Comment by gabereiser | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gabereiser | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

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.

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.

>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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com