[throwawayjava]

I wish I could upvote this a million times.

Your first point is 100% spot on.

Your second point deserves a caveat: CS does mean something at colleges/universities. they almost all follow the ACM model curriculum:

- CS I -> CS II -> Data Structures

- Discrete Math and Calculus I

- A smattering of available electives from a few fairly uniform buckets (SE,DB,OOP; OS,PL; ML/AI; theory,algorithms).

Contents of courses change (true in Math also! Biz Calc vs. Eng Calc vs. Honors/Advanced Calc). But overall shape stays the same. Can't guarantee outcomes, but can guarantee intent.

Unlike colleges/universities, at the national level, CCs have a serious cruft issue in CS/IT. It's totally impossible to tell what someone might know from the name of the degree program alone. Not even overall shape of curriculum is obvious.

IMO there's a simple solution: CCs nation-wide should pare down everything into a few specific named degrees:

1. Associates in CS Foundations: basically ACM without electives. Designed for transfer to a BA/BS.

2. Associates in Software Development: the non-math portion of ACM + some pragmatic courses (e.g., databases and web dev). Can have various version of this marketed as "AS in SD with Emphasis in ___" where ___ is chosen according to local/regional labor market. E.g., most bootcamps are somewhat like "AS in SD with an Emphasis in Web Development using <stack here>".

3. Associates in Information Technologies: catch-all for the stuff that doesn't even fulfill the non-math, non-elective portion of the ACM model. So "VBA scripting", "Networking aka CISCO certs", "Database Administrator aka Oracle&MS certs", "Applications aka MS Office+Web publishing", etc. degrees currently offered by CCs. Again, various versions can be marketed as "AS in Information Technologies with Emphasis in ___"

These issues might not be recognizable to folks in states like California with amazing CC systems, but in most of America, just figuring out which of the half dozen similar-sounding "IT/CS" associates degrees you want is a serious problem. And very often the answer is "none" because all gazillion of them fit into bucket #3 and you're really looking for bucket 1 or 2.

[srtjstjsj]

You don't really need an associates in CS foundations, since all the "CS" part of CS is upper level (except for the most advanced students who start elite Bachelors universities with 1-2 years of university coursework from high school). Just take some basic liberal arts math and intro programming during your AA, then you are ready to apply for CS Backelors program.

[throwawayjava]

> Just take some basic liberal arts math and intro programming during your AA, then you are ready to apply for CS Bachelors program. You don't really need an associates in CS foundations

Well, you can say the same for pretty much every curriculum ever: "we don't need a named degree, just have students figure out what courses they need to take".

Concretely, here's what happens in practice. A student does not know what to take and tells their counselor they are interested in transferring into a four-year CS degree. So student then ends up in:

- standard college prep courses (Algebra, Calc, and liberal artsy stuff), and

- some totally random stuff for the CS part. Might be programming. Might be VBA (won't transfer) or Java (might transfer). Might be a CISCO prep course. Who knows! And unless the student knows and fights, they end up wasting time.

Making a separate track that's explicitly "pre-college CS" avoids this confusion. And after all, part of the value add of a formal education is that someone who knows what you need to know organizes the curriculum for you.

So what you say is true, but there are still strong advantages for both the student and the institution to having a separate, explicit pre-college track.