[TomVDB]

My daughter decided to defer going to ‘real’ college for a year to figure out what she wanted to do: why spend all the money when you haven’t figured out things anyway?

She enrolled at a highly rated local community college and signed up for some difficult classes and she was very much not impressed: the pace of instruction was very slow, the students unmotivated (not doing homework, not participating during class), and the overall level of instruction often easier than what she had in high school.

It’s an excellent way to get some garden variety general courses off you plate at low cost and low effort, but, in her case, it was not a substitution of the real thing.

[caseymarquis]

Having attended both types of college, I actually had the opposite experience. At the community college, I was taught entry level classes by PHds who taught purely for enjoyment. The students were largely very motivated and professional. The university I attended was decent (top 60s), but all my direct interactions were with graduate TAs, many of whom struggled with the English language. The students mostly just wanted to party and constantly needed their hands held.

Most likely I just got lucky. My main point is that anecdata isn't very good data.

[romwell]

>by PHds who taught purely for enjoyment

Yeeeeeah, right.

Signed, PhD working in the industry.

[astura]

I'd have to agree, I took a couple community college classes over the summer (I was enrolled in a 4-year college) to get some credits out of the way.

WOW, the classes were so much easier than what I would expect from high school classes. It was honestly shocking they were giving out college credit.

[asdfman123]

I took Spanish at community college and it was a breeze. I rushed through all my assignments in class and spent the rest of the time spacing out. Felt like middle school all over again.

[TomVDB]

I had forgotten about my Spanish course at the local community college.

During finals of Spanish 103, we had to make some small conversation. Some students couldn’t string 4 words together.

At the end of the test, the teacher says “you all get an A” and that was that.