Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The result was graduating college with a bachelor's degree 2.5 years after graduating high school. I lived at home for the the duration (rent free as long as I maintained a 3.5 GPA) so the full cost was only around $6,000.
This was in northern California (Modesto Junior College and Cal State Stanislaus) with a relatively low cost of living. I know the costs have increased since then (I went in the mid 2000's), but I assume it's still relatively affordable.
Iirc it was phys2210
Not having to worry about financials really helped in reducing the pressure of changing majors. I went from CS to Mfg Engineering. If I had to factor in an additional $20000 into that, I probably would be working in a job I disliked rather than exploring other options.
On top of going to school for free, and living rent free, I was able to have a job for a few years which basically paid for my expenses in a 4-year.
Hardest part of it all was convincing my parents that I didn't want to go to Berkley even though I was accepted, but would rather go to a CC. The stigma behind CCs was the only hurdle.
All in all, got free school, had a savings, and knew what I wanted to do for a career. Would recommend it to anyone. PLUS I got to have my mom's cooking for lunch and dinner.
CSU Stanislaus: $47,000 (early career), $90,300 (mid career) MIT: $81,500 (early career), $147,000 (mid career)
Early career is 0-5 years experience. Mid career is 10+ years experience.
https://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/bachelors?pag...
Obviously, we can't say that prestige of college and income are causal but the correlation is definitely there.
Community college is different from a state college. Community colleges only do your first two years,and you transfer to another school for the rest of your Bachelors.
This is what I'm looking at now... I really want to get into a top-10 school, but I'm a washout; I had terrible high school grades and I've only been published once in the meanwhile. A top-10 university won't let me in. Hell, I talked to the people at SJSU and they told me to take two years of community college and get back to them.
It's interesting, though; I looked into it, and it's dramatically easier to get into Berkely from a community college; Berkeley has like a 15% admissions rate out of high school... and a 25% admissions rate from a California community college.
(that said, I personally agree that a top-10 college is worlds better than a middle of the pack college. My only point here is that from my research? Even without any money constraints, the most realistic path for me to a top-10 college is through a community college.
Of course, if you have a chance to go to a top-10 college, my advice to you is to borrow like hell and do it, because top-10 colleges, as far as I can tell, give you dramatically better returns if you graduate, and they don't seem to cost dramatically more than the mid-range schools.
I personally think that the utility drops off pretty fast after you get out of the really top universities. I mean,I'm not saying it's not worth going to a middle of the road school... I'm just saying that I would be a lot more careful of taking out giant loans to go to a middle of the road school than I would when going to a top-10 school.)
That is probably dependent upon major and level.
I suspect that for engineering, for example, a "mid-tier" school probably is better for your average undergrad. I never saw the 400+ student lectures that are universally lousy at a mid-tier (20-50) university. You also got professors teaching classes at far lower levels (my Electronics 101 and Signals and Systems were taught by the Dean, himself)
This may be unique to engineering given that engineering schools actually have to answer to an accreditation body (ABET).
All I'm saying is that most people didn't go to an elite school, and yet a lot of the really prestigious and remunerative Engineering and engineering/management positions from 2-4 levels up from me are occupied by graduates of elite schools. The higher up you go, it seems, the higher proportion of them went to an elite school.
I mean, that's totally unscientific, and just my perception, but if we could correlate the school you graduated from with people employed at the top-tier Engineering shops in the bay area, I bet elite schools would be vastly over-represented.
If you polled management from Westinghouse in the 1990's, you would find Pitt, CMU, Penn State and OSU overrepresented.
One thing you have to be careful of is that "elite" school graduates often have an over-inflated sense of how good they actually are. The ex-CTO of ModCloth had a video talking to a bunch of Russians where he talked about how the Pittsburgh team was better and more productive and that the SFO team was unjustifiably arrogant.
The guy was Adil Wali. Man, it took me way too long to find this. I guess ModCloth PR has sanitized the web: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4qYFqpLQBc#t=1h20m
If bias gets you a significantly more remunerative or prestigious job, well, that should be factored into your return on investment, if you are looking for renumeration or prestige or to work around people with prestige.
>One thing you have to be careful of is that "elite" school graduates often have an over-inflated sense of how good they actually are.
My experience of the world is that having an over-inflated sense of your own worth doesn't hurt you any.
It's sad, because I personally find that kind of overconfidence super annoying, but if you are trying to maximize your career...
I guess I worked at a moderately "prestigious" consultancy for a while that is a large factor in me having this particular job, but it seems like top universities aren't all that important beyond your first few years in the industry.
This means they can only award associate and technical degrees, but not bachelor's (4-year) degrees. You need to transfer to a 4-year college for that, which is what I did.
However, it's important to ensure that your intended university has an articulation agreement with whichever community college you're attending. In California, the IGETC certificates are accepted by all University of California and California State University campuses, and the CSU-GE Breadth certificates are accepted by all California State University campuses, but not UC campuses.
Looking to my sibling's experience, I decided to leave high school when I turned 16 to attend community college and accrue transfer credits. 2.5 years later, I transferred to a good university and graduated earlier than my high school peers, saving tens of thousands of dollars. I had a blast during this time, as it really helped shape my most formative years of development, especially being exposed to so many diverse groups (as you would expect at a community college).
Now my other younger family members are looking to my experiences and deciding for themselves if the last two years of high school or first two years of university education are important to them. Now they are taking the community college route to save money, and they seem to understand that they can still derive meaningful experiences and relationships.
It's a massive failure of imagination that this isn't already the case.
I agree with what you are saying but I think it’s a product of a failure somewhere else in the education system. No child left behind and other programs hinder education by applying one size fits all policies.
It's directly a failure of the primary education system, but it is more a failure of leadership and resources than anything else.
As far as NCLB, the response to it is a bigger problem than the law. There's nothing in it stopping states from investing in both helping underachieving students and in helping other students get ahead. NCLB didn't tell Oklahoma to slash taxes and burn their schools.
Why is it more expensive to teach, say, calculus than algebra? Offering more advanced classes should not cost more.
Because educating someone to teach more advanced subjects takes more times and resources.
Besides, teaching college freshman calculus is not exactly magneto hydrodynamics.
The normally accepted education level for teaching a university-level class is a PhD.
I was taught freshman calc by grad students - with no "education" training whatsoever. Perhaps these "masters" of education are learning the wrong things.
Freshman calculus just isn't that hard, and isn't much beyond algebra. This "gee math is hard" crap is, well, crap. No PhD is necessary. Hell, I taught it to my kids on the kitchen table, and I have no advanced degree and never took a course in education.
Of course I do. I am just bemused by teachers having masters degrees yet be unable to teach any freshman college level class.
> Do you think someone who has never studied calculus should be able to teach it?
Freshman calculus is not rocket science, and I expect someone with a masters degree to be able to handle it.
Right, well here's the answer to the original question then. If you want teachers to be able to teach calculus, and you agree people should have an education in a subject to teach it, then you need the teachers to study calculus themselves, which they weren't necessarily doing, because they studied things other than maths, so you need to use more resources to have them also take calculus classes, so it costs more.
Sounds like things are all messed up in what districts pay for. They don't need more money, they need to redirect what they're already paying for.
You can't say 'you have a masters you should be able to pick it up yourself and teach it to these school children'. Can you not see how unreasonable that is?
Many affluent high schools have an abundance of AP/IB courses. Many high schools also have additional college-credit courses (where the high school acts as a sort of proxy for a local college, often a community college). At a "good" high school, students can combine all of these options to have not just a year, but even junior or senior standing by the time they start college.
There are three problems with this approach:
1. Not all high schools are affluent / have their crap together enough to offer these options.
2. students need to be prepared. Enough of them that you can fill a course. This can be a barrier in less affluent areas.
3. Students have to know about this option, usually starting in middle school so that they can begin working ahead early (e.g., finish algebra in middle school).
> ...and college
The pattern here seems to be picking the college vs. picking the more advanced courses at the college. So, you don't take "more advanced couses at regional State campus"; instead, you go to (your field's equivalent of) MIT/Stanford/Berkeley/CMU. Or at least the state flagship. C.f., algorithms at an elite university vs. algorithms at the branch campus of a middling state system. The differences in both depth (rigor) and bredth are, in many cases, quite extraordinary.
> No child left behind and other programs hinder education by applying one size fits all policies.
Do you have any data to justify this assertion? AP offerings have increased since NCLB was enacted.
I don't disagree with you that NCLB is a net harm, but I don't think it's accurate to place the blame there for this particular problem. (Also, whenever NCLB comes up, it's worth pointing out that states bear a lot of responsibility -- they have quite a bit of leeway in how NCLB is implemented.)
I will be forever grateful that my high school encouraged this.
Whereas a Community College may have an easier time finding instructors, since there aren't licensing rules or a need to employ the instructor full-time. Also they draw from a wider student population so may not have as much difficulty filling a class.
One wonders about such teachers who have advanced masters degrees in education. Why are they not qualified to teach freshman college material?
Probably not; the state policies adopted under the pressure of NCLB and it's successors put strong pressure on districts to hire teachers with at least a bachelor's degree in the field taught for secondary schools, and even teachers that don't will often have additional coursework as part of college breadth requirements.
A masters in education is qualification to teach education classes, not other subjects.
Simply making High School arbitrarily harder is kind of meaningless if most students would fail the material.
You can still have everybody lined up to finish ~17 or 18, just allow more variation in what they have finished. If someone doesn't plan to go on to college, maybe they don't need to take college prep math classes and can take classes that will serve them better.
I also dropped out of IB, but in favor of a new program that let me take 2 online state college classes during the school day. So I got full college credit, great professors, and kept my schedule flexible. So agreed that dual enrollment is better if the option is available.
You can rack up quite a lot of credits with AP courses.
As an engineer, I wiped out all my English requirements (6 credits). I wiped out Chemistry (6 credits and a really annoying lab at 4 credits). And I wiped out my first Calc class (4 credits). I think I killed a foreign language requirement, too (probably 6 credits).
That's 30 credits--or, a full year.
The big problem was that I was feeding into engineering which really doesn't let you wipe a lot out--knocking off Chemistry was a big deal (I also had an AP History score which didn't do anything for me, for example). Generally, all your good science scores just let you switch to a "more researchy" track where you take "deeper theoretical" (read: a shitton more work) classes.
In my experience, if you find a good community college, the high volume classes tend to be better than they are at a big school. There are usually less than 50 students (vs up to 400), the teachers actually enjoy teaching, and the material is easy enough that the teachers understand it just as well as top tier professors.
Honestly, California is the only state where I'd unabashedly recommend this path though. The community colleges are consistently good, you have multiple choices in terms of top tier public universities, and transfer students are given priority.
The are curriculum-design rules at the 4-year state schools in CA to smooth the transition too, which I think is fairly unusual. When I was working at UC Santa Cruz, my department proposed a new degree program, and an important part of the overall proposal was to show that there would be ways to fulfil the first two years of credit requirements (plus the prereqs for years 3/4) via courses commonly offered at in-state community colleges, so you could transfer in and still graduate on time. This does complicate design of certain kinds of curricula (it tends to discourage course sequences that strongly build on each other), but gives students more options.
For state uni's they have a two year plan where all the credits transfer and you start as a junior.
A lot of the out-of-state uni's also list courses on their websites that will directly transfer so you can check if you're planning to attend later.
When I transferred to a private school I was a bit older so they really gave some leeway in how they transferrey credits. I am guessing they would not have done the same for a 19 year old though
Historically, the community and tech college teachers were unionized, so it attracted people who wanted to make a career of teaching. They were actually better off than the adjuncts who were teaching the same courses at the university. When the state broke the public sector unions a few years ago, a lot of teachers took early retirement (five or six of my friends), and I don't know how this will affect things going forward.
There's a reason UW Madison has been and continues to be so highly regarded.
There was also a greater difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition, with higher requirements to qualify for the latter. Wisconsin was focused on educating Wisconsonites, and bettering the state thereby.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Idea
Unfortunately, as another commenter mentioned, this lauded and effective system has come under attack by opponents of any sort of public spending and public good.
And, as Wisconsin has lost many union and other well-paying jobs, it's become harder to retain domestically educated talent.
It would be a shame if the system is destroyed. It's allowed this small, largely rural state to punch significantly above its weight.
The 4 year places generally impose limits on how many credits they will recognize from a transfer, for the obvious reasons, they want their cut and they don't want to be a rubber stamp for some other program.
As a student you find yourself in a situation like Feynman in Brazil. You sit in class and have to teach yourself the material again properly yourself.
As a c.c student wishing to go further you have two problems: you need to discover the concepts that were not taught because they were "too difficult" and you need to gain familiarity with them, and that is easier with proper instruction,.
So you see no reason for schools to produce people with well-rounded educations? You don't feel its important for society to have adults who have a wide-ranging perspective on things like literature, philosophy, history, art and non-computer science?
Also the OPs comment and this entire discussion is of general secondary education and not software development.
And it's not just about software development, most college curriculumns could be more focused into a two year degree.
To some degree yes but a much more limited scope than what's available at the university level. I don't think most public high schools teach humanities, political science etc.
Two year schools are basically vocational schools. I don't doubt there is a place for that but I think they are different products.
If you can’t teach the necessary fundamentals of that in high school that’s a problem with you’re K-12 system.
The idea of a “well rounded education” is the result of the middle class trying to ape the leisure classes, who went to college to learn things they didn’t need to support themselves financially.
Also your email address is as @northwestern.edu, a university that very much promotes the important of a well-rounded educational experience.
Which is a very different statement than saying pursing a well-rounded educational experience is nothing more than "trying to ape the leisure classes."
My undergraduate degree is in aerospace engineering, and you do really need a 4-year degree to do that. You can't learn aeroelasticity on the job. But the traditional engineering disciplines (aero, chemical, mechanical, etc.), along with medicine and pure sciences are the exception. The vast majority of people don't need 4 years of post-secondary education, including many "professionals" (bankers, lawyers, etc.).
* 1 literature class (shakespeare elective)
* 0 philosophy classes
* 1 history class (history 101)
* 0 art classes
* 2 science classes (physics 1 & 2)
The idea that most students develop this sort of thing in college is pretty clearly a myth.
>"The idea that most students develop this sort of thing in college is pretty clearly a myth."
So based on your own anecdotal experience core curriculum contributing to a well-rounded education is a "myth."
Also the idea isn't that you immediately "develop this sort of thing in college." It's to provide a foundation for thinking about things for the rest of your life.
Little State Promo: Minnesota has one of the best collegiate systems in the US from community to top tier university in case anyone didn’t know :)
I'm from Maryland, and our CC system, at least for my county, is great. We even had a pretty good career center. Knew many people who where able to get internships at places like NASA or NIH though the community college.
I did my first two years of electrical engineering at CC and it was great. Pretty much all my professors in EE classes had PhD's in the field and were of comparable quality to the ones at my 4 year university. Plus, since your in a class of only like 20 kids, you get a much better relationship. Had a few help me with a getting an internship sophomore year.
Near metro populations, night classes tend to be filled with strong learners- often already degreed- and with interesting stories to tell as well.
My kids will be strongly urged to go to community college, and I recommend it to everyone I'm close to. I may have missed out on college friendships, but I moved away after college anyway. I had about $13k loan debt at the end of 4 years, and I paid that off 2 years later even though it took me 9 months to land a job (because I didn't study CS and went for web development)
That's not too bad at all. Can I ask how long ago was this?
Community colleges are great in many ways. They provide a low cost option to get a four year degree. They give a second chance if you messed around in HS. It's less competitive to transfer into a top tier public university than it is to apply out of high school. Community colleges are more diverse - you'll meet a lot of older, experienced people, people working full time, and all ranges which just isn't possible at elite universities. Community colleges in California can also pay teachers more than the corresponding UC - so you'll find UC professors doing classes at the local college to make extra cash.
However, I would always recommend to go to a single university for 4 years if you can afford it. Some of the teaching quality in community colleges is just atrocious, unfortunately. A close friend of mine transferred into the UCB physics program, and he really struggled - the undergrad math prep at community college was a joke compared to what most of his fellow students had done. I also believe it's better to experience the full curriculum as intended. And there can be huge benefits to the dorm life.
My worse teacher was for CS. He was supposed to teach us about assembly language, but he had absolutely no idea what he was doing, and it was obvious to everyone. He would just babble nonsense for hours every lecture, trying to pretend he understood. The class revolted and petitioned to get him expelled from the college! I think he was one of the most senior lecturers there, he might have even been chair of the CS dept. Can't say I'm surprised, I think CS teaching quality is poor outside of 4 year schools.
I had a really lucky CC. I lived in a R&D military town hours from any other town. Some of my teachers were literally rocket scientists from the military base who happened to love to teach. The other teachers tended to be the spouses of the rocket scientists (which biases towards them also being smart) who had no where else to teach because of how remote the town is. They were all smart, passionate about teaching, and were practical.
the undergrad math prep at community college was a joke
My Calculus I instructor authored several college math texts, BTW.
Now that I think about it, the only instructors I recall having Ph.Ds who did their own lecturing were at the CC.
I transferred into a pretty hard to get into mechatronics program with an OK GPA, but having a year and a half of post-secondary under my belt was a huge bonus when the kids who were coming into engineering school straight out of high school realized that our profs were just too busy to help.
It's really a path that I suggest to everyone that I've met who's just leaving high school. Take some time, save some money, and if you're lucky, get better student-prof interaction.
That's what the dean of my university department told all the students.
Not for economics.
Not for political science.
This was for Electrical Engineering.
I wouldn't suggest to anyone to go to college.
It'd be more like a last-ditch "Ok, just don't start off at a university."
With the accessibility of information on the internet and the future collapse of student debt, college degrees will be an afterthought.. (besides doctors, dentists, most engineers)
IMHO the biggest potential loss are the social connections that can develop over four years versus just two. These can be crucial for friendship and for career connections, depending on the field.
I learn a lot from from college friends in other and the same fields. It teaches me a lot about the world, which is essential for identifying new areas for startups. I can bounce ideas off them and get feedback from entirely different perspectives; college is a great base for developing broad set of connections that all share at least a minimum amount of interest in critical thought.
There are actually lots of options to get a good education without breaking the bank. Transfer from community college is just one. Another is becoming a state resident for good state schools (eg UT Austin). This may require delaying college for a year but that’s not so bad either. Yet another is ROTC.
I’m all for people asking “how much will this cost and how much will it improve my economic prospects?”
At the high end I’m kinda sick of hearing FAAMG SWEs complain about not making ends meet because they can’t afford a 5 bedroom house in Palo Alto as well as pay $400k per child to send them to a top tier private school so it’s not like the need for learning financial responsibility is limited to the middle class.
It especially makes no sense to me for a resident of GA to ever go to a private college when you can get free tuition via the HOPE scholarship to go to well known public schools like GA Tech. If you get accepted to GA Tech, more than likely your grades and test scores were high enough to qualify for HOPE. If they weren't, you shouldn't be spending money going to an expensive private college anyway.
Because they are 18 years old and lack any life experience when they agree to take on this debt. And they are assured by smiling loan officers and their college's financial aid office that "everything is fine."
Shouldn't that be values of financial "viability."?
Most people don't want to becomes dead beats on their debt.
Unfortunately here's a whole system in place that encourages 18 year olds to take on hundred of thousands in dollars in debt in order to purse a degree which has very few professional prospects of earning enough to pay that money back to the lender(s.) Practically speaking it's debt-peonage.
To contrast to other forms of loans - if I earn $30K a year and apply for a mortgage for a house costing $800k I likely will turned down by the lending institution since I lack the means to meet those mortgage payments. In other words I am not a good risk.
However the same lending institution will gladly allow me to borrow $260K for 4 years of NYU tuition in order to obtain a degree in Drama that I will have almost no chance of being able to pay back.
- Our cc’s are all impacted and getting the classes you need is nearly impossible. Many people end up taking 3 years to graduate.
- When you do transfer to a bachelors program, you’ll find that your cc was missing a lot of the pre reqs you need for your major (depending on your major). I’ve seen a lot of cc students at UC schools have to go back and take freshman and sophmore level classes. (total could end up taking 6 years overall)
- All the other students when you transfer are already friends and have relationships with the professors and local businesses. Whose going to get the prestigious research position, the new guy or the one whose been bonding and proving themselves to the professor for 2 years? Same goes for internships.
- Who you spend time with shapes who you are. If you are a bright individual, it can be frustrating or depressing being around some of your peers in CC. My girlfriend took an online cc class where they had to submit a paragraph to their class forum. Two students literally copy and pasted her response word for word.
Contrast that with attending Houston Community College where they ask you if you'll be going on to a 4 year degree and if so in what and where. They can tell you exactly what courses to take at HCC to carry on to U of H, TAMU, UT, etc to finish a degree.
> Our cc’s are all impacted and getting the classes you need is nearly impossible. Many people end up taking 3 years to graduate.
This problem is not unique to CCs; this happens at all public schools. The solution is to plan your schedule years ahead. Most school officials readily give this advice, it's not a secret.
> When you do transfer to a bachelors program, you’ll find that your cc was missing a lot of the pre reqs you need for your major (depending on your major). I’ve seen a lot of cc students at UC schools have to go back and take freshman and sophmore level classes. (total could end up taking 6 years overall)
There's almost always a test you can take after transfer to verify your level of play.
When I transferred to a UC, they wanted me to retake some levels in my foreign language that I'd already completed at CC. Or, they offered a test I could take to jump ahead. I took the test. They saw that I could hang at the higher level. They let me enroll.
I wanted to take an upper-level writing course without taking the underclass pre-reqs. The program asked me to audition by submitting some samples. I did. They saw that I could hang at the higher level. They let me enroll.
This is fair and reasonable policy. UCs are world-class universities and they have a responsibility to maintain that standard. CCs offer everything needed to prosper after transfer (I think this is state policy), but it's up to students to make the most of their CC time.
> All the other students when you transfer are already friends and have relationships with the professors and local businesses. Whose going to get the prestigious research position, the new guy or the one whose been bonding and proving themselves to the professor for 2 years? Same goes for internships.
These are public schools. You are invisible to professors and faculty for the first couple years. I was better known to my programs after taking my transfer tests than most of the students who'd already been there for years. As far as friends go, again, these are public schools. They're too huge for any one clique to run the roost. Making friends has less to do with your transfer status and more to do with...your ability to make friends.
> Who you spend time with shapes who you are. If you are a bright individual, it can be frustrating or depressing being around some of your peers in CC. My girlfriend took an online cc class where they had to submit a paragraph to their class forum. Two students literally copy and pasted her response word for word.
I took vector calculus at my CC. Do you assume my vector calculus class was full of idiots just because it was at the CC?
What still surprises me most about CC was the large population of incredibly bright people I found there. They're not hard to find, but it's incumbent upon the student to put themselves in the more challenging classes where they congregate.
The first two years at university are basically a rehash of stuff you probably should have already learned in high school IMHO (Calculus, English Composition, humanities electives) and junior colleges are a great way to take those courses at affordable costs.
One thing I would recommend - even over community college - is taking CLEP tests. I found out about them a little late but was still able to clep 2 years worth of spanish and french which meant I got credit for around 8 courses for a grand total of $160 bucks. I also clep'd most of my humanities electives like history and sociology. It requires some personal effort i.e. find a textbook at your local library and read and study it - but is definitely worth it from a time/costs perspective.
Anyways, I wanted to mention it because a lot of people don't know about CLEP tests and they saved me literally thousands of dollars (in junior college classes costs, probably 50k if you compared it to a top tier university).
I also was able to compile a weather model at a weather forecasting class . I took Hapkido and got my purple belt . I had a bunch of fun and became treasurer at the philosophy club. I learned Linux and Python at the local Linux club . My community college experience was great !
That’s why I am very glad North Dakota adopted a common course numbering so all the credits transfer.
I was able to complete linear algebra, introductory physics, and vector calculus for something like $200 in voluntary book costs (tuition was waved). My instructors were knowledgeable and professional. I got more out of the physics class in particular than I did out of the University of Minnesota version, which were run by bored TA's and researchers who frankly had better things to do than lecture.
That saved me a full semester of university tuition. I had already completed the breadth electives in a previous pass through the academic world, but if I hadn't I could have shaved off another year or so, for a savings upwards of $22,000.
I believe we should continue to expand and invest in community colleges very aggressively, and keep them very cheap, and very easy to get into.
It's also worth pointing out that Pell Grants for CC tuition often constitute less public money than you were consuming during K-12.
There's nothing I learned in the first two years of an extremely expensive private school that wouldn't have been sorted out living at home and going to community college.
When I did, I started taking remedial classes, trying to rebuild what I should have learned in high school. After a couple years I entered a real major, graduated with a couple A.S. degrees and an almost 4.0. It cost something like $50/credit hour when I went. I think the entire program cost me under $5k. Today, it's about $12k. I think I still could have swung it by just adding another year.
This got me immediate entrance in the local state school where I entered as a Junior and finished up my undergraduate degree -- again while working full time. It was paid for almost entirely by grants. I think it was a little over $10 for those final two years. Today it's about double again. Harder, but again, doable.
I had to work full-time the entire time, got married in the middle, it took me almost 7 years, but at every increment I was able to use my advancing education to get radically better jobs.
Later I went back, got an M.S., but this time I had a few years of high paying tech jobs and I just wrote a check every semester. It also wasn't terribly expensive.
The CC covered all of the core courses I could have possibly wanted, and the instructors were pretty much as good as what I encountered at state school. In fact, of my professors, most of the ones who were the most dedicated to educating their students were my CC professors. When I entered University, I was incredibly prepared for the academic life there and had no problem making it through the program with another near 4.0 GPA.
If I had a second chance, I would follow this route again, even if I had money and better opportunity growing up. I also found many life-long friends at CC who were on a similar life-path and it's been enjoyable watching each other as we progress in our careers.
The stigma about CC's have to stop and the place it needs to die is in the high schools. Many kids come out of college counseling classes at high school thinking that if they don't go to an Ivy that they're basically going to fail out of life and end up dead from a cheap drug overdose. For most people, it matters approximately zero percent in their day to day work lives. I and my old CC friends routinely work with people who went to far better and more expensive schools than I did and have found plenty of workforce success.
Ended up transferring 70 credits or so over to a four-year institution 1 year after graduating high school and managed to walk away with a BS degree earlier than my peers and with no debt. Without community college, there's no way I would have achieved this; I owe a lot to that part of the system.
For many years, I felt like an imposter because of my community college background. The irony in it all though was that for a much cheaper, often more flexible schedule, and sometimes better teachers, I walked away with a lot of the same opportunity as my peers. Naturally, my "network" wasn't filled with ivy-leaguers, but I'd later rub shoulders with them in my employment and be considered equal.
More details around hacking through education: https://medium.com/@9bplus/hacking-the-education-process-1be...
Rethinking how we deliver lower level courses in the university, by either providing them online or through CC seems to be part of the answer to controlling higher education costs that are spiraling out of control as states cut funding to public universities.
Not sure what the lesson there is. But maybe a community college grad should consider finding ways to get through the school-based recruiting filter which is all too common in tech.
CCs offer 2 tracks.
Track 1: college prep. Students take a year or two of courses and then transfer to a 4 year institution.
For this track, the "trustworthy signal of competence" is by far the most important aspect of the product. So for CCs offering this track, your question is a bit ill-formed. You're basically asking "aside from the most important thing, what else is important?"
Track 2: Terminal associates degrees for students who will enter a trade immediately out of CC.
For this track, at least sometimes, MOOCs don't work as well because you need hands-on experience. Often, you also need connections to local institutions (for setting up volunteer hours and for job placement). IMO MOOCs shouldn't even try to focus on this track, at least for certain trades like nursing.
> Are the value gaps narrowing?
For track 2, it depends on the trade, but mostly no.
For track 1, MOOCs need to figure out the assessment problem and provide compelling evidence to higher ed that completing a MOOC is a strong signal of future success.
Finally, it's worth pointing out that MOOCs work well for some types of students (I wish they had been an option for me), but do not work at all for other types of students.
In a MOOC, you're one of 10,000 students submitting questions onto a web forum and taking multiple choice tests.
The middle group was the smallest by size.
Anyway, at UCLA, all the most motivated students went to community college first (the ones in the department undergrad club, the one in honors research programs, the ones who eventually got phds)
Life is not fair. You may as well learn to play the game as the rules actually are as apposed to what they "should" be.
Developing a network of peers IS a good thing!
> Isn’t it intensely anti-meritocratic
I guess that depends on how yo define "merit".
The ability to build professional networks is actually a valuable skill, not just for the individual but also for the business. And the network itself is valuable.
I can think of three of reasons why a business would, on merit alone, prefer someone with demonstrated ability to build their professional network, or who is plugged into a particular professional network:
1. When it comes to hiring, "merit" does not mean "the best person"! "Merit" means "someone who can do the job and who we can convince to take the job given recruiting budget X and max comp package Y." If locating a candidate among the chafe costs more than "X", then that candidate ISN'T a meritorious candidate. No matter who good they would be at the job!
2. Businesses often recruit to access to an entire network/pipeline, not just a single engineer. This is a common pattern at lower-paying shops especially. Recruiting your Nth engineer from State U is easy because you already have recruit N-1 to give you the names of five people who would probably do well. Now, in any given year, the business could recruit zero people from State U. But then they have to rebuild their State U pipeline in subsequent years.
In other words, your network is part of the value you provide to the company! Someone with no professional network is strictly less valuable than someone with a professional network. And in some regional job markets, "Alumni of State U" is a valuable recruiting network.
3. Someone with a strong professional network has signaled that they have a modicum of skill at "winning hearts and minds". Depending on the shop, engineers who are good at building and maintaining reputation over the long term bring way more value than just the LoCs they commit during their period of employment.
4. It's also worth pointing out that someone you recruit via one of these networks might have a niche combination of skills that would be otherwise hard to discover. E.g., "oh, we're hiring a new dev to work with a new client in industry XYZ. I have an old friend who double majored in CS and ABC, which gives him the background needed to talk with folks in industry XYZ. Should I give him a call?". Again, the definition of "merit" is "we can find you with budget X and you're willing to do the work for comp package Y". NOT "you're the ideal candidate if we had X+Z recruiting budget to cast a wide net and find you"
All that said, hiring college buddies can be anti-meritocratic, for sure. Life isn't fair. Just one of the reasons colleges require freshman read Shakespeare :)
And, there are some top quality programs that are very affordable. You can get a Masters in CS from Georgia Tech (top 10 CS program in the USA) for between 6K and 10K total.
Online, cheap and elite: https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018...
Sadly, this is something I'm reminded of every day :(