
Middle-Class Families Increasingly Look to Community Colleges - ColMustang
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/05/education/learning/community-colleges-middle-class-families.html
======
gmays
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 home for the the duration (rent free as
long as I maintained a 3.5 GPA) so the full cost was only around $6,000.

This was in northern California (Modesto Junior College and Cal State
Stanislaus) with a relatively low cost of living. I know the costs have
increased since then (I went in the mid 2000's), but I assume it's still
relatively affordable.

~~~
KKKKkkkk1
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?

~~~
jobowoo
I was able to find this site that compares average income by where students
went to college.

CSU Stanislaus: $47,000 (early career), $90,300 (mid career) MIT: $81,500
(early career), $147,000 (mid career)

Early career is 0-5 years experience. Mid career is 10+ years experience.

[https://www.payscale.com/college-salary-
report/bachelors?pag...](https://www.payscale.com/college-salary-
report/bachelors?page=101)

Obviously, we can't say that prestige of college and income are causal but the
correlation is definitely there.

~~~
nradov
In order to establish some degree of causality we would have to look only at
the population of students accepted to both schools. That way you're starting
from a comparable baseline.

~~~
diablerouge
Also you'd have to control for major. MIT produces a lot of people working in
technical fields with a higher average income. Cal State awards a broader
range of degrees.

~~~
pkaye
Here is one only for computer science. [https://www.payscale.com/college-
salary-report/best-schools-...](https://www.payscale.com/college-salary-
report/best-schools-by-majors/computer-science?page=32)

------
mattnguyen
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 credits. 2.5 years
later, I transferred to a good university and graduated earlier than my high
school peers, saving tens of thousands of dollars. I had a blast during this
time, as it really helped shape my most formative years of development,
especially being exposed to so many diverse groups (as you would expect at a
community college).

Now my other younger family members are looking to my experiences and deciding
for themselves if the last two years of high school or first two years of
university education are important to them. Now they are taking the community
college route to save money, and they seem to understand that they can still
derive meaningful experiences and relationships.

~~~
maxerickson
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.

~~~
wil421
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.

~~~
Retric
Students are not equally skilled. The majority of students are not really a
collage level English and History and Math and Art class starting in 11th
grade, though a significant number could take a subset of those.

Simply making High School arbitrarily harder is kind of meaningless if most
students would fail the material.

~~~
phamilton
This sort of leads into competency based advancement rather than time based
advancement. Rather than having a 4 year program where you rank graduates by
competency (gpa), have a higher bar of competency and have people graduate at
different rates.

~~~
maxerickson
That's part of what I'm getting at when I talk about it being an available
track.

You can still have everybody lined up to finish ~17 or 18, just allow more
variation in what they have finished. If someone doesn't plan to go on to
college, maybe they don't need to take college prep math classes and can take
classes that will serve them better.

------
CuriouslyC
I went to a community college and transferred to a prestigious public
university.

In my experience, if you find a good community college, the high volume
classes tend to be better than they are at a big school. There are usually
less than 50 students (vs up to 400), the teachers actually enjoy teaching,
and the material is easy enough that the teachers understand it just as well
as top tier professors.

Honestly, California is the only state where I'd unabashedly recommend this
path though. The community colleges are consistently good, you have multiple
choices in terms of top tier public universities, and transfer students are
given priority.

~~~
scarface74
Why does the community college need to be "good"? Mostly you take classes
there that have nothing to do with your major.

~~~
HarryHirsch
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 situation like Feynman in Brazil. You sit
in class and have to teach yourself the material again properly yourself.

~~~
scarface74
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.

~~~
HarryHirsch
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,.

------
arenaninja
For me community college was the pathway to the middle class. I went to
several community colleges in the Los Angeles area (due to affordability,
proximity, availability of classes) and then transferred to the UC system. I
had 0 support besides the Cal Grant/Pell grant and my part time job

My kids will be strongly urged to go to community college, and I recommend it
to everyone I'm close to. I may have missed out on college friendships, but I
moved away after college anyway. I had about $13k loan debt at the end of 4
years, and I paid that off 2 years later even though it took me 9 months to
land a job (because I didn't study CS and went for web development)

~~~
nikhizzle
So for me, the college friendships that have persevered the most in to my late
30s were those made in community college. This is from 2 years spent in
community college, 2 years at a 4-year, and then 2 1/2 years in an unfinished
doctorate.

~~~
arenaninja
I can see that happening if you live at home. For me, between a job and
commuting to 2 different colleges during the week and sometimes doing the
Saturday classes I don't think I spent the amount of time it takes me to get
close to people with anyone.

------
nvarsj
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 university than it is
to apply out of high school. Community colleges are more diverse - you'll meet
a lot of older, experienced people, people working full time, and all ranges
which just isn't possible at elite universities. Community colleges in
California can also pay teachers more than the corresponding UC - so you'll
find UC professors doing classes at the local college to make extra cash.

However, I would always recommend to go to a single university for 4 years
_if_ you can afford it. Some of the teaching quality in community colleges is
just atrocious, unfortunately. A close friend of mine transferred into the UCB
physics program, and he really struggled - the undergrad math prep at
community college was a joke compared to what most of his fellow students had
done. I also believe it's better to experience the full curriculum as
intended. And there can be huge benefits to the dorm life.

~~~
epage
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.

~~~
nvarsj
That's awesome! I had one good math teacher for my differential equations
class. He had worked on rocket propulsion systems in the Navy, had a Ph.D from
MIT I believe. I wasn't quite sure why he was a full time teacher at CC -
maybe he just loved teaching differential equations to the masses. But he was
an exception, for sure.

------
quake
I only really decided to go into engineering late in my final year of high
school, and I used the local community college (conveniently located across
the street from my HS) to take all the calculus and computer science classes
that I didn't have covered. In a year, I covered my high school requirements,
and my first year of university calculus, computer science, chemistry and
physics. The class sizes were tiny, which was amazing, and to this day, I
still think my Calc II and Intro to Java professors were two of the best I've
ever had. I still have some of the textbooks my Java prof gave me from his own
collection because he thought I'd take them further than his lectures.

I transferred into a pretty hard to get into mechatronics program with an OK
GPA, but having a year and a half of post-secondary under my belt was a huge
bonus when the kids who were coming into engineering school straight out of
high school realized that our profs were just too busy to help.

It's really a path that I suggest to everyone that I've met who's just leaving
high school. Take some time, save some money, and if you're lucky, get better
student-prof interaction.

~~~
Balgair
DVC?

------
epistasis
Some of the large introductory classes at four year institutions are not so
great anyway, as many faculty would rather focus on research and classes that
feed in talented undergrads for summer research.

IMHO the biggest potential loss are the social connections that can develop
over four years versus just two. These can be crucial for friendship and for
career connections, depending on the field.

~~~
ams6110
I don't know about the social connections angle so much. If you're the type of
person who really gets into that, i.e, would be in a fraternity or sorority,
there are advantages. But as a more introverted/tech type person I didn't
maintain contact with any friends or roommates from college much at all after
graduation, nor they me. I can't point to any particular social connections
from college that benefited me afterwards.

~~~
epistasis
Fraternities and sororities are not anything like I mean.

I learn a lot from from college friends in other and the same fields. It
teaches me a lot about the world, which is essential for identifying new areas
for startups. I can bounce ideas off them and get feedback from entirely
different perspectives; college is a great base for developing broad set of
connections that all share at least a minimum amount of interest in critical
thought.

------
cletus
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 (eg UT Austin). This may require
delaying college for a year but that’s not so bad either. Yet another is ROTC.

I’m all for people asking “how much will this cost and how much will it
improve my economic prospects?”

At the high end I’m kinda sick of hearing FAAMG SWEs complain about not making
ends meet because they can’t afford a 5 bedroom house in Palo Alto as well as
pay $400k per child to send them to a top tier private school so it’s not like
the need for learning financial responsibility is limited to the middle class.

~~~
golergka
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.

~~~
h0p3
Try empathizing instead of merely sympathizing.

~~~
scarface74
I was unable to "empathize" with people early in my career who were
complaining about "crippling student loan debt" that were sitting right next
to me, making the same amount I was when I went to an unknown state college
and graduated with no debt.

It especially makes no sense to me for a resident of GA to ever go to a
private college when you can get free tuition via the HOPE scholarship to go
to well known public schools like GA Tech. If you get accepted to GA Tech,
more than likely your grades and test scores were high enough to qualify for
HOPE. If they weren't, you shouldn't be spending money going to an expensive
private college anyway.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I don't know what it's like in the US but in the UK there is a relentless
pressure on students to go to University and take on huge debts. There aren't
many people at age 18 who have the ability to ignore what every adult around
them is telling them and say no.

~~~
scarface74
I'm assuming an 18 year old has parents that should be guiding them.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
It's hard to blame an 18 year old for their parents advice.

------
oculusthrift
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 students at UC schools have to go back and take
freshman and sophmore level classes. (total could end up taking 6 years
overall)

\- All the other students when you transfer are already friends and have
relationships with the professors and local businesses. Whose going to get the
prestigious research position, the new guy or the one whose been bonding and
proving themselves to the professor for 2 years? Same goes for internships.

\- Who you spend time with shapes who you are. If you are a bright individual,
it can be frustrating or depressing being around some of your peers in CC. My
girlfriend took an online cc class where they had to submit a paragraph to
their class forum. Two students literally copy and pasted her response word
for word.

~~~
technofiend
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.

~~~
monocasa
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.

------
jfaucett
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 would recommend - even over community college - is taking CLEP
tests. I found out about them a little late but was still able to clep 2 years
worth of spanish and french which meant I got credit for around 8 courses for
a grand total of $160 bucks. I also clep'd most of my humanities electives
like history and sociology. It requires some personal effort i.e. find a
textbook at your local library and read and study it - but is definitely worth
it from a time/costs perspective.

Anyways, I wanted to mention it because a lot of people don't know about CLEP
tests and they saved me literally thousands of dollars (in junior college
classes costs, probably 50k if you compared it to a top tier university).

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

------
zitterbewegung
I went from a community college with an associates to a bachelor degree
program. On one hand some of my credits didn’t transfer over to my state
college . But on the other hand I got a great gpa, figured out that college
was a good fit and got my bachelors in CS.

I also was able to compile a weather model at a weather forecasting class . I
took Hapkido and got my purple belt . I had a bunch of fun and became
treasurer at the philosophy club. I learned Linux and Python at the local
Linux club . My community college experience was great !

~~~
protomyth
_On one hand some of my credits didn’t transfer over to my state college_

That’s why I am very glad North Dakota adopted a common course numbering so
all the credits transfer.

------
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.

------
internetman55
That's what I did and it was lit. Worked at kmart for a year then pretty much
paid my tuition out of savings. Stood way out in all my classes. Got transfer
scholarship to my state flagship. If money isn't an issue I guess four years
could be better, but it seems pretty good to use CCs.

~~~
jdavis703
Maybe you're opposed to using government aid which is fine; but if you had to
work to pay for community college you probably could've qualified for Pell
Grants that would have paid for everything since community college is so
cheap.

~~~
throwawayjava
_> Maybe you're opposed to using government aid which is fine_

It's also worth pointing out that Pell Grants for CC tuition often constitute
_less_ public money than you were consuming during K-12.

------
kchoudhu
Good.

There's nothing I learned in the first two years of an extremely expensive
private school that wouldn't have been sorted out living at home and going to
community college.

~~~
golergka
Would you be able to make the same connections in a community college?

~~~
scarface74
That's the purpose of transferring after two years.

~~~
kchoudhu
Indeed.

------
bane
I had a poor high school experience and barely graduated without an SAT score.
To eat I had to go to work immediately. I didn't realize for several years
that I could get into the local CC without an SAT score.

When I did, I started taking remedial classes, trying to rebuild what I should
have learned in high school. After a couple years I entered a real major,
graduated with a couple A.S. degrees and an almost 4.0. It cost something like
$50/credit hour when I went. I think the entire program cost me under $5k.
Today, it's about $12k. I think I still could have swung it by just adding
another year.

This got me immediate entrance in the local state school where I entered as a
Junior and finished up my undergraduate degree -- again while working full
time. It was paid for almost entirely by grants. I think it was a little over
$10 for those final two years. Today it's about double again. Harder, but
again, doable.

I had to work full-time the entire time, got married in the middle, it took me
almost 7 years, but at every increment I was able to use my advancing
education to get radically better jobs.

Later I went back, got an M.S., but this time I had a few years of high paying
tech jobs and I just wrote a check every semester. It also wasn't terribly
expensive.

The CC covered all of the core courses I could have possibly wanted, and the
instructors were pretty much as good as what I encountered at state school. In
fact, of my professors, most of the ones who were the _most_ dedicated to
educating their students were my CC professors. When I entered University, I
was incredibly prepared for the academic life there and had no problem making
it through the program with another near 4.0 GPA.

If I had a second chance, I would follow this route again, even if I had money
and better opportunity growing up. I also found many life-long friends at CC
who were on a similar life-path and it's been enjoyable watching each other as
we progress in our careers.

The stigma about CC's have to stop and the place it needs to die is in the
high schools. Many kids come out of college counseling classes at high school
thinking that if they don't go to an Ivy that they're basically going to fail
out of life and end up dead from a cheap drug overdose. For most people, it
matters approximately zero percent in their day to day work lives. I and my
old CC friends routinely work with people who went to far better and more
expensive schools than I did and have found plenty of workforce success.

------
x0ner
During the early part of high school, a few friends and I began attending
community college night classes for subjects we got exposed to in our day
classes. By the time I graduated, I was half-way through a AAS degree and
considered continuing locally a no-brainer.

Ended up transferring 70 credits or so over to a four-year institution 1 year
after graduating high school and managed to walk away with a BS degree earlier
than my peers and with no debt. Without community college, there's no way I
would have achieved this; I owe a lot to that part of the system.

For many years, I felt like an imposter because of my community college
background. The irony in it all though was that for a much cheaper, often more
flexible schedule, and sometimes better teachers, I walked away with a lot of
the same opportunity as my peers. Naturally, my "network" wasn't filled with
ivy-leaguers, but I'd later rub shoulders with them in my employment and be
considered equal.

More details around hacking through education:
[https://medium.com/@9bplus/hacking-the-education-
process-1be...](https://medium.com/@9bplus/hacking-the-education-
process-1be6c972b82)

------
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.

------
paulie_a
For any parents in this thread, some states do allow students to "graduate
early" from highschool but get free college credits, in Wisconsin it was
called the student option program. I got my first 12 credits in my senior year
of high school

------
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.

------
Dowwie
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 narrowing?

~~~
throwawayjava
_> 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?_

CCs offer 2 tracks.

Track 1: college prep. Students take a year or two of courses and then
transfer to a 4 year institution.

For this track, the "trustworthy signal of competence" is by far the most
important aspect of the product. So for CCs offering this track, your question
is a bit ill-formed. You're basically asking "aside from the most important
thing, what else is important?"

Track 2: Terminal associates degrees for students who will enter a trade
immediately out of CC.

For this track, at least sometimes, MOOCs don't work as well because you need
hands-on experience. Often, you also need connections to local institutions
(for setting up volunteer hours and for job placement). IMO MOOCs shouldn't
even try to focus on this track, at least for certain trades like nursing.

 _> Are the value gaps narrowing?_

For track 2, it depends on the trade, but mostly no.

For track 1, MOOCs need to figure out the assessment problem and provide
compelling evidence to higher ed that completing a MOOC is a strong signal of
future success.

Finally, it's worth pointing out that MOOCs work well for some types of
students (I wish they had been an option for me), but do not work at all for
other types of students.

------
kelukelugames
I took classes at the local juco as a high school students. I met three types
of people. The first were kids like me who all ended up at good schools. The
second were older, actually junior college students. They were smart and
worked hard. They ended up at decent schools too. The last were people didn't
do well. That was either due to motivation or other factors.

The middle group was the smallest by size.

------
peter303
The first semester of calculas at MIT covered the same material as three
semesters of calculas I took at the community college while in high school.
You could interpret this two ways: (1) some schools just go faster than others
and cover more material or (2) at MIT you had to work hard to keep up at that
pace. While in high school and CC you could breeze through the slower
presentation.

------
SubiculumCode
My science and math classes were much more rigorous at my community college
than they were at a major 4-year university. Yes, there are a lot of fluff
courses and people at community colleges in respect to an aspiring academic
and/or professional, but in general the science and mathematics courses are
filled with serious people. AND SO MUCH CHEAPER.

------
marinman
As a capable yet ambition-less high schooler, community college saved my
family tens of thousands of dollars. I do sometimes wonder if I missed
something with the dorm experience but from an ROI perspective, it was stellar
for me. One anecdote doesn’t mean it’s applicable for all but I’d recommend it
for many circumstances

------
your-nanny
Community college gave me transfer agreement to UC Davis. I went to UCLA
instead, though I think I would have happier at Davis.

Anyway, at UCLA, all the most motivated students went to community college
first (the ones in the department undergrad club, the one in honors research
programs, the ones who eventually got phds)

~~~
SubiculumCode
Did the same, but went to Davis. Transfer agreements rock. Now I got my phd at
Davis.

------
PrimHelios
As they should be. Just finishing up my 2 year college and I'm about to
transfer to a much larger (and more prestigious) state school for my BS and
MS. It's turned out a whole hell of a lot cheaper using a community college
than paying $23k for four semesters.

------
aswanson
I took a summer community college class in C back in the day. Great
instructor, was well worth it.

------
rdlecler1
I went to community college for two years before transferring to University.
Great experience. I felt the focus on teaching over research and the smaller
class sizes helped me transition to University and better appreciate learning.
And I saved a lot of money.

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rayiner
I don’t understand all this talk about “connections” made in 4 year colleges,
as if that’s a good thing. Isn’t it intensely anti-meritocratic and something
to be discouraged, not encouraged?

~~~
xexers
> Isn’t it intensely anti-meritocratic and something to be discouraged, not
> encouraged?

Life is not fair. You may as well learn to play the game as the rules actually
are as apposed to what they "should" be.

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Simulacra
I think community colleges are a great solution, particularly for those that
are pretty much the same anywhere you go. Certainly cheaper.

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a2tech
Its time for the country to stop watching television and thinking thats how
they should be (almost everyone on television either lives an upper-middle
class life, or is a terribly smart poor person). Most Americans CAN NOT afford
college right now-not without going so helplessly in debt as to be a wage
slave for the rest of their life (or even worse cash out their parents hard
won gains to pay for their useless degree)

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swiley
If you go to a four year university with no credits at all and you're not
getting a full ride, you're doing it wrong.

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sokoloff
While I support other choices, I went to MIT all years without a full
scholarship and would absolutely do it that way again.

~~~
lotsofpulp
The networking and branding opportunities at elite schools make them worth
almost any price compared to other schools.

