point-of-sale clerk. I don't like to haggle; I check competitor prices, and use advertised sales or coupons.

> Never mind pushy. How do rude salespeople even exist?

They exist because people who give in to avoid conflict exist, so pushy and rude both, in certain contexts and with certain target audiences, work in sales.

If you've never sold its kind of hard to understand but doormats are people who have nothing to offer and who's time isn't valuable. Part of selling things to people is selling yourself. People with high value are allowed to be arrogant and rude , in moderation.

My local one has cut back on everything in the last few years. No more counselors - just use the online tools! And they're mostly about getting federal financial aid. Placement consists mostly of 'apprentice' positions which means a vanload of students running the back end of a restaurant somewhere all summer and sharing an apartment meant for 2.

Strangely they don't advertise at all - at least in the media I see. While I saw IIT ads all the time. And they target the same demographic.

Based on the experience of myself and acquaintances your experience seems to be an outliers. Obviously it's just anecdote vs anecdote.

Several years ago De Anza College in Cupertino had an excellent array of in person classes (by CC standards). Too bad they are making a lot of those online, from what I remember seeing a few years ago (that also has issues with Gi Bill requirements that classes be in person).

Community colleges have an inverse relationship with the economy - when the economy is in a slump they do well, when the economy is on the rebound their admissions go down. There's a bunch of reasons for this - people go to school when they're out of work, people who are going to school anyway may not think they can afford a "real" university when the economy looks ill.

Once the economy picks up people have jobs so they stop going, those who want to go to school feel good about their odds of taking on a ton of debt and go to a larger school.

(source: father was a professor at a vey large community college for ~40 years, mother is a prof at a university)

Advertising is really expensive, so most community collages advertise to a limited degree because that's about all they can afford.

>No more counselors - just use the online tools!

N=1 here, but I got no apparent utility from the existence of counselors in high school or college.

In retrospect they handled some registering paperwork for me, but they also planned my coursework for me as if I were the median student. In high school I had to press the counselor to let me take more AP courses than she thought was wise.

In college, it was more of a rubber stamp thing, where the counselor just approved my choices because they lined up with degree requirements.

Other than officially validating that my classes met the degree requirements, there was no value add. I'm glad to see someone at the helm realized a computer can do that just as well or better.

My high school counselors were actually reasonably helpful, mostly when it came to college advising stuff. I went to a small private HS though, and they knew everyone by the time you were a senior.

I had the same experience in college though. Heck, I'm an MSE student now and I don't even have an advisor because the one they assigned me left and I haven't been bothered to get a new one.

My high school counselor was incredibly useless, and quite possibly harmful. I also went to a small private high school (~30 students per grade level).

Her only focus, as far as I can tell, was to make sure we could be admitted to a UC. She spoke to us in 10th grade, letting us know that we needed to take three SAT II subject tests, and that two of them should be writing and math, while the third should be whatever we thought we'd get a high score in. She also stated that on no account should we schedule all three tests for the same day, because too much testing wears you out and your performance suffers.

I could tell that last bit was nonsense, but I believed the earlier advice and took the math, writing, and latin tests. The counselor bore a grudge against me from then on for ignoring her advice but still getting high scores. Come senior year, I learned that good schools usually required a science SAT II. Whoops.

I had almost no interaction with the school counselor besides the speech she gave to the 10th grade. I heard through the grapevine how upset she was that I'd flouted her non-individualized advice.

I had no "counselor" or similar role in college. The CS degree required a CS professor to sign off on my "plan", but that entire process consisted of me going to a professor in my final year, saying "I want to declare a CS major; here is my plan, all of the classes except that one are already complete", and getting a pro forma signature.

Community colleges with regional accreditation and freely transferable credits are not a problem. They serve several niches that large universities may find inconvenient or unprofitable--such as the hobbyist courses you mentioned, continuing education requirements, and remedial courses for students with inadequate high school education, and compete with some larger universities for the non-traditional students.

Spending some years at community college before transferring to a larger university's degree program is a great way for poorer students to save tuition money, and for academically unprepared students to catch up to their age cohort in a reasonable way. The disadvantage lies in the social networking, which is a big part of the value of (4 years of) on-campus university education. At a community college, it is somewhat less advantageous to make contacts with other students and professors, because they are less prestigious overall. Someone with an associate's degree is not as likely to help you get a job (at least for several years after graduation).

Most for-profit schools lack several of the elements I consider to be absolutely essential to qualify as a "community college". Many of them appear to be so horribly parasitic and exploitative that I can't figure out how they manage to get so many students.

I have no idea, but our local community (junior) college is so highly regarded that our high schools generally recommended it as a good course for many, if not most, students. It routinely ranks in the top 5 of the AMATYC[1], and has transfer programs set up with many of the UC/CS colleges in state so you are guaranteed entry in those colleges if you complete the requirement classes with a certain GPA, regardless of high school performance (or completion!). Guaranteed transfer to UCLA or UC Berkeley as a science major at a fraction of the cost with half your college credits taken care of is nothing to sneeze at.

1: http://www.amatyc.org/

What's your local community college?

Santa Rosa Junior College[1]. I just looked up AMATYC rankings, and apparently they haven't placed since 2003-2004. I'm not sure if that's because of their math department degrading, or other colleges stepping up their game, or some failure at the state K12 level in supplying fundamentals (since the contest is based on student performance). It's possible my information is somewhat out of date (I went through there around 2000), but the first of my children will be making choices about colleges in a few years, and I was leaning towards recommending it (but haven't closely looked at it again recently).

From my experience at that time, it didn't feel significantly different than the campus I transferred to, except that the math classes at the Junior College were actually significantly harder, or at least more intense.

1: https://www.santarosa.edu/

Nice, I live in SR now and attended SRJC in '02-03 or so, but eventually made my way to their Petaluma campus for their CCNA program.

Ah, I still live there myself. A nice place to live if you can leverage something close to a SF payscale even though you're an hour north, as the housing cost is still relatively high compared to almost everywhere else in the country.

California community colleges are pretty affordable (with in-state tuition) and mostly pretty good, but not all states have a similar system: when I was in Wisconsin, community college was much closer to the cost of a four year school.

I see more of a case against going to a four year college for a lot of people instead of just going to a much cheaper 2 year college for the first two years and transferring to get a 4 year degree. Most state four year colleges have a transfer program.

When I was an undergrad, many years ago in my home state of Ohio, community colleges were definitely looked down on as being "lesser" than four-year universities, even if the universities were offering two-year Associates programs.

However, the State of Ohio overhauled how it helps funds state universities, where funds are allocated based on graduation rather than enrollment. As a result, state universities have started shifting more and more students to take low level courses at whatever community college, or colleges, they partner with. In particular, students with higher drop-out risk also get sent over to the community college.

I think that, along with many of the State's public universities slashing tuition on entry-level courses have helped improve the cost burden of higher education, particularly for those high-risk groups where they only take a few classes and fail to complete the program.

I've always been a huge fan of community colleges. Partly because I came up through one.

I don't know that there is a "case" against them. My guess is that there are a bunch of mis-assumptions against them by proxy. I'm guessing but I think a chunk of people might think or suggest that the college prep education they pay their tax dollars for up with 12th grade is doing an inadequate job if community college or junior college is needed.

That and then there is a general "anti-university" sort of vibe in the world. "They waste a lot of time and money teaching you stuff that you don't need" or "it's just a piece of paper" where as maybe a vocational school might be a more "efficient" option for getting a job. I'm not expert but I believe a lot of community colleges try to offer college prep courses and try to help ease the transition, rather than just focus on vocational skills that can immediately be applied to a job.