Big Tech’s Hot New Talent Incubator: Community College
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10 years ago, this allowed for earning an engineering degree for $2k a year, or $8-10k.
In my experience, community colleges were very much viewed as remedial. I’d guess that many of the classes were taken by students who had failed the equivalent class at university.
I took Physics at both the community college and university (I was afraid that the community college class would not prepare me for later classes). The differences were stark: At university, lecture was 3x a week by the professor (who did not speak English), recitation by a TA (who did not speak English), and lab by another TA. There were 3 sections with 400 students per section. The professor had one hour of office hours for all 400 students in my section. At community college, my professor lectured, ran the lab, ran recitation. He went to a top 5 school, was an American, and was a great teacher. The class had 2 sections of 30 students. He ran weekend reviews for tests, if needed, and had open office hours all day. His tests were very difficult and required mastery of the subject matter.
I dropped the university class after I realized it was of much lower quality than what I had already received, for 1/5th the price, no less.
My CC years were almost always superior education wise over university.
I took a course for fun at a local community college: physics. There was nothing more fascinating learning physics from someone that did accident reconstructions for 30 years. It is a different feel than being lectured to by someone that hasn't finished their graduate program. Then for fun I tried again: Oracle. My teacher? A former executive at WellsFargo and Oracle. He was extremely wealthy, and taught for fun - he did not publish some book or beg for grants.
According to interns, those are some of the best professors that are currently on staff.
Irrelevant note: I originally used disinterested, but those words do not have the same meaning:
> An uninterested person is bored, unconcerned, or indifferent; a disinterested person is impartial, unbiased, or has no stake in the outcome.*[0]
[0]: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/disinter...
Places one is likely to have wealthy ex- Wells/Oracle execs lieabout.
"Community college is like a disco with books. Here's $10, let me go get my learn on!" --Chris Rock
Despite not being taken seriously as higher institutions, they're a godsend for focused, unconventional learning, and certainly an attractive alternative to for-profit bootcamps. State schools had many of the same advantages as CCs. I ended up graduating from state school; compared to the mid-tier private university I went to, the state school's profs were either clueless, or very interested in teaching.
Of course, the ability to transfer of credits will vary immensely depending on the university and the community college - some of which are highly regarded. If you are planning this route and know the educational institutions you want to attend, it would be prudent to verify at the outset.
Not sure if you'd consider the University of Michigan a top 25 school, but at least one website has. http://www.businessinsider.com/best-colleges-in-the-us-infog...
Based on my experience I would say that community colleges are great for learning the material, and universities are great for socializing and learning stuff outside of the classroom through self-directed interests (especially in graduate school).
I can see the PhD glut and general awfulness of academia (do postdocs and adjunct until a tenure-track opens up) pushing people from even high ranking programs into teaching at a CC.
This is especially true if they're married or have an SO: It's hard to convince your partner to uproot their lives so you can work at some tenure track position at some no-name college in the middle of nowhere... or forgo tenure and get paid slightly less and have the option to actually live near family/friends/partner's career.
I went to UIUC for Computer Engineering (I think it was #3 at the time), but my differential equations class was taught by someone with such a thick german accent it was impossible to understand. At least 100 people in the class, and no TAs that I can remember. Failed that course.
Took it over the summer at the local community college for much cheaper, and it was so much easier, smaller class (about 15), and then transferred the credit back to UIUC and didn't have to take it again at UIUC with the same professor who I couldn't understand the first time.
It was possible at the same university to walk into a lab and start working on joint projects with NASA, the NSA or local industry, where other local universities and community colleges don't offer as much in that regard. On the other hand those professors running the labs didn't really seem to care where the students came from, whether they were in high school or the community college up the road if they were willing to work.
I don't remember anything noteworthy (in terms of professional stature) from any of the state university teachers (few bad, some quite good, but no real experts). In the CC, an instructor I had multiple times had a Doctorate, the old-school Certificate in Data Processing, and decades of industry experience.
The best instructor I ever had in any discipline, whom I had for calculus, was at the CC. He authored several college math texts as well. Jack Minnick, you are greatly missed.
Unsurprisingly the school shut the department down, but it was GREAT.
The only reason I went on to a bigger school was familial pressure and the idea that I’d be pretty much doomed without a Bachelor’s degree or better. I left with a large amount of debt (my family fell into the space of too much for grants and not enough to pay out of pocket) and honestly didn’t really like my 4-year experience nor do I feel like it added much to the value of my life, either in practical or intrinsic terms. I get that my experience is anecdotal but I wonder how many other people would have been in the same boat.
(I guess not any instructors because there are TAs and the like, but people leading lectures or similar)
I don't think there's one single definition of "professor" that is true around the world.
The idea behind adjuncts was originally that you might hire someone on a temporary basis, either because of an unexpectedly large class or to offer a class on a special topic: a famous politician might offer a seminar about their time in office or an industrial researcher might offer something related to their work.
However, it’s become increasingly common to hire adjuncts to teach intro classes because they’re cheaper than professors (usually a flat fee per class and minimal benefits) and don’t involve much commitment (usually hired per semester), both of which have obvious short-term benefits to the administration.
It's possible to treat teaching faculty well. And even necessary in some in-demand fields where the private sector options remove the option of treating non-traditional faculty like crap.
As I understand the US system for four year universities
TOP Professor with an endowed chair University or Full Professor
Associate Professor (They have tenure and time in position)
Assistant Professor (They don’t have tenure. This is their first job and they want tenure here.)
BOTTOM Visiting Assistant Professor (They got denied tenure at a higher ranked university than they currently teach at and want tenure at that university or another one of similar rank.)
Adjunct Professor Someone with a non-academic job, expertise or position who teaches a university course because they enjoy doing so. Also a deluded holder of a Ph.D. who thinks this is still a part of academia. It is not. That is why it is below the bottom. These people are highly qualified, poorly compensated casual labour, desperately clinging to hope of an academic career after this makes any sense.
Anyone who describes themself as an adjunct professor as if it’s sonetbing other than a hobby should be encouraged to get a job that isn’t shit. Teaching high school is vastly less intellectually rewarding but the holidays are better and so is the insurance and the pension.
I looked into this in my state. Getting your foot in the door as a teacher in a public school would require someone with a PhD in say, mathematics, physics or computer science, to go back to grad school for a masters in education. Not sure that's an option, and is also ridiculous considering I just spent six years in grad school. You could do TFA as a backdoor, in many states, but that is probably an even worse deal for you physically and emotionally than being an adjunct.
But you need to get your resume in front of the right people -- namely, folks in the central office (or maybe principals) who view your area as a strategic/difficult hiring area. Easy peasy in CS these days...
Also check out private schools.
My understanding is that private (k-12) schools pay dramatically less than (unionized) public schools. I've had family and friends who taught even at very expensive secular private schools, who then moved over to public school because the pay, pension and benefits were dramatically better.
I don't have hard numbers, but my impression from talking with family and friends is that you are much better off as an adjunct at a public college than as a k-12 teacher at even a prestigious private school or non-union charter school, though a union teaching job at a public k-12 school pays better and is much more stable than both.
In the US at least, there are thousands of (good) Bachelors, Masters, and sometimes even Ph.D.-granting colleges/universities that do not require an R1-level research agenda for the Full Professor rank.
And many students use "Professor" as a title for any instructor above the Highschool level, even for people who do not have the word "Professor" in their job title, such as ad juncts, full-time non-TT instructors, and sometimes even TAs.
This answer is US-specific
Four-year universities put big emphasis on well-rounded educations, so you're taking humanities and physical education and biology and math classes in order to achieve a business degree. Community colleges cut away the "well rounded" part and often just tech the skills necessary to get a job at a local company. Oftentimes the instructors actually work at these local companies as their day job, so they know what to teach to.
If your goal is to get a job that leads into a career, go to a CC. If you need continuing education past that, many CCs have programs that let you transfer your credits into a local state university at extremely generous rates. My local CC has a 3+1 program where you can take 3 years at CC and one year at the state university and get a bachelor's degree from the university. The cost per credit hour at the CC is literally half the cost for the university, so you're paying $35k for your bachelor's compared to the $50k you'd be paying for four years at the state university. It's a no-brainer.
They don’t ask, but many places throw your resume without a bachelors into the trash at the first step in the hiring process. Ask me how I know.
I'm very understanding of this sentiment. I have suggested to people to get around this by simply lying about having a bachelors degree on their resume. If the employer verifies, you're out nothing. If they don't, you have a job you otherwise wouldn't have had. You have to be able to do the job though.
I’ve found the kinds of places that focus on these things tend to coincide.
Many, many employers public & private do verify. And some people will start rumors if you are in a small community, or if they know someone you know. And if the employer later finds out that you lied, the lie will cost you the job, not the lack of education.
IMO if you are low on experience like education, your best bets are things like formal networking events or informal events (parties, concerts with friends, etc.), or even informal walk-ins to companies where you want to work. For some, the biggest problem is that they won't talk about wanting a job around their friends, for fear of appearing incompetent.
As I mentioned, even if you don’t get the job or lose the job, you’re still ahead of not trying. And you now have experience to put towards your next employer (and your old employer will only verify employment dates, as they don’t want to be sued).
This is the unfortunate reality of an asymmetric labor market where employers can make demands with no cost to themselves. Fake it until you make it.
OP is competing against people who have put in work that he/she hasn't. That's just the reality. The best way in is to show the employer that they are a qualitatively superior employee. Networking and filters are _very often_ surpassed by leadership, sometimes even by creating new positions that are an exact fit for that person's experience. I have a few clients who were hired this way, and had better opportunities because of it. I even got a job that way myself long ago, when a CEO friend-of-a-friend hired me in a low level role but then re-read my resume and moved me to corporate offices to work more directly with leadership.
Lying about your past is not a good idea in this case, and it's far worse than just faking a role until you get better at it.
I don’t suggest lying lightly, but it is sometimes necessary in the current environment.
Dodging around relational morals like "don't lie to others" or "be a good human being to others" is a typical blind spot of a game-analyzer-type logician. "I beat the game, don't I win the prize?" are famous last words in these cases; I suggest you choose your audience very carefully if you wish for your cognitive gifts to be celebrated in the context of such a strongly-recognized developmental target as being an honest person. Perhaps sporting or hostage negotiation or other "bluffing"-oriented domains are better suited for such advice, where some variant of "outright lying" is given a little bit more leeway.
I fail to see how poisoning your own reputation comes out as "still ahead"; that is absolutely guaranteed to get your résumé silently discarded. The tech community isn't that big, even in the tech hubs, and word does eventually get around both among engineers and recruiters.
[citation needed]
Court cases are a matter of public record and, given your, ahem, open advocacy of falsehoods, it's unclear why we should believe your unsupported assertion.
The gabber is going to look worse than the candidate by a long shot.
Careful who you gab about and who you gab to.
It's like marrying someone who cheated on their spouse. They'll cheat on you, next.
(Wahres Leben = “real life” in German)
If they actually check they won’t find the university but they can’t discount the fact it might exist. So HR is more likely to follow up with you then throw your resume out, and you can take that chance to explain you being more to the table than a university graduate.
You should not lie on your resume, but if you're going to lie, just find a way to make it harder to verify. Presumably the for-profit schools that got shut down in the last few years would be hard to check with. Obviously they aren't accredited, but that's not your fault. It'd be, at least, a believable lie.
Eh, I don't have a degree. My own strategy? I just apply until I find a place where that isn't a hard requirement.
I personally don't mention my education at all. Let them assume what they like. I mean, if they ask, I'll tell them, (they ask like 20% of the time, and it has never been a problem at that phase, as far as I can tell. At least once, the interviewer acted super surprised and I got the job.)
Note, a lot of places claim to "require" degrees. Treat that requirement like any other "requirement" on the job description; in my experience, you need something like 3 out of 5 of the requirements to get a chance at an interview; the degree is just one more I've gotta make up for, no different than not knowing Java.
>Networking and meetups won’t get you passed HR filters and corporate requirements.
This hasn't been my experience. Someone on the inside with pull has a lot more influence than HR, in my experience. It's very rare that we technical people approve a person and HR blocks them; the only cases I know the details of in my own experience have to do with serious (and obvious) lies turned up by the background check.
I mean, certainly, there are jobs that will bin my resume right off... and I'm sure there are some jobs that will bin my resume even with a good internal recommendation, (I could tell stories there, but they all have to do with trying to get work outside of the USA.) but my experience is that most places? A good internal advocate is worth a thousand pieces of paper from the university.
The other thing to keep in mind is that a technician who misleads is about as useful as a salesperson who can't deceive without crossing that line in the way that good salespeople can. A lot of the startup advice is fine if you are management-track, but if you are looking for individual contributor work, being honest and straightforward in ways that don't really work when you are management/sales is the order of the day. I've seen a lot of technicians fired for lying about a screwup (or because management thought they lied about a screwup) - I haven't seen many technicians get fired for actually screwing up.
For non-US schools, there are services that will provide an evaluation of foreign academic credentials. I know someone who was reviewing a candidate from Poland for a position requiring specific credentials and used a service to find that the listed education did not meet US standards for the position credentials.
Best not to lie. When I hire, education is last on my list of criteria, but if I select a candidate and the HR background check turns up an outright lie, it is out of my hands.
No, you have a job for as long as you're able to keep your lie secret. Once the lie comes out, even if it's X years down the road, you're terminated for cause, and if a prospective new employer calls they will be told you are "ineligible to be rehired." There are possible legal consequences as well.
GP, do not lie. In the long run, the world works out to be pretty fair, and liars are revealed for what they are.
I've definitely been asked why I didn't go to/finish my Bachelor's in many interviews. Who knows how many jobs I was skipped over because I didn't have it. Could be 0 for all I know but how would I know?
That being said, after a few years of working nobody cared about it anymore.
I also why its why I didn't get a call back from Ebay I suspect spain where the hr person was based might have some biases.
Many of my friends and I don’t have a bachelors, and we haven’t noticed this issue. I have been asked if I have a degree, and I am honest about it and tell my story.
While not everyone agrees, I think it matters more what you’ve done on your own and on the job than what degree you’ve got.
It can be compensated with 15 years of experience. Better not be a millennial with no degree.
You really shouldn't avoid math if you want to be an educated person. Math is the key to the universe.
In contrast, the university students just felt a lot less interested, and in one case they had to be promised credits just to get them to show up.
Making it quick, I'm a 20 year old native who's having a troubling time keeping optimistic and feeling 'locked out' from the job market around here. I've only been doing front-end engineering for a non profit for a few years now since High School, but everything still feels so far away and impossible to me, especially because I didn't go straight to college, so I've just been wondering if I'm just not trying hard enough or if I'm actually locked out until I build a decent resume...
Lately, no, last I've actually tried was all last year, but I've been wanting to get back on it with everything I've learned this year.
"Are you in the USA ? In a techie area ?"
Yes, Oakland, quite near San Fransisco.
I've been thinking I might have to end up moving one day, I wouldn't hate it but even then I must imagine that other 'tech areas' around America have that same kind of competition where people are moving out for work. My work is indeed paid.
"Think portfolio, not resume; why don't you have a nice portfolio ?"
Good question, I'm not actually sure but you've managed to get me on it. I've been relying on Github for a portfolio because people've always told me that it's about having a Github accessible and a decent resume...
Thank you for the help
The IGETC program ensured that my education was equivalent to what I would have gotten at a UC as a freshmen and sophomore.
My teachers were mostly Stanford and Berkeley PHDs. They were dedicated to teaching. Not trying to balance research and teaching. 30 people per class, maximum. Arguably, I got a better education than UC students.
And obviously, cost. My mom raised me and my brother. On paper, we were rather poor. The financial grants for students from low-income families essentially paid for all costs. If I had been really savvy with my money, I actually could have saved a few grand each year.
I transferred to UC Berkeley after 2 years, right on time.
TLDR; Academic performance is necessary but not sufficient. Figure out why you're unique, what you can bring to their student body that they might not have, and kill the essay.
Then some bright spark will come along and beat them to the punch: Jr High incubators!
We'll eventually have a system where you're born right into a desk, and a machine is hooked up to your head to suck all the originality, youth and zeal straight from the nape of your neck and provide it in pill form to people who have lost touch with reality, at the cost of your childhood, to those who can afford it.
We'll call it "authentic".
I think it has a better chance of succeeding: you might not need four years of university education to become an entry-level developer, but a few weeks of intensive "bootcamp" training isn't enough.
For instance, calculus is pretty widely available even if it isn't a diploma requirement.
Parts of the US have world class secondary education and parts don't--just like Europe. Even taken as a whole the US education system ranks higher than many countries in Europe.
>South Korea
The South Korean education system is nothing like the US education system. It's hard to think of a large country more different from the US in this regard.
On the other hand, at some institutions one can satisfy the major minimally without a whole lot of courses, leaving plenty of time for non-technical courses.
So to summarize, there is a lot of variability. A US graduate in a technical discipline may have taken anywhere from zero to two years of arts and humanities courses.
But in any case, I don't think shoe-horning general education into what is basically jobs training is the right approach. We put kids through 12 years of "general education", if we haven't succeeded at that point, why would a few more college credits help?
I feel like people making claims that education that students don't ask for is useful have the burden of showing that it is does what they say it will, empirically, and not get to hand wave about "critical thinking" or "well-roundedness".
If say you had been in the foot lights (Cambridge) got a blue or been on university challenge.
Our in a very interesting case when I worked at BT, been a under 21 international and had his foot blown off in the Balkan wars and been medevac'd to the UK
When I was a bootcamp instructor I noticed that my top students were able to pick up React Native or Electron without me teaching them. One student needed to learn the basics of Python, PHP and later on Java Spring Boot. He was capable of doing that.
For students that are in the lowest 33% I would agree, but for everyone above that there is a debate and for the top students it is not a question in my opinion. They are employable, even for different technologies. Of course, they still have a lot to learn, but they also have demonstrated they're capable of doing that making them an investment that's easily calculated whether he/she will be an asset or not.
1. Learners who will succeed, regardless of the amount and nature of instruction.
2. Learners who will not be able to grasp the material, due to lack of engagement, interest, self-efficacy, or some other related factors that cannot easily be fixed in a one-to-many classroom setting.
3. Learners who will succeed with the right kind of instruction, but will flounder without it.
Effective instructors try to gauge who falls into the third category, and then concentrating their efforts on these individuals.
Can you elaborate?
To get around the paywalls.
I went to a university, paid a ton of money, dropped out, and then found work as an engineer. If I had done community college, I would have probably gotten the same quality of education, but not have to spend the first year and a half of my post-dropout years paying back loans.
First, employers are only interested in what you can do for them, immediately. They are not interested in you or the rest of your life either 'horizontally' (the very many other aspects of your life, from individual to parent to citizen to homeowner to intellectual to whatever) or vertically (the rest of your life after you work for them, after you retire, if you get sick, have kids, go to grad school, etc.). For example, many employers will repeat the trendy mantra that all you need is community college skills, but they won't hire you for management without an MBA.
Second, the distribution of education is not based on capability and need, but on the wealth of parents. Wealthy kids without academic talent or effort get 4 year degrees or more; poor kids who are smart and work hard get community college or less. It's just as good, the wealthy people say, but somehow not good enough for their kids or to hire or pay well.
Finally, the demand for 4 year college is overwhelming, which we can see based on the ability to raise tuition without impacting attendance. The demand in the labor market is overwhelming, based on salary differences. Let's meet the demand and stop finding second rate substitutions.
College tuition increases astronomically due to bad govt subsidies and poorly--financially-educated teenagers making purchasing decisions.
Community colleges aren't "second-rate" compared to the plethora of for-profit and low-quality private universities.
2-year Community colleges are a stepping stone to 4-year degrees.
Do poor kids deserve better K-12 education so they can succeed in the same 4-year programs that rich kids do? Sure, but colleges can't fix that. It's crazy to also deny college education to kids just because they already got screwed over in K-12.
I wonder if you can get an MBA that's worth anything. I doubt any top tier program accepts many CC students.
> College tuition increases astronomically due to bad govt subsidies and poorly--financially-educated teenagers making purchasing decisions.
They are due to making tuition more market-priced, and according to research I've read, due to a reduction in public funding. It's also due to colleges raising tuition rather than focusing on their mission of educating people; nobody is forcing them.
> It's crazy to also deny college education to kids just because they already got screwed over in K-12.
Nobody suggested that. I said quality college education availability should be expanded.
Personal computer courses were non-existent, except for one day "How To Use Your PC or Apple" class.
That community colleges were behind the curve? Ahead of the curve? Or is there even a message?
The economy has been a zero sum game for the majority for a very long time, so zero sum game strategies is what they employ.
The trend I’ve noticed is that the more senior of a role we interview for the less and less we even look at their education. Much more comes from their work history.
While the study is possibly applicable to the jobs they studied (lawyer / business roles), I’m not sure it holds up in all sectors.
One, part of the problem is that I've found "computer science" and "software development" get shoved under the umbrella of the "computer technology" departments of community colleges, rather than the math or engineering departments. Consequently there's a sense that software development is an extension of IT rather than an engineering practice. That might be true in a lot of settings (e.g. making VB widgets), but I'm not sure it's great for producing generalist developers. Frankly, I think it also lends to unqualified people leading departments, hiring instructors, and designing a curriculum. Anecdotally, one semester I took a discrete math class (through the math department) and a data structures class (through the CIS department); I ended up learning a lot more about data structures in the math class, and the programming project I did for the math class was much more instructive than any of the projects in the CIS class.
Two, across all institutions (boot camps, community colleges, universities) there doesn't seem to be a coherent curriculum on how to teach this stuff [1]. With math, english, economics, etc. the lower division classes are basically the same everywhere. Even if you think the way we teach subjects is kind of weird (as I do with math), everyone knows what "Calc II" means, or what's taught in an intro to microeconomics course. With software, there's no consensus on where to begin. Is it an infusion of theory and practice ala the SICP-based courses (MIT and Berkeley)? Intro to programming (Stanford)? A class where you learn how to use an office suite (a lot of community colleges)? Git and HTML/CSS (bootcamps)? [2] As a result, it's not surprising that individual classes don't line up. Maybe this is fine for the case where students will only ever study at one school, but for a lot of students indenting on transferring to a university (or anyone trying to evaluate a curriculum) it's quite cumbersome.
Not being an educator (and being mostly self-taught for software development), I'm not sure what the best approach is. Personally, I think a combination of theory/assignment based classes supplemented with longer-term project courses is probably the way to go. The former helps in presenting a general area or class or problems, and how to solve them, and the latter might help with exposure to the diversity of practical software development.
[1] I say "stuff" intentionally. Even the scope of "software development" is huge and hazy
[2] I could be wrong with the specifics on schools here :)
Your first point is 100% spot on.
Your second point deserves a caveat: CS does mean something at colleges/universities. they almost all follow the ACM model curriculum:
- CS I -> CS II -> Data Structures
- Discrete Math and Calculus I
- A smattering of available electives from a few fairly uniform buckets (SE,DB,OOP; OS,PL; ML/AI; theory,algorithms).
Contents of courses change (true in Math also! Biz Calc vs. Eng Calc vs. Honors/Advanced Calc). But overall shape stays the same. Can't guarantee outcomes, but can guarantee intent.
Unlike colleges/universities, at the national level, CCs have a serious cruft issue in CS/IT. It's totally impossible to tell what someone might know from the name of the degree program alone. Not even overall shape of curriculum is obvious.
IMO there's a simple solution: CCs nation-wide should pare down everything into a few specific named degrees:
1. Associates in CS Foundations: basically ACM without electives. Designed for transfer to a BA/BS.
2. Associates in Software Development: the non-math portion of ACM + some pragmatic courses (e.g., databases and web dev). Can have various version of this marketed as "AS in SD with Emphasis in ___" where ___ is chosen according to local/regional labor market. E.g., most bootcamps are somewhat like "AS in SD with an Emphasis in Web Development using <stack here>".
3. Associates in Information Technologies: catch-all for the stuff that doesn't even fulfill the non-math, non-elective portion of the ACM model. So "VBA scripting", "Networking aka CISCO certs", "Database Administrator aka Oracle&MS certs", "Applications aka MS Office+Web publishing", etc. degrees currently offered by CCs. Again, various versions can be marketed as "AS in Information Technologies with Emphasis in ___"
These issues might not be recognizable to folks in states like California with amazing CC systems, but in most of America, just figuring out which of the half dozen similar-sounding "IT/CS" associates degrees you want is a serious problem. And very often the answer is "none" because all gazillion of them fit into bucket #3 and you're really looking for bucket 1 or 2.
Well, you can say the same for pretty much every curriculum ever: "we don't need a named degree, just have students figure out what courses they need to take".
Concretely, here's what happens in practice. A student does not know what to take and tells their counselor they are interested in transferring into a four-year CS degree. So student then ends up in:
- standard college prep courses (Algebra, Calc, and liberal artsy stuff), and
- some totally random stuff for the CS part. Might be programming. Might be VBA (won't transfer) or Java (might transfer). Might be a CISCO prep course. Who knows! And unless the student knows and fights, they end up wasting time.
Making a separate track that's explicitly "pre-college CS" avoids this confusion. And after all, part of the value add of a formal education is that someone who knows what you need to know organizes the curriculum for you.
So what you say is true, but there are still strong advantages for both the student and the institution to having a separate, explicit pre-college track.
Also some people get married to get better financial aid...
So now they are looking for a pool of labor that will take even lower salaries.
Expect the vulture capitalist friends to pump up community college prices in the next decade.
Community Colleges are institutions that can also focus on the subset of trades actually relevant the current private sector.