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Comment by nkangoh | Hacker News Reader

That would only be true if community college were an equivalent alternative. Unfortunately it is not.

Unless you care about education for education's sake and nothing of jobs or career prospects, then a well motivated individual could learn a ton at a community college.

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Students usually transfer to a 4 year college after 2 years. That means that employers see a degree from X State University, not Y Junior College.

In the community colleges in my state (Texas) they make sure credits can transfer to UT, A&M and other Universities. So they are equivalent in terms of those classes (typically at freshman or sophomore level).

This is true in most states. The various CC systems in CA should transfer cleanly into the University of California system, same for SUNY, University of Virginia system and other public college systems.

The classes are absolutely equivalent to the Fresh and Sophomore classes and an A.S. degree from a CC should start you as a Junior at the big-kid school.

Same in Oregon. I did what is called a AAOT which basically guarantees that you will be admitted as a junior at any four year school in the state. And to be honest I didn't care all that much about the quality of the education since the first two years I was taking a bunch of General Education requirements that didn't really apply to my degree.

And a lot of trades come up through community colleges. The one here has two year degrees for auto mechanics, aircraft mechanics, HVAC, welders, CAD, CNC, plumbing, electricians, and so on. My bet is Obama is more concerned about that aspect of the program than people transferring to four year schools.

I don't know...the transferred credit aspect could be huge.

I wish I'd taken classes like Organic Chemistry in CC. There is no way anyone could convince me that my quality of learning would be worse considering that class at University of Texas had hundreds of people in it.

But if it were free, it'd be a no-brainer.

So, either the quality of these classes will have to get tons better at University or their prices will have to come down.

People are squawking about how third party payments will cause prices to rise but I just don't see how that can happen in this case.

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