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More than a third of community college students have vanished

seattletimes.com

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Re: More than a third of community college students have vanished

#31

Post by scottLobster »

My wife briefly (a couple of semesters) tried to go through a software development curriculum at our community college, which is apparently decently funded as community colleges go.

Having gone through a 4-year Bachelor's in Computer Engineering at an ABET accredited university, the community college program was pathetic by comparison. There was one professor who seemed to have his shit together and worth the money. The rest were clearly half-assing it, assignments were poorly explained, grading was ludicrously pedantic (red marks for number of spaces on indentations in hand-written HTML), and the curriculum didn't structure prerequisites adequately so if you didn't know any better you'd be learning how to use a command line for the first time while someone is trying to teach you about RLC circuits with Arduino. It was quite bizarre, and they were clearly mostly dealing with the dregs who couldn't make it in a more serious university or in industry.

I guess I can't blame them, I can't imagine a community college teaching position pays all that well. But the only reason to go through that program is to do the bare minimum required for 2 years to trade up to a superior four year program at a major university, and you'll probably have to do a lot of remedial work when you get there.

Re: More than a third of community college students have vanished

#32

Post by screwturner68 »

causi wrote: post #26
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is usually a path for two years of cheaper community college with transferable credits to two final years at a state university.

Problem being that community colleges will happily lie to your face about what does and does not transfer and most community college students aren't going to lawyer up about it.

That's more on the universities end than the CC, I used to see it all the time. The community colleges would have agreements with many universities but when you'd as the uni to accept your credits they wouldn't and you'd spend 6 months fighting it. I took a calculus class at Purdue over the summer and tried to transfer it to Indiana and they flatly rejected it -same state, same class, won't accept it. Everybody has their little fiefdom and they will fight to the death to keep it.

Re: More than a third of community college students have vanished

#33

Post by the_only_law »

scottLobster wrote: post #31

My wife briefly (a couple of semesters) tried to go through a software development curriculum at our community college, which is apparently decently funded as community colleges go. Having gone through a 4-year Bachelor's in Computer Engineering at an ABET accredited university, the community college program was pathetic by comparison. There was one professor who seemed to have his shit together and worth the money.…

I was at a community college for a couple months after high school before leaving for a full time job. Frankly, it just felt like high school, except I paid for it directly.

I’m sure there are very good community colleges all across the nation, unfortunately, education isn’t something you can really shop around for.

Re: More than a third of community college students have vanished

#34

Post by kaycebasques »

legitster wrote: post #20

I had a wonderful time at community college! (It helps that my community college had an amazing service department). Even for people who don't finish a degree, it's still a great place to get exposure or make connections. And it's much cheaper to find out college isn't for you at community college. Transfer programs though are a mess. The culprit are the 4-year universities - who actually punish you for not coming di…

> Transfer programs though are a mess

Depends on the state. IGETC [1], the transfer program from California community colleges to the UC system, was very straightforward back in 2007-2009. Cal had a few dorm buildings specifically for transfer students. Each UC even provided stats on the admission rate for each major.

[1] https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/admission-requi...

Re: More than a third of community college students have vanished

#35

Post by gremlinsinc »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #11
banannaise wrote: post #7

The headline reads like the setup to a true crime podcast. It took me a moment to figure out what they were actually trying to say.

I thought it was more like the premise to a Lost derivative TV show

I'm glad I'm not alone, this is where Reddit would've shined, someone always nails the comment like these.

Re: More than a third of community college students have vanished

#36

Post by screwturner68 »

mjburgess wrote: post #15
etempleton wrote: post #8

It is a bit of paradox that community colleges are, in theory, what every talking head and commentator are asking colleges to be—direct, cheap, no frill, about the education only—and yet there is no other college type that is seeing a more precipitous enrollment drop off than community colleges and technical schools. The answer, and no one likes this, is what people say they want and what they actually want as voted…

The issue is network effects, though, right? If community colleges could attract the best teachers (etc.), and provide the kind of education as stated , then perhaps they would be what people want. The problem is the incentives of workers, academics, students, the state, etc. are not aligned. Most students probably do want the best practical education to get them into the workforce effectively -- but those who can pr…

CC actually do have some of the best teachers, they may not have some of the best research professors you get at a high-end school but they are actual teachers as opposed to grad assistants or a research guy who really doesn't want to teach. Further, even at your high-end schools most of the teachers are contract workers no different than any other college. I take classes at a CC down the road, the guy that taught one of my classes also teaches at two other universities, one that's a top 10 uni and another that's just an expensive private school -same teacher,same class, wildly different cost.

Re: More than a third of community college students have vanished

#37

Post by nverno »

screye wrote: post #18

Universities are about a few things: 1. Education - Inspiration and job training 2. High-achieving peer groups 3. Prestige and signalling 4. Fun and independence Online courses do #1 better than CCs. Dorms are essential to #4, so CCs miss out on it. There is no prestige associated with CCs and the titular community isn't especially high achieving. What value do CCs provide ?

They are stepping stones to 4-year degrees for many people. As the article mentioned, most people in CCs are planning to graduate from a university, but stuff happens.

They have some incredible transfer opportunities, where you can get half the cost of a state school for pennies on the dollar.

Re: More than a third of community college students have vanished

#38

Post by musictubes »

When I decided to go to grad school in Econ I had to take all the math classes I didn’t take during my undergrad years. Community college was the obvious choice. I had 2 really good professors and one hack. This was from 2002-2005.

I also tried to take a “fun” class each time I took a math class just to break up the grind. Creative writing was an eye opener. Most of the stuff turned in was dreadful, sometimes in style/substance but especially in effort. Short stories meant 2 paragraphs for a lot of them. The final story of the semester was supposed to be the culmination of the class. I turned in a 7 page story. While several people were enthusiastic about reading it for critique most were not. One guy even told me, “I’m sure it’s good but dude, I’m never going to reading anything that long.”

I asked the prof about the lack of effort and awful results from the class. I was in a BFA program in film and photography for undergrad and the critique sessions were intense. Part of what drove us, me at least, was fear of embarrassing myself in front of everyone with lousy work. This creative writing class was an elective and presumably the people that signed up for it should have been at least interested in the topic.

She said that you have to understand that most of the people there were really pushing themselves to be at college at all. Most had never developed successful academic habits or understood what it takes to seriously engage with a topic. “That’s why they are at community college instead of a 4 year school” was left unsaid but was clearly implied.

I’m of the opinion that marginal students, either in skill or interest, are more likely to just not try college at all these days instead of wasting their money and time. That’s actually a good thing IMO.

Re: More than a third of community college students have vanished

#39

Post by humanrebar »

jseliger wrote: post #12
etempleton wrote: post #8

It is a bit of paradox that community colleges are, in theory, what every talking head and commentator are asking colleges to be—direct, cheap, no frill, about the education only—and yet there is no other college type that is seeing a more precipitous enrollment drop off than community colleges and technical schools. The answer, and no one likes this, is what people say they want and what they actually want as voted…

I've taught at community colleges; many of the issues mentioned in the article are long-standing. So what's driving the change now ? The simplest answer is the most likely: the strong economy, including among relatively low wage, low skill workers.

...combined with the selection bias that means community colleges disproportionately enroll "relatively low wage, low skill workers" that would most appreciate "direct, cheap, no frill, about the education only".

That is, the talking heads might not be wrong about what they think community colleges are getting right.

Re: More than a third of community college students have vanished

#40

Post by [deleted] »

scottLobster wrote: post #31

My wife briefly (a couple of semesters) tried to go through a software development curriculum at our community college, which is apparently decently funded as community colleges go. Having gone through a 4-year Bachelor's in Computer Engineering at an ABET accredited university, the community college program was pathetic by comparison. There was one professor who seemed to have his shit together and worth the money.…

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