Because you have to go to a high school that offers special courses, you have to be willing to work much harder than the average student, and you have to know about this trick when you're like 15yo and comprehend how much $$$ and time it's going to save you in the long run.

I fortunately did take advantage of this, and so did my wife. Thought we took advantage of it so we could do cheap study abroad and not have to take any courses toward our degree plan (indeed, I actually earned a second degree in a completely unrelated field while doing my study abroad)

But to be clear, this was because I took every advanced class offered at my high school and took other courses at the local community college instead of hanging out with my friends during lunch, etc. It was a constant gaming of the system to eventually get the results I wanted.

You can double up on a lot in high school (AP, IB, dual enrollment) or CLEP out of a good number of GenEd classes, but not everybody has the access and support they need to pull that off. There's potential value in going to college (as in _being in college_) that isn't strictly measured in credit hours as well.

The critical part is getting all the non-exciting stuff done at community college. There’s a useless cultural construct we have that says that CC is for a lower tier of student. Obviously this is absolute poppycock, since paying $2000 a year for college vs $20,000 only proves that you don’t like pissing away money. It’s not like English 112 is taught by world-class professors at Stanford or UW. It’s taught by some random TA. But many types of people (even myself) felt pressure to “attend a 4-year school” right from the start.

The best argument for it actually is purely social — community colleges (for no real reason though) don’t have dorms, so the ‘commuter school’ experience can be socially isolating, whereas for outgoing types mixing with all your fellow freshman in a dorm can be very socially rewarding and help establish major friendships. I think they should add on-campus living to community college.

You still need the gen ed credits from somewhere. And you have to actually get in to the major, which is hard for UW CSE (desirable major with limited spots).

You normally pay per credit, so not quite, and also that way you'll have lower grades, fewer chances to get internships, and make less connections.