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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

#121

Post by epage »

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…

CC is a mixed bag. CCs can shine in that the teachers are hired to teach rather than research and that they can be more practical / approachable than a specialized researcher.

I had a really lucky CC. I lived in a R&D military town hours from any other town. Some of my teachers were literally rocket scientists from the military base who happened to love to teach. The other teachers tended to be the spouses of the rocket scientists (which biases towards them also being smart) who had no where else to teach because of how remote the town is. They were all smart, passionate about teaching, and were practical.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#122

Post by bogomipz »

scarface74 wrote: post #78
bogomipz wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"That's exactly what I am saying. I think we would be better off if we treated Software development like a trade that had a two year up to date curriculum that actually prepared people to be hit the ground running at a company." So you see no reason for schools to produce people with well-rounded educations? You don't feel its important for society to have adults who have a wide-ranging perspective on things like li…

Isn't that what they are doing in high school? And it's not just about software development, most college curriculumns could be more focused into a two year degree.

>"Isn't that what they are doing in high school?"

To some degree yes but a much more limited scope than what's available at the university level. I don't think most public high schools teach humanities, political science etc.

Two year schools are basically vocational schools. I don't doubt there is a place for that but I think they are different products.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#123

Post by epage »

maxerickson wrote: post #34
mattnguyen wrote: post #10

My older sibling and I both grew up in a single-parent household. Since we were tight on money, my sister decided to go to community college after high school in part to look after me while our parent worked. After two years, my sibling transferred with a full ride to a good university. Looking to my sibling's experience, I decided to leave high school when I turned 16 to attend community college and accrue transfer…

Having a year (or more) of college credits upon high school graduation should be one of the education tracks available to every student. It's a massive failure of imagination that this isn't already the case.

I've seen this in some cities and love it. I unfortunately had a district that was targeted at the lowest common denominator. My high school would only consider accepting community college credits if you were in danger of not graduating. I was a dual-enrollment student (HS+CC) and took Calc 1-3 + DiffEq, Kinetics, E&M, and more while still taking the filler courses at my high school.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#124

Post by bogomipz »

rayiner wrote: post #93
bogomipz wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"That's exactly what I am saying. I think we would be better off if we treated Software development like a trade that had a two year up to date curriculum that actually prepared people to be hit the ground running at a company." So you see no reason for schools to produce people with well-rounded educations? You don't feel its important for society to have adults who have a wide-ranging perspective on things like li…

> You don't feel its important for society to have adults who have a wide-ranging perspective on things like literature, philosophy, history, art and non-computer science If you can’t teach the necessary fundamentals of that in high school that’s a problem with you’re K-12 system. The idea of a “well rounded education” is the result of the middle class trying to ape the leisure classes, who went to college to learn t…

It's amusing that you view 4 years of college as excessive when your profiles states you are a lawyer. This means that you yourself spent between 7 and 8 years working on a degree.

Also your email address is as @northwestern.edu, a university that very much promotes the important of a well-rounded educational experience.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#125

Post by oculusthrift »

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.

well specifically for my school there were a lot of classes that we took freshman and sophomore year that weren’t offered at any CC. Therefore students had to go back and take those cs courses.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#126

Post by gmays »

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?

Good question. I can't speak for all community college in all states, but community colleges are generally considered "two-year" institutions.

This means they can only award associate and technical degrees, but not bachelor's (4-year) degrees. You need to transfer to a 4-year college for that, which is what I did.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#127

Post by harryh »

bogomipz wrote: post #76
scarface74 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what I am saying. I think we would be better off if we treated Software development like a trade that had a two year up to date curriculum that actually prepared people to be hit the ground running at a company. Yes, I'm advocating the modern equivalent of "Java Schools".

>"That's exactly what I am saying. I think we would be better off if we treated Software development like a trade that had a two year up to date curriculum that actually prepared people to be hit the ground running at a company." So you see no reason for schools to produce people with well-rounded educations? You don't feel its important for society to have adults who have a wide-ranging perspective on things like li…

In college I took:

  * 1 literature class (shakespeare elective)
  * 0 philosophy classes
  * 1 history class (history 101)
  * 0 art classes
  * 2 science classes (physics 1 & 2)
I don't believe these gave me a wide-ranging perspective on these topics. I think my experience is pretty typical for technical majors.

The idea that most students develop this sort of thing in college is pretty clearly a myth.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#128

Post by fancyfish »

The CCs have the cost model worked out better than the universities, and can curb spending since they don't rely on public funds to support sports programs, sprawling administrations, large campuses, etc. It's about the courses and the students, and providing the most practical courses. I think it's an excellent way to deliver the basic general education and lower level courses of an undergraduate degree compared to taking them at a university because of this cost basis alone.

Rethinking how we deliver lower level courses in the university, by either providing them online or through CC seems to be part of the answer to controlling higher education costs that are spiraling out of control as states cut funding to public universities.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#129

Post by bogomipz »

harryh wrote: post #127
bogomipz wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"That's exactly what I am saying. I think we would be better off if we treated Software development like a trade that had a two year up to date curriculum that actually prepared people to be hit the ground running at a company." So you see no reason for schools to produce people with well-rounded educations? You don't feel its important for society to have adults who have a wide-ranging perspective on things like li…

In college I took: * 1 literature class (shakespeare elective) * 0 philosophy classes * 1 history class (history 101) * 0 art classes * 2 science classes (physics 1 & 2) I don't believe these gave me a wide-ranging perspective on these topics. I think my experience is pretty typical for technical majors. The idea that most students develop this sort of thing in college is pretty clearly a myth.

Did you actually believe at some point that taking 0 philosophy and 0 art classes would give you a wide-ranging perspective on those topics?

>"The idea that most students develop this sort of thing in college is pretty clearly a myth."

So based on your own anecdotal experience core curriculum contributing to a well-rounded education is a "myth."

Also the idea isn't that you immediately "develop this sort of thing in college." It's to provide a foundation for thinking about things for the rest of your life.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#130

Post by scarface74 »

bogomipz wrote: post #124
rayiner wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't feel its important for society to have adults who have a wide-ranging perspective on things like literature, philosophy, history, art and non-computer science If you can’t teach the necessary fundamentals of that in high school that’s a problem with you’re K-12 system. The idea of a “well rounded education” is the result of the middle class trying to ape the leisure classes, who went to college to learn t…

It's amusing that you view 4 years of college as excessive when your profiles states you are a lawyer. This means that you yourself spent between 7 and 8 years working on a degree. Also your email address is as @northwestern.edu, a university that very much promotes the important of a well-rounded educational experience.

How is that amusing? If he wanted to be a lawyer, he didn’t have a choice. Also, who better to have the opinion that a “well rounded” education is not all it’s cracked up to be than someone who has it? I think I have more credibility to state that taking 6 courses of Calculus, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra, etc. was a waste time for co outer science as someone who has been in the industry for years than someone who has not gone to college.
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