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Comment by sotojuan | Hacker News Reader

There's a stigma against community college in the US for high-achieving students. At least where I went to high school, it was where the kids who did okay/poorly in high school went to get a second chance in hopes of transferring to a university or at least have an associate's degree.

If you were to tell the average high school student who's in the top ~10% of their class to go to CC, you'd get laughed at.

Also, we're spoiled in programming and engineering in that we can go to almost any valid school and still get a job if we can build and ship software. In other careers, college or location choice really does matter!

On a better note, where I went to high school most students (even top ones) went to in-state schools, but that's because Texas has pretty good public colleges (though last time I checked they're getting more expensive).

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> There's a stigma against community college in the US for high-achieving students.

> If you were to tell the average high school student who's in the top ~10% of their class to go to CC, you'd get laughed at.

There shouldn't be any such stigma; it's a great path to follow. If it was the last degree you got, sure, a 2-year degree won't get you the results you want. But as the first 2 years of a B.S. or graduate degree, it's a completely sensible path.

I went to community college for 2 years, graduated with an A.S., transfered into a full university as a junior, and then finished a B.S. and Ph.D. there. I can definitely vouch for that path, and never once has it mattered in the least where those first two years took place.

> Also, we're spoiled in programming and engineering in that we can go to almost any valid school and still get a job if we can build and ship software. In other careers, college or location choice really does matter!

True, careers like law or business seem to have a much larger problem with credentials.

Part of the stigma is at least well deserving where I grew up, since if you had anything over a B average at my high school, the state schools would give you a full ride for all four years. Of course most people ended up paying a bunch of money to go to one of the UCs.

Although you also need to factor into that decision the impaction in certain majors at lots of the CalStates. People are taking more than 4 years to graduate because they can't get in to classes they need.

This works if a student wants to start out as an entrepreneur. But if they actually want to start their career with a high paying engineering job at a big tech company and they don't have any inside connections, their school had better be a recruiting target for internships and new grad positions. Plenty of affordable public universities are in this category, but Google and Facebook don't show up at the community college career fairs.

Of course there's always a career path for people with a record of making impressive things, but if you're a CS major in the right schools you can get into the big-name tech companies just for having potential.

I recognize my bias towards community colleges is impacted by the fact that I grew up in a small, isolated community with a major R&D institution.

My chemistry, math, and physics teachers excelled in their field and taught night classes because they wanted to. This was much better then the university classes taught by people who just wanted to research or who were too caught up in all the theory to figure out how to explain concepts.

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