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Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

nytimes.com

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Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#111

Post by jarjoura »

nvarsj wrote: post #92

I went to community college because my family was "middle class poor". Income just too high to qualify for grants or scholarships, but too low to afford to send me to university (for various reasons). Community colleges are great in many ways. They provide a low cost option to get a four year degree. They give a second chance if you messed around in HS. It's less competitive to transfer into a top tier public univers…

Most of the professors I had at my university also taught part time at the community colleges. I did all 5 years at a university but I can only assume that just like community colleges, every professor is different and their quality ranges quite heavily. So much of college life is about learning how to self-study anyway and knowing when you need to go to the TA, or spend quality time in the library.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#112

Post by marricks »

gmays wrote: post #41

Community college worked well for me. 2 weeks after graduating high school I started taking a heavy workload at the local community college. I was able to complete the prerequisites by the following year and transfer to a local state university. I was lucky that both were within a 45min drive from my house. The result was graduating college with a bachelor's degree 2.5 years after graduating high school. I lived at h…

CC is great and it’s awesome people find it so valuable but an equally important topic to explore is why college is not longer affordable for large parts of the population in the US.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#113

Post by skookumchuck »

maxerickson wrote: post #55
wil421 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should you have to get credits before you leave High School? Just teach more advanced subjects in both High School and College. I agree with what you are saying but I think it’s a product of a failure somewhere else in the education system. No child left behind and other programs hinder education by applying one size fits all policies.

I didn't say that. I said it should be available to every student, which is not the case. It's directly a failure of the primary education system, but it is more a failure of leadership and resources than anything else. As far as NCLB, the response to it is a bigger problem than the law. There's nothing in it stopping states from investing in both helping underachieving students and in helping other students get ahea…

> a failure of leadership and resources

Why is it more expensive to teach, say, calculus than algebra? Offering more advanced classes should not cost more.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#114

Post by skookumchuck »

ams6110 wrote: post #69
wil421 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should you have to get credits before you leave High School? Just teach more advanced subjects in both High School and College. I agree with what you are saying but I think it’s a product of a failure somewhere else in the education system. No child left behind and other programs hinder education by applying one size fits all policies.

High schools may have trouble finding teachers who are qualified to teach advanced subjects, also they may not have enough students to really justify a class at that level. Whereas a Community College may have an easier time finding instructors, since there aren't licensing rules or a need to employ the instructor full-time. Also they draw from a wider student population so may not have as much difficulty filling a c…

> High schools may have trouble finding teachers who are qualified to teach advanced subjects

One wonders about such teachers who have advanced masters degrees in education. Why are they not qualified to teach freshman college material?

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#115

Post by chrisseaton »

gmays wrote: post #41

Community college worked well for me. 2 weeks after graduating high school I started taking a heavy workload at the local community college. I was able to complete the prerequisites by the following year and transfer to a local state university. I was lucky that both were within a 45min drive from my house. The result was graduating college with a bachelor's degree 2.5 years after graduating high school. I lived at h…

Community college worked so well for you... but you had to transfer and go to a university instead?

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#116

Post by anonacct37 »

robterrell wrote: post #86
gmays wrote: post #41

Community college worked well for me. 2 weeks after graduating high school I started taking a heavy workload at the local community college. I was able to complete the prerequisites by the following year and transfer to a local state university. I was lucky that both were within a 45min drive from my house. The result was graduating college with a bachelor's degree 2.5 years after graduating high school. I lived at h…

After moving to California six years ago, I was surprised to learn how many high school students have this plan -- a couple of years at a local community college and a transfer to one of the bigger Cal schools.

It's a good strategy for many. My community college let me take basic calc based physics with a small class of 20 pre-engineering majors. After transferring to a big engineering school I met my wife. She took the exact same class but it now had 400 people and zero time with the professor. Also now it didn't use calculus.

Iirc it was phys2210

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#117

Post by pasbesoin »

analog31 wrote: post #58
paulie_a wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Wisconsin you could transfer all classes from the two year schools to the 4 year schools and the pricing was definitely much better. I don't know for sure if that is still the case though. But it also had the advantage of being taught by the actual professor and not some TA. When I transferred to a private school I was a bit older so they really gave some leeway in how they transferrey credits. I am guessing they…

I live in WI, and this is still the case. Historically, the community and tech college teachers were unionized, so it attracted people who wanted to make a career of teaching. They were actually better off than the adjuncts who were teaching the same courses at the university. When the state broke the public sector unions a few years ago, a lot of teachers took early retirement (five or six of my friends), and I don'…

This Wikipedia article doesn't really describe this aspect, but as I understand it, the Wisconsin Idea extended to a integrated approach to higher education. The technical colleges, numerous university campuses, and the University of Wisconsin Madison worked cooperatively to provide a full range of accessible and desirably higher education opportunities to Wisconsin's students -- and working adults.

There's a reason UW Madison has been and continues to be so highly regarded.

There was also a greater difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition, with higher requirements to qualify for the latter. Wisconsin was focused on educating Wisconsonites, and bettering the state thereby.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Idea

Unfortunately, as another commenter mentioned, this lauded and effective system has come under attack by opponents of any sort of public spending and public good.

And, as Wisconsin has lost many union and other well-paying jobs, it's become harder to retain domestically educated talent.

It would be a shame if the system is destroyed. It's allowed this small, largely rural state to punch significantly above its weight.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#118

Post by giancarlostoro »

chrisseaton wrote: post #115
gmays wrote: post #41

Community college worked well for me. 2 weeks after graduating high school I started taking a heavy workload at the local community college. I was able to complete the prerequisites by the following year and transfer to a local state university. I was lucky that both were within a 45min drive from my house. The result was graduating college with a bachelor's degree 2.5 years after graduating high school. I lived at h…

Community college worked so well for you... but you had to transfer and go to a university instead?

Colleges are only 2 years tops, and some offer transfer programs to universities. The one nearby me in Florida: Valencia College actually gets you a guaranteed transfer to any University in the state practically. So you're more likely to be accepted in a university by going the College route first. Also in some cases you can take a lot of the math classes for a lot cheaper and they're still transferable as a result.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#119

Post by monocasa »

technofiend wrote: post #85
oculusthrift wrote: post #81

I like CCs but there are definitely some downsides to consider as well: (speaking from california perspective) - Our cc’s are all impacted and getting the classes you need is nearly impossible. Many people end up taking 3 years to graduate. - When you do transfer to a bachelors program, you’ll find that your cc was missing a lot of the pre reqs you need for your major (depending on your major). I’ve seen a lot of cc…

That sounds like incredibly poor planning on the part of the students and like there are no standards for colleges to follow. Contrast that with attending Houston Community College where they ask you if you'll be going on to a 4 year degree and if so in what and where. They can tell you exactly what courses to take at HCC to carry on to U of H, TAMU, UT, etc to finish a degree.

In some states it's not really the fault of the student; no amount of planning would've helped you. The 4 year college will keep changing the structure of the requirements, and while their own students will be grandfathered in, a transfer student will have to somehow make up the credits that have changed out from under them. I've seen this even in states that supposedly let you transfer everything from a 2 year. You technically still have a bunch of credits, they just don't fulfill all of the requirements of your degree progression at that point; it's sort of like if you had switched majors as a junior.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#120

Post by gruez »

shams93 wrote: post #109
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering what's the opportunity cost that you paid by having Cal State on your CV instead of a top-ranked university. I sometimes see people who went to MIT or Stanford that I feel would not have gotten nearly as far as they have if it were Cal State. How many of your colleagues are from top universities?

Studies have shown that Calstate LAactually does a better job at promoting social mobility than UCLA.

that doesn't mean degrees from two are equal, or that there wasnt an opportunity cost paid by going to cc. I'm going to speculate that a UCLA degree is better than a calstate degree, but people going to UCLA are already high class, thus making UCLA lower mobility than calstate (cant move up when you're already at the top).
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