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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

#181

Post by dragonwriter »

skookumchuck wrote: post #158
thoth wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone with a masters in education may or may not have the knowledge required for a particular subject, say a math or science. Or another way, just because someone has a masters in education doesn’t mean they can teach any specific class. Their background could be in counseling, administration, school psychology, or education methodology... not, for instance, typical high school subjects.

A degree in anything but the subjects they teach? Does that mean that a high school physics teacher knows nothing more about physics than high school physics?

> Does that mean that a high school physics teacher knows nothing more about physics than high school physics?

Probably not; the state policies adopted under the pressure of NCLB and it's successors put strong pressure on districts to hire teachers with at least a bachelor's degree in the field taught for secondary schools, and even teachers that don't will often have additional coursework as part of college breadth requirements.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#182

Post by bsder »

lsc wrote: post #138
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?

> 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? Community college is different from a state college. Community colleges only do your first two years,and y…

> because top-10 colleges, as far as I can tell, give you dramatically better returns if you graduate

That is probably dependent upon major and level.

I suspect that for engineering, for example, a "mid-tier" school probably is better for your average undergrad. I never saw the 400+ student lectures that are universally lousy at a mid-tier (20-50) university. You also got professors teaching classes at far lower levels (my Electronics 101 and Signals and Systems were taught by the Dean, himself)

This may be unique to engineering given that engineering schools actually have to answer to an accreditation body (ABET).

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#183

Post by bsder »

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.

It's called Advanced Placement.

You can rack up quite a lot of credits with AP courses.

As an engineer, I wiped out all my English requirements (6 credits). I wiped out Chemistry (6 credits and a really annoying lab at 4 credits). And I wiped out my first Calc class (4 credits). I think I killed a foreign language requirement, too (probably 6 credits).

That's 30 credits--or, a full year.

The big problem was that I was feeding into engineering which really doesn't let you wipe a lot out--knocking off Chemistry was a big deal (I also had an AP History score which didn't do anything for me, for example). Generally, all your good science scores just let you switch to a "more researchy" track where you take "deeper theoretical" (read: a shitton more work) classes.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#184

Post by lsc »

bsder wrote: post #182
lsc wrote: post #138

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? Community college is different from a state college. Community colleges only do your first two years,and y…

> because top-10 colleges, as far as I can tell, give you dramatically better returns if you graduate That is probably dependent upon major and level. I suspect that for engineering, for example, a "mid-tier" school probably is better for your average undergrad. I never saw the 400+ student lectures that are universally lousy at a mid-tier (20-50) university. You also got professors teaching classes at far lower leve…

I've got no opinion of the quality of instruction; I don't have the experience of either one.

All I'm saying is that most people didn't go to an elite school, and yet a lot of the really prestigious and remunerative Engineering and engineering/management positions from 2-4 levels up from me are occupied by graduates of elite schools. The higher up you go, it seems, the higher proportion of them went to an elite school.

I mean, that's totally unscientific, and just my perception, but if we could correlate the school you graduated from with people employed at the top-tier Engineering shops in the bay area, I bet elite schools would be vastly over-represented.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#185

Post by skookumchuck »

chrisseaton wrote: post #175
skookumchuck wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need a masters degree in math to teach freshman calculus. I was taught freshman calc by grad students - with no "education" training whatsoever. Perhaps these "masters" of education are learning the wrong things. Freshman calculus just isn't that hard, and isn't much beyond algebra. This "gee math is hard" crap is, well, crap. No PhD is necessary. Hell, I taught it to my kids on the kitchen table, and I hav…

Do you think someone needs any education at all in a subject to each it? Do you think someone who has never studied calculus should be able to teach it?

> Do you think someone needs any education at all in a subject to each it?

Of course I do. I am just bemused by teachers having masters degrees yet be unable to teach any freshman college level class.

> Do you think someone who has never studied calculus should be able to teach it?

Freshman calculus is not rocket science, and I expect someone with a masters degree to be able to handle it.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#186

Post by bsder »

lsc wrote: post #184
bsder wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because top-10 colleges, as far as I can tell, give you dramatically better returns if you graduate That is probably dependent upon major and level. I suspect that for engineering, for example, a "mid-tier" school probably is better for your average undergrad. I never saw the 400+ student lectures that are universally lousy at a mid-tier (20-50) university. You also got professors teaching classes at far lower leve…

I've got no opinion of the quality of instruction; I don't have the experience of either one. All I'm saying is that most people didn't go to an elite school, and yet a lot of the really prestigious and remunerative Engineering and engineering/management positions from 2-4 levels up from me are occupied by graduates of elite schools. The higher up you go, it seems, the higher proportion of them went to an elite schoo…

Mostly bias, I suspect.

If you polled management from Westinghouse in the 1990's, you would find Pitt, CMU, Penn State and OSU overrepresented.

One thing you have to be careful of is that "elite" school graduates often have an over-inflated sense of how good they actually are. The ex-CTO of ModCloth had a video talking to a bunch of Russians where he talked about how the Pittsburgh team was better and more productive and that the SFO team was unjustifiably arrogant.

The guy was Adil Wali. Man, it took me way too long to find this. I guess ModCloth PR has sanitized the web: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4qYFqpLQBc#t=1h20m

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#187

Post by DrScump »

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…

  the undergrad math prep at community college was a joke
I had the opposite experience. I took the calculus sequence at CC. Taking more advanced courses (e.g. numerical analysis) at Cal State, I was better prepared than my peers who had taken calculus there.

My Calculus I instructor authored several college math texts, BTW.

Now that I think about it, the only instructors I recall having Ph.Ds who did their own lecturing were at the CC.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#188

Post by chrisseaton »

skookumchuck wrote: post #185
chrisseaton wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think someone needs any education at all in a subject to each it? Do you think someone who has never studied calculus should be able to teach it?

> Do you think someone needs any education at all in a subject to each it? Of course I do. I am just bemused by teachers having masters degrees yet be unable to teach any freshman college level class. > Do you think someone who has never studied calculus should be able to teach it? Freshman calculus is not rocket science, and I expect someone with a masters degree to be able to handle it.

> Of course I do.

Right, well here's the answer to the original question then. If you want teachers to be able to teach calculus, and you agree people should have an education in a subject to teach it, then you need the teachers to study calculus themselves, which they weren't necessarily doing, because they studied things other than maths, so you need to use more resources to have them also take calculus classes, so it costs more.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#189

Post by poulsbohemian »

nwallin wrote: post #150
chrisseaton wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Community colleges do not offer bachelor's degrees. They only offer associate's degrees, which are a 2 year program, and do not confer the same expected income potential as a bachelor's degree. That's what this article is about; do two years at a community college to get the GE classes out of the way, and then transfer to a four year university to get your degree. It's actually extremely common; it's what I did, and…

Oddly enough, my local community college was just approved to start offering two bachelors programs: https://www.wwcc.edu. I've seen this happen a few places, though admittedly it is somewhat rare and is a rule-bender in terms of the normal way we define community colleges. I'm also not that clear on why, as there are 4-year programs available from other public institutions a one-hour and two-hour drive away (IE: there isn't really a shortage)

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#190

Post by skrap »

When I graduated from a far-from-top-10 CS BA program in 2002, I couldn't get the time of day from any of the top software firms. I spent 9 months throwing resume after resume down the corporate waste chute. Then I noticed that Apple was holding a recruiting event at MIT, so I crashed it. Didn't mention that I wasn't from that school. A month or so later I got the job that launched my career.

Not sure what the lesson there is. But maybe a community college grad should consider finding ways to get through the school-based recruiting filter which is all too common in tech.

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