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Comment by frankbreetz | Hacker News Reader

As a millennial college graduate, my number one piece of advice to college bound high schoolers is do the first two years at community college. The debt is not worth the experience. Most people spend the first two years figuring stuff out, community college is a great place to do that. I didn't even know this was an option until after college and I feel failed by my high school college advisors. Unless you are very confident in what you want to do and get into a very good college you don't think you can get into again, get a full ride, or have ridiculously rich parents, go to community college. Edit: perhaps full ride is too strict a requirement. If you can save money by going to community college, taking into account lost scholarships, you should go to community college.

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Anecdotally, I felt like 4 years at a university was not enough time to really grasp the college experience.

Also maybe a lot of American students aren’t aware of this, but there are many “needs based” government scholarships out there that can make your state university effectively free to attend. I attended a state university from 08-12 and didn’t pay a dime, thanks to the Pell Grant and some needs-based scholarships from my state (Arizona Assurance).

It seems like the rough spot with regards to paying for college is being too rich to qualify for the needs-based scholarships and too poor to have your parents be able to afford everything. For that, I sympathize and would probably recommend the community college approach.

I don't think you read the article. It's telling people to defer a year because of coronavirus, not the usual college is not worth it schpeel.

That being said, I disagree with your advice in two cases:

1) Most top schools offer free tuition if your family income is below a generous threshold (like $150k). If you can get into Stanford and meet this criteria, it's cheaper than your local community college.

2) If you are studying a technical field, even if you are average, a degree has greater ROI than just about anything else. You can pay off your debt in the first few years out of school and continue earning dividends for the rest of your life.

If you are an average student and studying a non-technical field, then the decision is not as clear.

I read the article and I am saying instead of deferring a year of college go to community college. You should do this regardless of the covid.

Yes if, as he says, you're satisfied with your community college being mostly remote classes, because that could well be what you end up with.

> 2) If you are studying a technical field, even if you are average, a degree has greater ROI than just about anything else. You can pay off your debt in the first few years out of school and continue earning dividends for the rest of your life.

What's the downside to going to a community college? Where I grew up the credits were transferable.

They did say, "Most people spend the first two years figuring stuff out". I went to college knowing I wanted to study computers, but didn't know what specifically. If I changed fields I'd still have the first 2 years to pay back.

I wish I had gone to a community college first. I overpaid for a worse educational experience. There was too much competition for core classes. So you had to wait semesters to get in. When you did get in the class sizes were much larger. Equivalent, transferrable classes were available, cheaper, and had smaller class sizes at nearby community colleges.

Some people take community college level courses at university, payit inflated prices for the false prestige of a mid tier school like American University. That's a waste. If you start University at a level above community college (which many people here did), and get a decent price, it's good.

If you can do both at the same time, or get basic classes out of the way in the summer at a community college, then it may be ok.

But delaying electives for two years would put you at a significant disadvantage in technical fields, imo. Not to mention the basic classes (math, physics, etc) will be a joke at a community college so you will have a weaker background.

The basic classes had good teachers and content at the CC I went to, on the same level as the university.

The downside is that you basically won't get into Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale... or most any other "top" college after going to community college. I know of one counter example, and I know of many very smart capable people who would have been capable and profited from such a degree, but missed their chance... which in turn made it VERY difficult to get any advanced degree.

Maybe that doesn't matter in CS/programming, but it does in lots of other (e.g. Engineering/Science) disciplines.

And where are you getting this information from? Just anecdotes of people you think are smart, went to community college, and got rejected?

Depends on where you live. The state schools in California are part of one big system so it's very easy to transfer from a community college to a UC (e.g. Berkeley) as long as you have the grades/aptitude.

> get into Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale

Based on everything I've seen over my roughly 20-year career in academia, plus the 18 years before that living in that world (my parents are both professors), what you get from going to Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale, and all the other "Big Name" schools is just that: the name.

The education you get there is not better than the education you can get at a small liberal arts college—in fact, it's often worse, because you're just one of tens of thousands, lost in the crowd, and you're extremely unlikely to get one-on-one attention from the professor if you have any trouble with the material.

Small liberal-arts colleges, on the other hand, so long as you're avoiding the ones that are specifically party schools, generally tend to focus much more on the teaching aspect, and especially on the personal attention aspect.

For more specialized degrees like engineering you may need to narrow your pool of those schools to find one that has a good program, but there are enough that unless your field (at undergrad level) is suuuuper-niche, you're very likely to be able to find one that works for you.

And while it's not universally true, they tend to be pretty good about taking transfer students.

I didn't study in the US, but having studied in college faculties staffed by professors who are at the cutting edge of their fields in my country, I can confidently say that the experience was unparalleled vs. my friends who didn't. In my undergrad one of my profs was a "may have been" Nobel prize winner. In my B-school, some of the profs essentially created the government's public policy in some fields. Their perspectives and insights during classes was quite enriching.

So I find your comments quite curious. Nowadays I tell my younger cousins and nephews/neices to research the faculties in colleges they are applying to and look at the quality and impact of their publications.

Outside the US, I don't know much about top universities beyond Oxford, Cambridge, and the Sorbonne, but my point really was pretty specific to the schools in the US that have big names—not big-name professors, but the schools themselves have names which, for whatever reasons, are well-known and confer prestige.

A university having a prestigious name is not synonymous with having Nobel Prize winners and influential professors. Hell, one of the professors at the small liberal arts college I work at is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet.

How deep is your connection to that star professor though? I tend to believe I visited a good university, and we also have some leading researchers. The problem is that you wouldn't know beforehand if they are even giving the lectures you're interested in. The other people in the department can still be bad at their job. Being a researcher doesn't transmit to being a good teacher. Or not a complete idiot.

Sorry if this sounds harsh, also I'm not trying to deliberately shit on my uni education, but let's just say I didn't find it great for many reasons. One course by a "leading expert" could have been pretty great, just that it was done in not so stellar English (the prof was German, so am I) and so it wasn't so great to understand.

If you just show up to learn and don't plan to stay in academia there (do a PhD, get to know the faculty) I really don't see a point.

When I was in high school, my state had a program where if you were eligible for high school but got accepted to any in-state college, the state would pay tuition. So, by the time I went to MIT, I had about 2.5 years' worth of credits from the University of Minnesota, including honors-level mathematics up through differential equations.

I was an arrogant superstar before I went to MIT. It wasn't that I thought that I was worth more than other students, but I felt my classes were a bit below me. I got all As, except for a B or B+ in my Intro to World Politics class at the UofM. As I remember, the way honors GPAs were calculated, I my GPA was above 4.0 at the UofM. In my high school "Enriched Chemistry" class (one level above honors, no extra GPA boost beyond, but all the kids there really wanted to learn), after I caught a couple of mistakes in exams, the teacher started marking my Scan-Tron answer sheets as the exam answer key, and in class, the whole class would together grade my exams the day after the exam to make sure the answer key was correct. There was one exam where the second-highest score was 90/100, so the teacher just added 10 points to everyone's score. At some point, I made one mistake the whole semester, so I ended the semester 9 points above 100%. At the UofM in my honors mathematics course, I was being graded on attendance and felt it was a bit of a waste of my time. I would read a newspaper in class. One day, the TA asked a couple times if anyone knew the answer to a problem, and I made a bit of a show of folding up my newspaper and proceeding to answer the question nobody else could answer. The honors math professor took me out into the hallway and proceeded to tell me "I don't care who you are. I don't care what kind of grades you get. If you bring a newspaper to class one more time, I'll have you thrown out of the program."

MIT was another level of challenges and expectations. Most of the kids there were used to being at the top of their class and getting cut a bit of slack from the teachers/administration because they were head-and-shoulders above their peers in high school. For most of us, it was a big ego hit and a big adjustment having to work very hard just to get a median grade.

The instruction at MIT was top-notch, but the real value was increased expectations, and excellent peers for both competition and support.

On the flip side, the ego hit is soul-crushing for some students.

The honors programs of state schools definitely have students every bit as smart and capable as people at MIT. The extra level of competition and expectations at MIT really does help some people shine, though. Also, the name is helpful as there's a pretty high minimum bar for getting an MIT degree. You might not be getting the best by hiring the MIT grad, but you're hiring someone who's pretty good.

That being said, I hope the age of GitHub, HackerRank, etc. diminishes the effects of brand-name schooling. I had a friend back in my honors math classes who also got into MIT, but couldn't justify the expense due to his dad being a welder and his mom a homemaker. MIT offered him a lot of loans and grants, but he got a full scholarship at the UofM honors program and could live at home while going to school.

I went to MIT, and I can confidently say it's no better than many schools a tier or two down. What you describe is a difference in personality, more than in tier. There are party ivies, and there are some really awesome 2nd or 3rd tier tech schools. Some of the lower-tier tech schools are just like MIT in virtually all respect, except brand.

That said, brand matters.

MIT now invests incredibly heavily in brand development, compromising integrity, research quality, and teaching-and-learning. For grads, that's paid off. My degree has gone up in value a lot over the years.

What do you make of Eric Weinstein's recent interview on Lex Fridman's AI podcast (both MIT alumni) specifically the taking back MIT portion:

https://youtu.be/rIAZJNe7YtE?t=6418

I've been conflicted with MIT as an institution ever since the death of Aaron Swartz, it stood by and then participated in what ultimately took the life of a great member of the hacker/tech community, but I understand and accept that so many great minds go there to create some of the greatest innovation the Human Species' is capable of.

It was sad to hear Eric's plight was the same trivial political non-sense and administrative corruption that I encountered in the low tier State Schools I attended, his impact was far greater to say the least of course. Which apparently also the case with Harvard. This seems systemic, and not just a prestige campus based occurrence.

The closest I ever got to MIT was a clim co-lab project I was involved in that was accepted into the finalist rounds in sustainability and presented on campus at the awards.

I couldn't attend the event as I was working on my startup in CO, so I didn't see it from within; but I was told by the project lead that it was a great experience, even if nothing really came of it--there is lots of hand shaking, but ultimately prize winners are given a small token sum, not really even seed money to get a project off the ground so the best thing you can do is network for well endowed collaborative partners and find leads for real funding.

I can't comment on the whole talk, since I only watched a little segment of it, but yes, for MIT to be a force of good in the world, it would need to be taken back by the nerds. I'd love to see that happen.

The leadership is overrun by brand-focused, power-seeking, money-grubbing sleaze-balls. That's drifted down, taking over some parts of the Institute, and leaving others okay-ish. But if left unchecked, it will take over the whole thing and ruin it.

We definitely still need a place in the world where nerds can do their thing.

It's hard for me to express how much less visible MIT was when I went there, and how much higher the quality of the research was as well. When I applied, scientists respected it, but popular audiences confused MIT with ITT. A highly-branded high-dollar MIT of the type we have today brings in the wrong sorts of people. Nerds have no chance of competing with them for power, and they have no chance of competing with nerds for intellectual curiosity.

But I think the time for taking back MIT may have passed.

Aaron Swartz is far from the worst thing that happened at MIT; things like that now happen regularly. MIT "wised up" to the use of NDAs and non-disparage agreements in protecting its branding.

As someone who grew up in a no-name mid-western town, I can't stop counting my lucky stars for becoming one of the first students ever in my high school's history to become accepted to a Top 10 university. Every job opportunity and connection I've made since graduating is directly attributable to my school's name. It wouldn't be an understatement to say that going there changed my life. I know for a fact that there would have been a lot more societal barriers had I gone to the nearby state school instead (my startup would not have been able to raise venture capital and my would-be resume would not have made it past the resume screening stage at FAANG companies because of all of the subtle social signaling involved; people from my school would not have even given me the time-of-day). Things wouldn't have just been a lot harder; they might have even been impossible.

Sounds to me like you benefited specifically from what I mentioned: not the education you gained at the unnamed Top 10 school, but its reputation and connections got you where you are.

I want to be very clear that I'm not saying "you shouldn't go to these schools"—I'm saying "if you go to these schools, recognize that what you're getting that you won't get anywhere else is not a better education, it's the school's name."

I would even go one step farther and say it's a mixture of both.

The classes at my uni could move at a more intense pace than other schools, and the problem sets and exams were also more difficult, given the academic aptitude of my class. Go on the MIT Open Courseware web site, and take a look at the physics problem sets to get an example. I'm not sure there are too many other freshman physics classes that require pulling all-nighters to solve the challenge problems.

Sure, I could always challenge myself more wherever environment I was in (I taught myself linear algebra and C++ coding in high school, even though nobody I knew in real-life could help), but there is a LOT said to be surrounded by peer pressure, mentorship from world-class professors, and other motivated, top-notch students with the same drive for success. I would not have pushed myself to do better to the extent that I did at my uni.

I don’t think any of the schools I mentioned have 10s of thousands of students or faculty ratios of more than 10to1. I think you’re comparing small schools (which most ‘mafia schools’ are) to big state schools which are usually much cheaper. Why liberal arts would be a good choice for a tech degree I don’t know, but I agree it’s not so important undergrad.

The big thing you get besides ‘the name’ is your relations and links to your cohort. That really helps get good jobs!

> which in turn made it VERY difficult to get any advanced degree.

Absolutely false for STEM fields. Except for Stanford/MIT your flagship public school is probably a better tech school than any other private name-brand school. Yale is an ordinary tech school, with several public schools (Berkeley, UCLA, UCSB, UWash, UIUC, UMich, Ohio State, Penn State, Wisc-Mad off the top of my head) being significantly better and cheaper. And all will allow you in from community colleges.

Transfer spots can be more competitive than Freshmen spots. This would especially be true if more people were doing it.

I have no idea how admissions work. I've heard stories about soliciting applications from unqualified candidates so they can tout accepting 1% of applications and the number of applicants so they can sound more exclusive.

One would imagine in a fair world if you applied as a Freshman and as a Junior you'd have a higher chance of being accepted, if Junior applicants had a higher graduation rate they would bias accordingly, or if they started getting more Junior applications they would find more spots.

> I have no idea how admissions work. I've heard stories about soliciting applications from unqualified candidates so they can tout accepting 1% of applications and the number of applicants so they can sound more exclusive.

Its pretty corrupt, I already spoke on my first hand experience in other threads, but just look at what the recent admissions scandal yielded:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/investigations-college-admis...

The one at USC was the most blatant of all in my opinion:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-01/usc-admi...

> Transfer spots can be more competitive than Freshmen spots. This would especially be true if more people were doing it.

Agreed, that was my experience. Added on top of the limited slots for upper division transfer to a highly desirable school I was in the most impacted major of all and its unbelievably hard to transfer even if you meet all the criteria and you're already in the system.

The amount of BS posturing that takes place to have to 'justify' your acceptance to just want to get in and out and graduate is unfathomable when dealing with administration/acceptance committees, especially if they know they can use your spot to bring in International students that pay upwards of 5x more than you.

Personally, I still regret when I think of the business opportunities I turned down, ultimately motorsports was a better monetary investment then a career in the Life Sciences after the financial crises as cruel luck would have it.

I learned then that doing the seemingly safe, prudent and pragmatic thing isn't always the route you want to take in Life and that following the herd is seldom as rewarding as promised. At least if you fail following your own instinct it will be on your terms and hopefully provide you with a solid foundation and skill set to rebuild if/when needed. In addition to a richer Life experience.

Personally I'm a proponent of apprenticeships and online learning/certifications, which I think is where Universalizes are going to have to migrate towards for a majority of their programs if they have any chance of surviving this post-corona World in the long run.

>What's the downside to going to a community college? Where I grew up the credits were transferable.

Depends on the quality of the school. If it's a top school then transferring can be difficult, you lose on networking opportunities (with students and professors), potential internships/summer research and arguably get a weaker education (although, true, it matters less the first couple years). I've taken courses at a community college and at a top school, the later was much more rigorous and fast moving.

> Depends on the quality of the school. If it's a top school then transferring can be difficult, you lose on networking opportunities (with students and professors)

Where I grew up a 2 year degree allowed you to transfer as a 3rd year student at any university in that state. The other option was to take specific credits at a CC and credit them to university (I believe degree focused classes were excluded from transferring in). At least looking at my program, none of your degree focused classes started until the 3rd year. All of the gen-ed classes were massive at the university. So a lot of opportunities for networking are minimized (unless it was around an extra-curricular activity).

My path was going to a university for a couple years. I ignored CC classes because I was a bit too arrogant, but left that university because of the BS. Much of that could have been avoided by taking some classes at the local CC. I ended up moving states to pursue a career and planned to get a degree if I hadn't started a career by the time I qualified for in-state tuition--but I never made it back to school.

Since then I've had the opportunity to interview college grads. That process has made me question the quality of many top school's education.

I don't think one path is better than another. I just wanted to let people know the 4-year university path isn't the only option. I wish I had finished a degree. I've poured over friend's class notes from college and grad school and wish I had the opportunity to take those classes.

I took some community college classes in high school through a program we had with them. The environment and students were very underwhelming. Your mileage may vary.

I got to take relevant classes (CS) in my very first quarter of college. The first two years it was a 50/50 split. The biggest benefit was being among smart, interesting people. College was way better than any previous educational experience, by far.

That being said I didn't experience waiting for core classes. The class sizes were typically very large though. Taking these on the side at a community college while attending a 4 year college sounds like a good idea. I'm just opposed to putting everything on hold for 2 years to do basic classes. I don't think a community college is the place to explore interests.

You don't have to put anything on hold. If you're motivated, you'll start learning what you have to on your own.

To be transparent, I went to a community college for 2 years and honestly can't recommend it enough for the reasons listed by the OP. I learned a lot better in the small class setting, and a good ratio of my professors were actually good at teaching (unlike the university I ended up going to where teaching was a necessary evil for professors).

> I'm just opposed to putting everything on hold for 2 years to do basic classes. I don't think a community college is the place to explore interests.

In my state a 2 year community college degree allowed you to transfer as a 3rd year student into any state university. You could also pick and choose individual classes, but they may not transfer directly. I believe a lot of states are like this. The only thing you have to be careful about is if you want to transfer out of state. Schools aren't incentivized to allow you to transfer credits (or test out of classes).

I just wanted to let others know that's an option and it shouldn't be stigmatized. I think I was a little too arrogant to pursue community college classes and because of my frustrations with the university I left.

He said the first two years. In a lot of cases you can still get the same 4-year degree with two years of CC if done properly, which would actually result in a higher ROI.

> 1) Most top schools offer free tuition if your family income is below a generous threshold (like $150k). If you can get into Stanford and meet this criteria, it's cheaper than your local community college.

This is only a few private schools doing this and they account for well under 1% of all people attending university in the US so not really relevant.

You're still getting a degree. I work/have worked with people who went to MIT, Harvard, Yale, etc. and the degree only mattered for them in the case they wanted to do research or for their first job. Beyond that it has very little value in the job market. The fact that I got to the same place they did without a degree also says something.

tl;dr you're choosing to disagree with good general advice because it doesn't account for 0.02% of americans

Pro tip: if you live in California, there's something called IGETC, which is a set of GE classes you can take at a community college. Look up the equivalent in your state.

Once you do that, you don't have to take GE classes at most UCs and CSUs.

Transfer students typically take IGETC classes at community college, which is what allows them to graduate in 2 years once they transfer.

I realized I could take these classes while in high school and so I finished all my IGETC classes while in high school. It did a middle college program my senior year, but even if I didn't I probably could still finished IGETC, by taking community college classes online and using AP scores.

This allowed me to graduate in 2.5 years from UC Berkeley with a CS degree. I didn't have to take any GE classes at all in college (though of course I could've if I wanted to). I then paid off my student debt after a couple months of starting my first job.

This is the best of both worlds: don't spend two years at a CC (which was never too fun for me) and also graduate early from whatever college you go to.

This trick worked for me because I knew from the start I wanted to go to Cal or another UC. If my goal was to go to a private or Ivy League school, this wouldn't have worked.

I do kind of regret not applying to Stanford or any Ivy League schools, but I think going hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to go to a more prestigious school, and having to stay there longer, just isn't worth it. I would've gone to Cal even if I got into these schools for this reason.

Especially as someone who wants to start a startup, this much debt will make you a lot less willing and able to take risks.

I took a similar path to you. I did 2 years at CC and 1.5 years at UC.

And oh man, IGETC is bringing back some memories.

The resource I found useful for CC students in California was the https://assist.org tool to 1:1 map out your CC units against your CSU/UC credits so you are in and out of there efficiently (or better yet, are able to sign a guaranteed transfer agreement which can relieve some long-term stress about the admissions process).

Bonus points -- at least when I was at CC, I recall SATs were not required (although I had done them during high school), nor were the foreign language requirements quite as stringent!

Disagree.

Graduation rates are drastically lower from community colleges.

There is vastly less academic support available.

The people around you will be vastly less ambitious. This will rub off on you.

Yes 4 year university is now overpriced in America. But if you can, go to a 4 year university.

Yes maybe go to an in-state university instead of out of state if that is cheaper, or go where you get the best financial aid.

Also, make sure that the college(s) you want to go to have a plan in place to accept transfers from the one you want to start at. It does you no good to get two years under your belt at college A in preparation for college B, then find out college B is going to make you start over because the credits don't transfer. Also, how hard is it to get a spot in college B as a transfer from college A. You should know this going in.

What exactly is the negative consequence you are envisioning from 2 years at community college and 2 years at your in-state 4-year school, vs. all four years at the latter?

The typical alternative that people need to be guided away from is one of the for-profit "career" schools that doesn't have transferable credits and is way more expensive than community college.

A lot of people I went to high school with chose to stay home and go to community college to figure things out. Most of them puttered around for a year or two, studying part time while working, eventually getting distracted and abandoning their degree plans.

I think I can count on one hand the kids who actually transferred to a 4-year university and finished their bachelors degree.

I guess dropping out of a community college is a less costly misfire than dropping out of an expensive 4-year university, but anecdotally the people who went straight to university tended to stay there and finish. Obviously, this wasn't a controlled study and the university crew were probably more academically-minded to start with, but it is an observation.

Not sure why you are getting downvoted. What you said is actually true for many that go to community colleges. Do people disagree about this?

I think there are many positives to attend a community college first but there are also several drawbacks that need to be acknowledged.

Staying home and puttering around at a CC can be a better choice than spending time at a big school if you are not ready for it. Especially if you are paying private or non-resident tuition.

My daughter's freshmen dorm roommate should have stayed home. She spent much of her time pining for her boyfriend at home, rarely doing anything outside of class. She got pregnant by the boyfriend and now is dropped out. Kind of a bummer really, she is an under-represented minority who had a full-ride for Chemical Engineering.

Assuming it's true for many that go to community colleges, why are people so committed to the idea that it's cause and effect? What does this claimed pattern have to do with anything inherent about a community college?

Overspending to make a big commitment to something in the hopes that leads to success is generally, on average, terrible advice, in my opinion, even if you think there's some example of it working for somebody at some time.

The point is that a lot of people who go to community college who plan to finish at a state school don't actually make it to that state school.

I agree with the parent comment, the people in community college will tend to be less ambitious and it will likely affect you. This is not a knock on community college folks, it's just different people have different priorities.

I do think that there are many states with excellent public universities that are a comparably great bargain, especially if you can get scholarships.

I'd love to see stats for this, as it seems to me that at the moment the majority of students that go to a community college were less likely to graduate regardless of plans to end up at a state school. It would be interesting to see graduation rates from community college and state college as a function of a student's high school GPA, as that would control for the potential lower quality of students in community college.

I think they envision a lack of support and encouragement, and therefore the student dropping out or not finishing a degree.

In my experience Universities seem to actively filter students. Perhaps I didn't reach out (or the University I attended was particularly bad), but I don't remember much support services when I attended.

Personally, I didn't succeed until I could ask for support, and that was completely independent of being at a private, public, community college, you name it.

I never even realized there was this negativity towards community college until recently, but I suspect it at some level amounts to astroturfing by their competitors, the miserable for-profit career schools that are everywhere. People will make bad decisions; I did after high school, but it's unconscionable to play on their vanity or low self esteem, telling them they're not good enough for a real college or that a real college isn't good enough for them, either way.

Could it be that the perceived necessity of attending a 4 year school from the get-go is causing some of these issues? If the expectation is that good students go to 4 year schools, which I believe it currently is, then only the less ambitious students will go to community colleges. It's a positive feedback loop that could be broken by making prospective students aware of the financial and self-discovery benefits of community colleges.

Some of the best professors I had were at the community college I attended before transferring to a much larger 4 year school. The class sizes were smaller and they had more time to help their students than their 4 year school counterparts.

Hard disagree. You’ll find just as many unambitious individuals in any given first-year course at a university as you might at a CC. It’s a better investment all around.

I think OP was suggesting to go to a community college for the first two years, then transfer to a university for the second half of your undergrad. Most colleges (at least in Canada & US) have transferable credits at this level. I agree with OP that this is a good approach. In addition to being cheaper, the community college experience tends to be better in the first year or two because the instructor to student ratio in the mandatory courses tends to be better.

As a EUian: look overseas. Many universities in Europe offer programs in English. It'll be an even mind-broadening experience, and it's significantly more affordable (I'll take this link from 2018 as a baseline: https://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/student-finance... ).

As a EUian, college in your own country could be near free, some fees but heavily government sponsored. For foreign students the pricing model is completely different, in fact this is the college's big cash cow, so that may make the equation very different for those you're so kindly inviting in. I'm all for the exchange experience, though!

> The people around you will be vastly less ambitious. This will rub off on you.

Most community college people I have encountered are extremely ambitious — they are working full time while busting ass to achieve in school. The myth that community college is a bastion of the academically weak is wrong. I saw plenty of people at my prestigious school with ambitions that centered around parties and getting laid.

This was my experience as well. Pretty much everyone at CC was there to get an education, usually with specific employment goals. At University, it was more like 50%.

>Graduation rates are drastically lower from community colleges.

how is that a useful metric for anything, really?

Look how many extra programs pull people into community colleges, and look at the difference in accessibility between community colleges and universities.

A stay-at-home mother isn't going to be eyeballing Stanford as a viable way to get her nursing degree with night classes. In the same instance, a stay-at-home mother who is using community college in order to get a degree necessarily has a lot more difficulty in managing her time and money than a university aged adult being sent to university by their parents with far fewer personal responsibilities and burdens.

The stay-at-home mother will necessarily have higher drop-out rates just simply from things that exist as burdens in their life from the get-go. As will the displaced worker who is being funded by the state for re-training at their local colleges.

University life is designed to reduce burden on the student in order to facilitate their learning. Comparing metrics like drop-out rates between universities and community colleges is wholly unfair. They both result in degrees, but they serve (mostly) different communities of people.

I don't know. I have a friend who got a PhD from UW as a "stay at home mother".

It's a metric of exactly what you're describing. Going to a community college means immersing yourself in a community of people who see academics as a more of a luxury and less of a necessity; people who have other priorities in life, and will only participate to the extent that it doesn't interfere with their more important goals and obligations.

>They both result in degrees, but they serve (mostly) different communities of people.

Right - and if you're a recent high school grad with the grades to go to a good state school (not just Berkeley or whatever) and a desire to be around your peers while fully dedicating yourself to your education, you're not really in the target audience for community college.

Depends on the schools I guess.

My peers at a top 10 public school didn't get nearly the pre-engineering education I got at a nearby community college.

Primarily because their core courses (math, physics, chemistry) were weed out courses for engineering and med school with 200-300 people in them. In contrast, my core courses had about 20-40 people in them.

Note, I am not claiming any prescience here. I didn't have a choice in the matter. I started my pre-engineering slog at Math 085 (Pre-Algebra 2, I think) at CC after four years in the Army.

Circumstances are much different for my kids, one went to Westpoint (USMA) and the other is going to a big state school, but she is in their honors college. So, honor college courses and AP credits have enabled her to bypass the weed-out jumbo core classes. And, I am paying for everything so loans are not a concern for her.

Strongly agree. Community college enabled me to knock out almost 2 years of school in 1 year by taking classes during the regular semester, weekend classes, online classes, and summer classes. I also saved tens of thousands of dollars, and had much smaller class sizes than at the university. My professors were only focused on educating, not research, not arguing over grant money, and not flying around to conferences. I found my community college classmates more mature. Many students in the university seemed to be there because their parents wanted them to be there.

I've noticed that a lot of the students at the community college I went to were more mature as well. They all had stronger convictions for going to school as most of them were older and had spouses and children they were trying to build a better life for. Other types I found were people who were switching careers due to a life-changing event (pregnancy, work accident, rent increases) and even a good amount of immigrants who were fervently trying to pursue the American dream. All of them had a lot to lose if they didn't succeed, and I believed they worked so hard because all of them knew what it was to fail, unlike many of us high school grads. Needless to say the mentality at my community college helped build strong study habits within me, and inspired me to hang in there when times got tough (just like the classmates I used to work with did).

I got what I still think is the sweetest deal: I was able to take all but one of my classes at community college for my freshman year, while living in the dorms at the state university. It was cheaper to do it that way and the experience was practically the same. In fact, I'm not sure most of my friends even remembered that's what I was doing, since we all had different majors and classes anyway.

I don’t think your point is germane to the article, but to support it nonetheless:

I love to hire folks, even new graduates, who did the CC-to-UC track, and am sorry than many are embarrassed about it. They tend to have better focus and be more fun to work with.

I have a couple of friends who teach at CC in the Bay Area, one of whom was previously an assistant prof at Stanford for a couple of years.* They both have told me that they like the CC Because the students want to be there, do their homework, and want to learn. I remember as a TA that many Stanford students didn’t seem all that dedicated to doing their homework unless it counted in the grade, though all of them were smart and interesting.

* I believe Stanford didn’t value his contributions and encouraged him to seek alternative employment. This was a long time ago.

If you have a scholarship, this advice may not be good. I think most scholarships expect you to start that fall; if you don't, you may lose the scholarship. (Some or all of them will accept a "gap year", but most won't accept you going to community college for two years and then trying to take the scholarship.

Or at least, that's how I think it is. Your mileage may vary, so if you have a scholarship offer, check the rules for that scholarship rather than listening to me.

Many scholarships are available to students while in college. Many people don't even apply to them because they don't know about them or care at that point.

Where I went, the Student Affairs office knew more about scholarships than the financial aid office.

I wonder why the downvote? If you, or if you have kids going to college, make sure they're on every internal mailing list possible that college has. That's how I found out about a lot of scholarships. I didn't have any debt because I found out about the scholarships and asked staff and professors to nominate me.

A professor who hears about a scholarship, or a department head who emails their staff, generally doesn't think to include the financial aid office, or any other office in the university.

I'm on the fence about how scholarships should factor into the total cost of college. I feel like there is a decent amount of scholarship money freshmen year that disappears after that. So that the student ends up with a lot of student loans debt to finish school. It's all well and good that freshmen at an expensive college will be cheaper than some alternate school. Though is it really going to be cheaper overall? I don't think so and this is how lots of students end up with to much student debt.

Good point. Is it a four-year scholarship, or a one-year scholarship, or a one-year-with-option-to-renew scholarship? If it's the last, how common is renewal? And, do you feel lucky?

I studied engineering. There were a ton of scholaships available to any student. The financial aid office generally never finds out about except that the receive a check from some organization or company and are told to deposit in my account.

There are plenty of scholarships, just the communication about them is extremely poor. You have to get on every mailing list your university has, and constantly ask professors if they've heard about any scholarships.

Many of the scholarships I got were from companies or organizations that reached out directly to professors.

This is optimal advice.

I got a full ride to a decent state university but I wasted the first 3/4 trying to figure everything out myself because my high school college advisors were useless and because my parents had never been to college so they couldn’t help me out either.

Going to community college first is cheaper and oftentimes, some professors I had at university showed up in community to teach The same courses so it’s better value too.

I cannot agree with you more. I'm also in that broad spectrum of "millennial college graduate" -- specifically, my college years were during the beginning of the last financial crisis (the 2008 "great recession").

I remember the stigma about going to community college (even in the Bay Area, California) when all my high school peers were going straight to Stanford, UC Berkeley, Brown, etc.

But I remember that the CC classes were tough, afforded me a ton of independence and personal responsibility, and to my surprise, found my professors were also concurrently teaching at Stanford or UC Berkeley.

The CC had guaranteed transfer agreements with certain University of California (UC) campuses, and also had a neat program called https://assist.org which allows students to be smart about mapping the relevant CC courses with the equivalent [transferable] courses at the 4-year institution of choice.

I saved a ton of money, worked my way through CC, took a gap year to work full-time to save up (and/or internships to build my resume), and was able to graduate UC in only 1.5 years afterwards (while also working on campus). E.g. 2 years CC + 1.5 years UC.

Sure, I missed out on some college experiences, but I matured quick, it allowed me to ride out the recession into a very strong position, and I cannot recommend it enough to young folks today. Especially today.

For those wondering, I graduated into a down market, but ended up in various tech and engineering positions, with no discernible difference between my peers who had gone straight to Stanford or Brown or wherever else -- and in most cases, I somehow [luckily?] ended up faring a lot better than most of them.

Lastly -- your resume will only reflect the diploma from the 4-year institution, not that anyone's asked, but you do not get put into a second-tier or second-class position because you started at a CC and transferred into a UC or 4-year, which I recall, was one of my early worries when I was starting.

I'd love to reverse the stigma about CC's, because I'm immensely proud whenever I see other CC success stories -- it is the path less taken, and in many cases a lot harder upfront because of that stigma and the amount of independence and personal responsibility involved -- but I think the dividends can be rewarding long-term.

A primary reason to attend the most exclusive college you can is the academic caliber of your fellow students.

You mean high socioeconomic caliber, don't you?

High academic caliber peers are easily available online.

Given that probably the biggest by far factor for success in most anything is connections and networking the later is a lot less useful than the former.

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