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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

#141

Post by jknoepfler »

I went to community college in San Diego, CA when I was trying to return to school to finish a computer science degree. It was a godsend.

I was able to complete linear algebra, introductory physics, and vector calculus for something like $200 in voluntary book costs (tuition was waved). My instructors were knowledgeable and professional. I got more out of the physics class in particular than I did out of the University of Minnesota version, which were run by bored TA's and researchers who frankly had better things to do than lecture.

That saved me a full semester of university tuition. I had already completed the breadth electives in a previous pass through the academic world, but if I hadn't I could have shaved off another year or so, for a savings upwards of $22,000.

I believe we should continue to expand and invest in community colleges very aggressively, and keep them very cheap, and very easy to get into.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#142

Post by drngdds »

Dowwie wrote: post #22

MOOCs have been developing en masse for the last 6-7 years. What, aside from the obvious associates degree at completion and an accelerated pathway to a bachelors degree from a 4-year program, does community college provide that MOOC micro-programs do not? It seems reasonable to assume that MOOC service providers are establishing pathways to undergraduate programs just as community colleges do. Are the value gaps nar…

The main (good) reason to go to community college is that it's a cheap way to get college credits.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#143

Post by __float »

jfaucett wrote: post #36

Me and my whole family have gone to community college and I would recommend it to anyone wanting to save money and graduate with little or no debt. The first two years at university are basically a rehash of stuff you probably should have already learned in high school IMHO (Calculus, English Composition, humanities electives) and junior colleges are a great way to take those courses at affordable costs. One thing I…

CLEP credit is not often accepted at "top tier" universities.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#144

Post by dang »

golergka wrote: post #9
cletus wrote: post #2

Good. If nothing else, maybe it’ll help instill values of financial responsibility (I watched a report on crippling student debt where a woman went $150k in debt to get a theatre arts degree from NYU and now works as a waitress). There are actually lots of options to get a good education without breaking the bank. Transfer from community college is just one. Another is becoming a state resident for good state schools…

Honestly, I can't understand how people can sympathize with college students going into crippling debt any more than a proverbial Chinese teen who sold his kidney to purchase an iPhone (this news story from a couple of years ago probably was fake anyway). Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Would you please stop doing flamewars on HN? This isn't thoughtful discussion and it just leads to low-quality sniping.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#145

Post by thoth »

skookumchuck wrote: post #113
maxerickson wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, the more difficult/specialized the subject, the fewer available teachers. Plus, someone that knows calculus well enough to teach it likely has other job prospects (competitive pay).

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#146

Post by bogomipz »

scarface74 wrote: post #130
bogomipz wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 some…

>"Also, who better to have the opinion that a “well rounded” education is not all it’s cracked up to be"

Which is a very different statement than saying pursing a well-rounded educational experience is nothing more than "trying to ape the leisure classes."

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#147

Post by thoth »

skookumchuck wrote: post #114
ams6110 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#148

Post by HarryHirsch »

scarface74 wrote: post #74
HarryHirsch wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also take foundation classes for your major. Compare an introductory physics lecture from MIT or Berkeley you find online to your average community college class. At community college you find people with insufficient understanding of algebra so if something like Ohms Law comes up you have them memorize all three forms. This is a problem, you can't teach for understanding. As a student you find yourself in a situ…

How is that different than computer science? The only people I know that were successful at my unknown state college were people who were geeks and either already knew how to program or took an interest in it outside of class.

If you teach chemistry at community college you'll find that arrow-pushing and teaching reaction mechanisms is discouraged by faculty and resented by students because these things won't be on the test. But arrow pushing is a unifying concept that shows up everywhere; the sooner it is introduced, the better, as a chemist you really need to be familiar with the idea and its implications.

As a c.c student wishing to go further you have two problems: you need to discover the concepts that were not taught because they were "too difficult" and you need to gain familiarity with them, and that is easier with proper instruction,.

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#149

Post by rayiner »

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.

If I wanted to be a lawyer from the outset, I'd say the 8 years I spent in post-secondary school was about 5 years too long. That's not how they do it in England, for example, where law is a 3-year undergraduate major. I'm pretty critical of the fact that legal education has been taken over by academics--there is large and growing disconnect between the three years of mandatory schooling and anything you need to actually know as a lawyer. Shortening law school to one year plus a few years of apprenticeship would be vastly preferable.

My undergraduate degree is in aerospace engineering, and you do really need a 4-year degree to do that. You can't learn aeroelasticity on the job. But the traditional engineering disciplines (aero, chemical, mechanical, etc.), along with medicine and pure sciences are the exception. The vast majority of people don't need 4 years of post-secondary education, including many "professionals" (bankers, lawyers, etc.).

Re: Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges

#150

Post by nwallin »

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?

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 I only spent about $15k to get my bachelor's in computer science.

However, it's important to ensure that your intended university has an articulation agreement with whichever community college you're attending. In California, the IGETC certificates are accepted by all University of California and California State University campuses, and the CSU-GE Breadth certificates are accepted by all California State University campuses, but not UC campuses.

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