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Comment by dgunay | Hacker News Reader

I went to my local community college for CS after graduating from a top university in underwater basket weaving, and tbh it was pretty good and did not feel like a noticeable step down in quality from my former university (perhaps more of an indictment of expensive universities).

We do need to reduce the stigma of community colleges, they fulfill an important need.

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I went to Oxford, where they give you actual 3/2/1-on-1 tutorials several times a week. You get to sit in a comfy room with an actual world renowned professor in the appropriate field.

Great as it sounds, I think the main benefit is accountability rather than better teaching. You don't want to be the guy who wastes an hour with the fellow of the academy of sciences.

As for teaching, such people tend to have more of a bird's eye view of things than is good for teaching. They don't know a whole lot about the details of the subject anymore, their job is to find funding. The best teachers tended to be recent PhDs.

My brother did his masters in operations research at Stanford after doing his undergraduate degree in our home country that is ranked in the 200-300 range. His full undergrad cost 20kish, his masters cost (at least on paper as he got various fee reductions etc) over 100k.

He said there was no discernible difference in quality of the lectures, lecturers, content etc between the two. I'm sure it would be a very different situation if he wanted to go into research but that is a much much smaller portion of all people who go to university.

I also have a friend who went to Riverside college in Austin TX for the first 2 years before transferring to UT Austin for the last 2 years. She said that many of the lecturers from UT Austin also taught courses at Riverside college. Her years at Riverside cost her around 8k a year, her years at UT cost her something like 40-50k. She was on the GI bill so didn't have to pay for most of it anyway but still pretty amazing when you think about.

There’s real value in company/community college partnerships - they’ve been common for factory-type work for decades (go to the college and learn the machines, get hired at the company afterwards) and companies willing to admit this can work could get lots of good talent in other areas.

I would go farther - two year degrees in focused subjects need to become the rule and college as a social experience needs to die

The social experience is important too, I would argue. There must be a good way to combine that with reasonably priced education.

Not all major(ish) colleges are an arm and leg the way the Ivy's and some other upper crust/common names are. Certainly there are many very good state institutions at relatively reasonable cost/value. Michigan State is order 15K tuition for in-state.

My in-state school had similar tuition (in 10yrs ago dollars) and had guaranteed, no-questions-asked scholarships that covered most of it if you exceeded an SAT or ACT score (not a super high one either).

> We do need to reduce the stigma of community colleges, they fulfill an important need.

Because of continued budget cuts to the CSU/UC system which resulted in less sections being offered or having those with openings simply conflicting with my core major classes I had the misfortune of having to attend Community College alongside Uni.

I say misfortune not because the of the lack of prestige, I was a junior by that time and had already attended 3 universities due to budget/class shortages so all the luster of the University system had all been washed away a long time ago, and all I wanted was to graduate and try to cope as best I could in the financial crisis job market to pay down all my debt.

But what gave it a stigma, in my onion, were the levels infantile like behaviour everyone was expected to work under, I was shocked to see you had to ask permission to go to the bathroom, and you were penalized for attendance. Grown adults, as in over 30, were complying too. I can only suspect that the workforce had taken it's toll on them and they didn't even question it anymore.

Mind you these were general-ed classes that I honestly didn't care about but had to complete to graduate in 5 years and I was inclined not to pay full University price for them if possible so I stuck it out, but even in my lower division classes at University which were impacted we ever forced to attend class--you're an Adult its your money and it's your fault if you fail after all.

What pushed me over the edge was one day when after working all night at my job, and having a lab practical in the morning I drove 1.5 hour and arrived to the CC campus on time only to find out everyone agreed to go home to watch the World Cup matches... I lost it, and I just saw red!

I knew then I would never have gotten past the first week if I didn't have any agency after these regretful experiences if this was all I had as an option after I finished High School. It felt exactly like High School, but with the added bonus of having to pay out of pocket for it.

By contrast, I took an online class in Spanish and that was fine. I got a B+ and put in minimal effort and I felt I got what I paid for: a letter saying I'm completed the course for under $200.

If we are to broaden the appeal of CC then a digital first approach should be applied, if Coursera can do that with it's affiliated Universities so can Community Colleges. They need to modernize to compete, and the Market will soon be filled with Gen Z that have all been priced out of University so it's a net boon if they do.

Moreover, I have seen the costs of CC, it's still way too expensive for what they offer. I was tempted to go back for a welding certification and try my hand at that but it was 1000s of dollars per class not including material costs! I saw what an Associates degree costs after I met a girl who had to drop out and wait tables, and it's on par with what my first semesters of University cost even as a local in Colorado.

Insanity...

I think the real thing that needs to be addressed is conflating college experience as a good gauge for professional experience in the work place; I'm a much bigger proponent of the Germanic model of apprenticeships, wherein you can opt out of High School to go into a trade and start a career when you're ready.

So many more options are available to you that way, and end up yielding some of the best people I ever worked with. Best of all, you don't waste your time studying something you may never end up working in, as so many do after completing their degrees.

Wow, are there many Germanic children who don't go to high school, in your experience? That's really different.

I'm sure there is a German or two here who can chime in with the specifics, but the parent poster shared a somewhat abbreviated version of the story. There are multiple kinds of high school in Germany (and other European nations) whereby you can opt into the right kind of school to fit your talents and needs. So what they likely meant was Gymnasium, which is traditionally viewed as a university bound high school program. Other students will go to other kinds of more hands-on schools that I'd say are no less rigorous or well-rounded, just different.

So I'm going to be the german who is going to chime in.

The german system works like this:

The frist 4 years of education you'll got to Grundschule where you learn the basics.

Then you'll get sorted in the 3 different "high school" types.

- Hauptschule

  - This type of school is the least academically demanding and has a lot more 
    hands on classes like woodworking/cooking and the likes.
  
  - This take usualy 5 years to complete.

- Realschule

  - This is the middle ground school it offers a bit of both worlds

  - this takes 6 years to complete.

- Gymnasium

  - This is the more acadamiclly focus type of school, with stuff like AP 
    classes.

  - have to learn a thrid language 

  - takes 8 or 9 years

But after you complete Hauptschule or Realschule you can go do an apprenticeship or add on some more school years to get the better school diploma.

Appranticeships can be in trades, manufacturing, IT or office jobs. There is also Duales Studium where you go to collage but also work half time at a company.

As an example take my school journy: I was sorted into the Hauptschule.

After I completet that school, I added 2 more years school time so i get a Realschul depolma, as a bonus the school I went to also touth me the frist year of electricians apprenticeship.

After that I got a apprianticeship to become a software developer which took me 3 years to complete.

edit: formating and last paragraph

This also differs based on state within Germany.

In Berlin for example the Grundschule is 6 years and then you go to either Gymnasium or Sekundarschule[1] for another 6, which offers either university-bound education or vocational education but generally everyone attending that wants to and is academically capable can get a highschool diploma out of it, allowing them to go to uni.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sekundarschule#Berlin

We are seeing some of that in the US in the form of charter schools. We have one locally that is focused more on trades and technology, and goes all the way from middle school through high school. Traditionally, you'd go to the regular public school if you were interested in post-secondary education. Not that you couldn't go to college if you went to the charter school, just that isn't the focus. You get an equivalent high school diploma either way.

I think that sounds a bit more voluntary than it actually is. Some argue its to early to decide after elementary school to decide who will likely study and who won't.

After elementary may be too early. In my country most of selection is at year 9 (pupils being 14-15 y/o). That's not a hard cut off though. Technically you take same exam and may go to university if you want. But if you picked arts school, you probably won't do well in exams needed for STEM at university...

Works pretty well I'd say.

This is somewhat out of date as modern day system in Germany is a lot less exclusionary and less prone to railroading pupils to vocational education than it was 20-30 years ago. This also depends on state, in Berlin for example basically any capable/motivated pupil can get an Abitur by attending an Integrierte Sekundarschule.

In Australia, while there are some specialist high schools with a different focus (e.g., agricultural sciences) students can otherwise take on a trade apprenticeship from Year 10 (15ish yo) as part of completing their secondary schooling.

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