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Comment by hombre_fatal | Hacker News Reader

I went to the University of Texas but I took summer courses in Houston Community College (calculus II, physics II, and more -- those classes were SO bad at UT).

It was insane how much better the courses were in the community college. Tiny class of 15. $300 or something. Amazing professor that you could ask questions to like you could in high school. Normal 20-30 question textbook homework where you just work basic problems and build confidence that you know the material.

Meanwhile UT was the opposite. I think I paid $1400/class/semester (and that's a bargain). Lecture halls where you couldn't possibly ask a question. Weird math/physics homework that was like 3-5 super hard questions that I often couldn't figure out, demoralizing. Often a TA that could barely speak English. It's actually quite insulting.

I sometimes think about enrolling in a local college for fun, the experience was that good.

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> Weird math/physics homework that was like 3-5 super hard questions that I often couldn't figure out, demoralizing

Had this experience at an elite uni as well for math courses. At the time I felt like it pushed me to really grow, and it was absolutely necessary to do well in that specific course (tests often had questions that ~required you to know how to do all the uber-hard homework problems), but I wonder what the research actually says about this sort of homework vs your more standard variety.

I have wondered this too as a person who has attended a regular (non-honors) Calculus II course at a fairly top-rank private university and then again at a community college.

From what I remember, the university course also had some rote exercises for homework so it isn’t like everyone is only focusing on working the trickier exercises.

This also reminds me of the story Donald Knuth has around working every exercise in the book for a calculus class.

I had classes with take-home tests of three impossible questions, and standard tests of disguised regurgitation. The impossible questions are the ones that will really test your understanding of the fundamentals. It's the different between "add two numbers together", and "what does adding mean"?

I found out I can't stretch my brain to truly understand the fundamentals, so I stopped after a bachelors and don't use my degree at all. I don't mind. It takes truly special people to push the limits, and a lot of not so special people to keep the world running for them.

I think it also depends on what the professor's and the student's goals are; and if they're aligned.

Is the course about learning the material at hand, or laying the foundation for graduate level courses in the same subject? About teaching the most efficient way or getting a student used to deriving equations when there's not a plug and play formula.

I'm sure we can draw similar parallels between csci college courses, big tech interviews, and professional software development. Even though it's all the same pipeline, each stage/stakeholder has different goals, motivations, etc... If you're having a discussion about the pros and cons of an approach, you have to make sure the goals are aligned else you'll just be talking past each other.

> I wonder what the research actually says about this sort of homework vs your more standard variety.

I have a vivid memory of one of the question on a final being basically “sketch the outline of this important thing we studied”. I couldn’t do it. I took the class but didn’t see the forest for the trees.

Later I met people who talked about things with each other, including the big picture. That’s the community I was missing when I took the class solo.

In retrospect, I could have gotten something more out of those problems that I thought were so hard.

Large universities are focused on research, and they incur a lot of expenses due to administrators' egos (build build build), the number of administrators, and the range of microstate services offered, like their own health care system and mental health counseling (a major thing in universities now). Community colleges are focused on teaching.

> their own health care system and mental health counseling (a major thing in universities now)

Which would be a non-issue if the US simply had single-payer or universal healthcare.

the US loves externalities, or not understanding them

I had a similar experience -- took physics at a community college when I was in high school. The 'up-side' of the overproduction of PhDs is that many people from elite backgrounds end up teaching at community colleges.

The only negative for me was that the students were pretty checked out.

> The only negative for me was that the students were pretty checked out.

I didn't put a lot of thought into where I went to school but if I could do it over again this is something I would have considered when I applied. The school I ended up at did not have many serious students. It was a night and day difference taking courses with even one or two students who were similarly engaged with the material, but most of those students ended up transferring to better schools after a year or two.

You also run into the issue later on that the people you went to school with wash out of industry (or never work in it to begin with) at much higher rates in comparison to those who went to more serious schools.

Exactly the same experience. My AP Physics teacher in high school was incredibly better than university.

UT is research focused. Depending on the department, they make the professors teach classes, which is often not aligned with their interests at all. Sometimes I think they are actively trying for bad reviews from students to incentivize the university from making them take on course load.

I had the same experience where community college teachers were vastly superior to my university teachers. Vastly.

It's possible that people who end up as teachers in community colleges actually like teaching and see it as a challenge they are willing to tackle.

Whereas in big universities the professors really don't much want to teach they want to accomplish scientific breakthroughs, themselves.

One possible reason is that the community college teachers -- at least in my state -- are unionized. This makes teaching as a career possible.

I went to a somewhat highly regarded (not MIT or CalTech tier) tech school, and then to a state university.

The tech school considered it a boast that it had more graduate students than undergrad. It was clear where the professors' emphasis was. I recognize the lecture halls where you couldn't ask questions, and the barely-anglophone instructors. (Everyone in the EE department, in particular, seemed to come "fresh off the boat" from China bringing precious little English knowledge with them. The prof for my introductory EE course mumbled on top of it.)

Then I went to state school. Ho-lee shit. Complete difference. The bad profs were incompetent chucklefucks who couldn't cut it in real academia. The good profs actually cared about teaching undergrads.

I learned a lot about choosing a college -- a few years and a few tens of thousands of dollars too late.

I had this experience too! My math professors in community college were much better than at my significantly more expensive university.

community colleges are... like... there for the community. and you feel that community.

a lot of big universities have people there for research. there is money to be made, grants to be given, and degrees to be minted. and you can feel that too.

source: got out of the military and went to one, then the other.

I had a long winding road through academia. Went to a big selective R1 state school in a different state after high school. Had an existential crisis, moved back home with my parents and went to community college for a year, finished my undergrad at a large, less selective R2 and then did grad school at a large, very selective private R1. I would rank the quality of instruction:

1. Community College 2. Probably a tie between the R2 and grad school. However, that grad school focused a lot on grad students, so it's possible the undergraduate experience isn't quite as good. ... 3. After a very large drop off the R1 state school.

You obviously can't extrapolate too much from my personal experience, but it does seem to line up with man others.

Community Colleges are the gems of US undergraduate education

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