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I grew up pretty poor and never had hope that I could go to college...so I never tried in high school, and never took my SATs and was resigned to a life in lower paying non-career jobs.

After a few years of this, I remember interviewing at a larger company for a position in their IT department. I didn't get the job, but the interviewer gave me life changing advice, "why don't you just go to the local CC?". I had no idea that was even an option, so I looked into it, the cost was cheap, it allowed for flexible part-time schedules, and I started my journey.

I ended up dual majoring, graduated from the CC, moved to a state Uni graduated with a BS, and later worked through an MS. It absolutely transformed my life. I'm the first person in my entire family to have been educated to this level.

I also grew up in an immigrant heavy area and met many wonderful people from around the world at the CC, who also all went on to get BSs and MSs and move through successfully better careers at major companies. CC was their entry point into the American dream.

Still, that stigma hung with me until I had an experience where I was able to move past it. I was invited to a be part of a business team to build a product to sell to an overseas customer. Everybody introduced themselves and their backgrounds, some were very impressive, and a couple of them even had graduated from the Ivys. It clicked then, even with all of this impressive education and experience, we were all working at the same place on the same effort and I deserved to be there.

Ever since then, whenever somebody tries to edu-shame me or another person, I always reply with "and yet we're all working in the same place" and that shuts it down immediately.

I've had people give the same advice, and was only met with fraud and weed-out classes, structured in a way so that every simple misstep snowballs to failure. 15+ years of effort and resources with nothing to show to employers other than a transcript of Ws or Fs on those weedout courses which are required to even transfer, some repeated 8-10 times at different colleges and with different teachers. The same structural issues.

I hear this is less of a problem in Europe, but in the US, education is a farce. Wherever you are from, I'm glad it worked out for you.

I ended up dropping out and getting into IT, self learning system's theory along the way, and after a decade am back to trying to get a degree because a lot of employer's won't look at you if you don't have one. Or worse, they'll say you aren't qualified (despite having a decade of direct experience), and low-ball offer the already low salary (50% off). There are some truly despicable people out there.

Community College is for people who are busy getting things done. The stigma around community college is that "You weren't good enough for 4-year, let alone Ivy League" when simply that's not true and a stereotype.

I started at a community college. This was a long time ago now but I remember having to dance a precarious line between explaining where I went to school and explaining what I know. To this day when people ask me where I went to school, I riddle off a long explanation on why that kind of thinking isn't helpful and instead should be asking yourself, "What don't I know?". I've been to a 4 year college. I've been to an Ivy League school. The humbleness and "Let's do this" attitude of community college is still the best education I got. Don't feel bad for having these things on your resume, show them with pride. If YOU see someone applying for your positions and they are proudly showing their community college, I'd definitely want to talk to them over someone spoon fed from Harvard. Show me the people who take initiative. Regardless of where they went to school. I'm hiring for aptitude and attitude, everything else can be taught.

>Community College is for people who are busy getting things done.

FiveThirtyEight has a great article from 2016 that agrees with you. [0] It also debunks a lot of the myths of higher education, like the myth that students are mostly majoring in humanities:

>What few journalists seem to understand, Goldrick-Rab said, is how tenuous a grasp many students have on college. They are working while in school, often juggling multiple jobs that don’t readily align with class schedules. They are attending part time, which makes it take longer to graduate and reduces the chances of finishing at all. They are raising children, supporting parents and racking up debt trying to pay for it all.

>“One little thing goes awry and it just falls apart,” Goldrick-Rab said. “And the consequences of it falling apart when they’re taking on all this debt are just so severe.”

>Students keep taking that risk for a reason: A college degree remains the most likely path to a decent-paying job. They aren’t studying literary theory or philosophy; the most popular undergraduate majors in recent years have been business and health-related fields such as nursing.

[0] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/shut-up-about-harvard/

I'd love to see an update. 2016 doesn't seem like long ago but in the labor markets and advent of TikTok I'm curious to see what the industry (higher ed) looks like compared to trade schools w/ TikTok channel on the side or something. I've met a ton of folks who, like me, decided to sail off into the sunset and started a youtube channel and now that's all they do and are thriving. I decided against the channel and instead continue to work via starlink. For younger generations, what's the outlook on higher ed vs doing your own thing?

> I've met a ton of folks who, like me, decided to sail off into the sunset and started a youtube channel and now that's all they do and are thriving.

I wonder how much this is additional jobs, or how much it replaces jobs cut from traditional media companies.

Nielson knows I'm sure. That's a very good question. I'm sure the answer is just as complex. A mix of replaced jobs (or lets say, restructured jobs) into social media platforms vs traditional media (broadcast, print/web) over additional jobs in the sector.

I have met nobody who is making substantial money from Youtube or other social media. Is it not true that you need huge subscriber and view numbers to make money? I compare it to making money as a professional athlete or musician or other celebrity profession. Yes you can do well (even really well) but the odds are much more likely that you'll make peanuts.

Edit -- I did think of one person I kmnow personally who is probably making some money from YouTube, but he was a well-known author and public speaker before that. YouTube became an additional channel for things he had already invested many years in creating, it was not something he launched into as an alternative to or replacement for his day job.

>I've met a ton of folks who, like me, decided to sail off into the sunset and started a youtube channel and now that's all they do and are thriving.

That is very surprising to me, and I am a reasonably-successful YouTuber.

For nearly everyone, YouTube is not a viable career path. It’s not even a viable path to making money. Any money.

YouTube is the most saturated market that I know of. There are almost no barriers to entry, and your competition is everyone else on the planet who has a YouTube channel, plus, to some degree, the entire entertainment industry. Success on YouTube requires hard work, but hard work doesn’t guarantee even a bit of success. To succeed on YouTube, you don’t just have to create great content; you have to create content that people want to watch more than everything else that is available to them. That, obviously, is very hard. And even if you do it, a significant luck component remains.

Why did you “decide against the channel?”

because of all the hard work you just described. Sailing channels boil down to 2 sub-genres that are successful. Boat Projects. Babes in Butt Bikinis. I'm too old for butt bikini's and I'm not proficient enough to guide you through my frankenstein boat projects. It's not about making money from YouTube itself. It's about directing your viewers to avenues where the odds are in your favor. Patreon, Merch sales, Monthly subscriptions, even a little OnlyFan's if that's your jam. YouTube is like public broadcasting. Your content brings the audience. It's up to you to compel them to visit another site and part ways with that money beyond $0.0000001/view.

I'm not surprised that many students in CC's are in fields related to health care. When I considered a career change into health care community college offered the easiest path to that.

I read somewhere recently that the purpose of prestige/Ivy League schools is to provide the very wealthy and the very talented/ambitious the opportunity to mix, where you won’t be able to tell the difference.

This would be the unspoken part, spoken out loud.

That has mainly been the purpose of the wealthiest schools. Elite sends their kids to the same schools, to be prepped for a role in society similar to the one their parents have/had. They're finishing schools essentially.

Then there are schools like Rose Hulman or Curtis Institute of Music that specialize hard. They're very prestigious, but you also have to know about them to even think about going to them.

>Community College is for people who are busy getting things done.

Exactly. Now that I am older, having the option to return to school while working is so helpful. Too add to that, community colleges generally offer one off classes, or certificates in certain fields that are really useful.

Also for people looking to get the best value for their tuition dollars.

Many colleges (often by law) have to accept local community college transfer credits. A freshman can save thousands by taking prerequisite/introductory math, science, and other courses at a community college and then transferring to a traditional college or university to complete an undergraduate degree.

> Also for people looking to get the best value for their tuition dollars.

I'd like to add that one of the ways community colleges provide educational value is by putting you in a classroom made up of more than just teenagers and 20-somethings who came to college directly from high school. For a lot of subjects, the quality of discussion is improved a lot by having parents, veterans, people who have had varied or multiple careers, people who have survived various hardships... people who have seen and contended with more of life.

It makes a big difference in a class on childhood development to have classmates who are parents of kids of various ages, or who have worked for a long time in childcare and education. It makes a big difference in a class on death, dying, and grieving to have classmates whose experiences with death, aging, and grief are not limited to the passing of one or two relatives two generations apart from them. It makes a big difference in various job-oriented classes to have classmates who already work in the field and are studying in order to specialize, pursue a certification, or round out their skillset.

The student bodies of community colleges are way, way more diverse than those of universities, and that makes them a lot more interesting in certain ways, especially for discussion-oriented classes and subjects that address human life and experience outside of narrow, academic contexts.

There are networking benefits to this as well. You are significantly more likely to meet people already working in industry at the CC than at a university.

Agreed. Community college probably lifts up & allows people to better themselves more than most 4 year universities.

My dad put himself through community college then did 2 years at a university with some work in between. He was the first of his family / only one of his generation to go to college.

These days given cost & competition, most people going to a 4 year university come from a family that has already done the same and is following the prescribed path.

> When I'm hiring, I see a lot of MIT/Stanford/Ivy on resumes, but I also pay as much attention to resumes from people who went to other schools, or who took some other path through their circumstances.

I agree wholeheartedly. As another datapoint, over the years I've worked with many people from "top" schools like MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Ivies, etc. Generally they have not been strong engineers. I don't really have a good understanding of why, but it's just something I've noticed.

The folks who've struggled through non-traditional routes have been stronger engineers. They may not be as strong on the theory side, but they have some intangible "street smarts" or something that makes them overall more effective. Some combination of focus, grit, scrappiness, etc.

There have been some engineers who are from top schools who do have those traits but IME they aren't as common.

> I don't really have a good understanding of why, but it's just something I've noticed.

Have they ever worked at the bottom? Working at the bottom of your discipline ensures you learn basics in a non-theoretical manner.

I was once interviewed by someone who asked me a question about restriction enzyme digestion. He didn't like my answer so rephrased whatever the question was along the lines of "what's the unit defition of a restriction enzyme?". Which I answered along the lines of "One unit is the amount of enzyme that digests the substrate DNA in one hour. But you always use more enzyme.". The unit definition is theoretically true, but it's irrelevant for most bench work. You (almost) always use more enzyme because: 1) your DNA is usually not the test substrate DNA, 2) the enzyme is not fresh at the supplier where it was tested (enzymes degrade in functionality over time, even when stored properly), 3) due to stochastic effects or other mechanisms (such as denaturing) some minimal amount of DNA may remain undigested, and an extended digest or digest with additional enzyme can help maximize digestion, and 4) enzyme is cheap compared to your salary and having to redo things. I unfortunately didn't get the job. Maybe I would have if I had said the unquoted part (but still probably not, he was just one interviewer out of many).

> The folks who've struggled through non-traditional routes have been stronger engineers.

My guess is because those are the people who really had the persistence and ambition to overcome obstacles and adversity.

Those who didn't have that on a "non-traditional rout" would have been much more likely to drop out, whereas someone going to a top school is more likely to have family expectations as their prime driver, which doesn't translate as well to workplace performance.

When you've got a prestigious school on your resume you don't need to worry as much about improving your skills to get hired. They don't have to put in as much effort to be marketable to employers, so they don't in some cases.

Anecdotally, my interview/application rate went from something like 5% to more like 25% when I finished my B.S. I previously only had a C.S. associates degree and a year or so of credit at university in an unrelated program from just after high school. By the time I enrolled in the B.S. program I had ~3 years of industry experience and a promotion on my belt. None of that (including my contributions to major open source projects, and other code samples that to this day I still think are high quality) made as big of a difference for hiring managers as the scrap of paper from a university. I didn't learn a damn thing and had to pay ~$20,000 for the privilege, lost out on time with my young son, etc. It's worth it for the security of knowing you will always be able to find a job on short notice, but it's also massively frustrating. I wish there was a B.S. equivalency exam of some kind that was taken seriously.

Anyways, here are some of the advantages I see in hiring community college grads instead of or in addition to bootcamp grads, the other major way companies hire non-traditionally:

1. The students did have to put in at least a solid ~2 ish years and had to work on the fundamentals. A big one here is being able to step through code mentally, which is something we often forget has to be learned.

2. They are much more likely to actually like programming, given that they stuck with it for 2 years. I worry the shorter bootcamps sometimes aren't able to weed out highly intelligent people that nevertheless are going to end up hating the job, and that they are focused too much on front end web development that is flashier than a lot of the work many companies need done. So sometimes the candidate from a bootcamp may just like front end but hate more general programming.

3. You can't just copy code into a GitHub profile and have bootcamp instructors hold your hand through everything. If somebody with just an associates shows you code that isn't obviously some kind of brain teaser from a course exercise, you can bet they wrote it themselves without a lot of handholding. The code may suck compared to what you get from bootcamp grads, but it is significantly more representative of what the candidate will actually produce on the job.

4. I don't just hire web developers. There is no bootcamp I am aware of that teaches C programming or that goes through computer architecture and basic operating system stuff. All of that is covered by the local community colleges in their associates degree programs.

Totally agree. For me the most important metric is to what extent a person has made use of the opportunities available to them. I would hire a passionate and engaged community college grad who has hobbies before someone who went to a "top" school but only has grades to show for it.

Hobbies can be a complicated signal.

Consider someone studying while also working to pay their way through school or support their family, vs. someone who has more free time.

(I say this as someone with open source, which I wouldn't have been able to do, if I had anyone to support when I started the bulk of it. The open source helped get me a few very nice jobs, but I still would've had much of the skill and potential without that. So I don't want to over-fit, and exclude people with skills and potential, just because they had different circumstances than I did.)

What if my hobby is scholarship? Is knowledge and comprehension a bad hobby?

Anyway it looks like you are filtering for rich people with free time.

> For me the most important metric is to what extent a person has made use of the opportunities available to them.

We aren't all entrepreneurs, social butterflies keyed into what others are doing, or undecided and thus open to any whims of life made available to us. Some of us had plans and ideas, but lacked the feedback or mentoring to pursue those plans and dropped out, became depressed, or whatever for large chunks of our young adulthood. That doesn't mean we aren't now great at what we do.

I agree with you.

I took a somewhat roundabout way of going to a 4-year (first 2 years), then a community college for a year, and back to a different 4-year (last 2 years). In my experience, most of my community college classmates seemed to actually want to be there. They were motivated to learn and not just "get a degree". It's not that the university students didn't want to learn, its just that they were the ones who "knowledge comes easy" to; But, even then, a lot appeared immature, took the education for granted, had everything paid for by parents, and were perhaps guilted into to being there by parents, society, etc. Even in the last 2 years I noticed this.

Community college students were typically more mature, paying their own way, some having families and full-time jobs. And to top it all off I actually knew my professors in community college. I never once met 70-80% of my professors in the university. Maybe things would've been different at a smaller 4-year university, but community college felt just like that -- a community.

The problem, at least in my experience is that the quality of community colleges seems to vary wildly, and you can’t really shop around too much when it comes to education.