[wikibob]

Disagree.

Graduation rates are drastically lower from community colleges.

There is vastly less academic support available.

The people around you will be vastly less ambitious. This will rub off on you.

Yes 4 year university is now overpriced in America. But if you can, go to a 4 year university.

Yes maybe go to an in-state university instead of out of state if that is cheaper, or go where you get the best financial aid.

[RHSeeger]

Also, make sure that the college(s) you want to go to have a plan in place to accept transfers from the one you want to start at. It does you no good to get two years under your belt at college A in preparation for college B, then find out college B is going to make you start over because the credits don't transfer. Also, how hard is it to get a spot in college B as a transfer from college A. You should know this going in.

[pnw_hazor]

Depends on the schools I guess.

My peers at a top 10 public school didn't get nearly the pre-engineering education I got at a nearby community college.

Primarily because their core courses (math, physics, chemistry) were weed out courses for engineering and med school with 200-300 people in them. In contrast, my core courses had about 20-40 people in them.

Note, I am not claiming any prescience here. I didn't have a choice in the matter. I started my pre-engineering slog at Math 085 (Pre-Algebra 2, I think) at CC after four years in the Army.

Circumstances are much different for my kids, one went to Westpoint (USMA) and the other is going to a big state school, but she is in their honors college. So, honor college courses and AP credits have enabled her to bypass the weed-out jumbo core classes. And, I am paying for everything so loans are not a concern for her.

[serf]

>Graduation rates are drastically lower from community colleges.

how is that a useful metric for anything, really?

Look how many extra programs pull people into community colleges, and look at the difference in accessibility between community colleges and universities.

A stay-at-home mother isn't going to be eyeballing Stanford as a viable way to get her nursing degree with night classes. In the same instance, a stay-at-home mother who is using community college in order to get a degree necessarily has a lot more difficulty in managing her time and money than a university aged adult being sent to university by their parents with far fewer personal responsibilities and burdens.

The stay-at-home mother will necessarily have higher drop-out rates just simply from things that exist as burdens in their life from the get-go. As will the displaced worker who is being funded by the state for re-training at their local colleges.

University life is designed to reduce burden on the student in order to facilitate their learning. Comparing metrics like drop-out rates between universities and community colleges is wholly unfair. They both result in degrees, but they serve (mostly) different communities of people.

[SpicyLemonZest]

It's a metric of exactly what you're describing. Going to a community college means immersing yourself in a community of people who see academics as a more of a luxury and less of a necessity; people who have other priorities in life, and will only participate to the extent that it doesn't interfere with their more important goals and obligations.

[drngdds]

>They both result in degrees, but they serve (mostly) different communities of people.

Right - and if you're a recent high school grad with the grades to go to a good state school (not just Berkeley or whatever) and a desire to be around your peers while fully dedicating yourself to your education, you're not really in the target audience for community college.

[lonelappde]

I don't know. I have a friend who got a PhD from UW as a "stay at home mother".

[perl4ever]

What exactly is the negative consequence you are envisioning from 2 years at community college and 2 years at your in-state 4-year school, vs. all four years at the latter?

The typical alternative that people need to be guided away from is one of the for-profit "career" schools that doesn't have transferable credits and is way more expensive than community college.

[ForHackernews]

A lot of people I went to high school with chose to stay home and go to community college to figure things out. Most of them puttered around for a year or two, studying part time while working, eventually getting distracted and abandoning their degree plans.

I think I can count on one hand the kids who actually transferred to a 4-year university and finished their bachelors degree.

I guess dropping out of a community college is a less costly misfire than dropping out of an expensive 4-year university, but anecdotally the people who went straight to university tended to stay there and finish. Obviously, this wasn't a controlled study and the university crew were probably more academically-minded to start with, but it is an observation.

[electriclove]

Not sure why you are getting downvoted. What you said is actually true for many that go to community colleges. Do people disagree about this?

I think there are many positives to attend a community college first but there are also several drawbacks that need to be acknowledged.

[pnw_hazor]

Staying home and puttering around at a CC can be a better choice than spending time at a big school if you are not ready for it. Especially if you are paying private or non-resident tuition.

My daughter's freshmen dorm roommate should have stayed home. She spent much of her time pining for her boyfriend at home, rarely doing anything outside of class. She got pregnant by the boyfriend and now is dropped out. Kind of a bummer really, she is an under-represented minority who had a full-ride for Chemical Engineering.

[perl4ever]

Assuming it's true for many that go to community colleges, why are people so committed to the idea that it's cause and effect? What does this claimed pattern have to do with anything inherent about a community college?

Overspending to make a big commitment to something in the hopes that leads to success is generally, on average, terrible advice, in my opinion, even if you think there's some example of it working for somebody at some time.

[hn_throwaway_99]

The point is that a lot of people who go to community college who plan to finish at a state school don't actually make it to that state school.

I agree with the parent comment, the people in community college will tend to be less ambitious and it will likely affect you. This is not a knock on community college folks, it's just different people have different priorities.

I do think that there are many states with excellent public universities that are a comparably great bargain, especially if you can get scholarships.

[antasvara]

I'd love to see stats for this, as it seems to me that at the moment the majority of students that go to a community college were less likely to graduate regardless of plans to end up at a state school. It would be interesting to see graduation rates from community college and state college as a function of a student's high school GPA, as that would control for the potential lower quality of students in community college.

[AnimalMuppet]

I think they envision a lack of support and encouragement, and therefore the student dropping out or not finishing a degree.

[perl4ever]

Personally, I didn't succeed until I could ask for support, and that was completely independent of being at a private, public, community college, you name it.

I never even realized there was this negativity towards community college until recently, but I suspect it at some level amounts to astroturfing by their competitors, the miserable for-profit career schools that are everywhere. People will make bad decisions; I did after high school, but it's unconscionable to play on their vanity or low self esteem, telling them they're not good enough for a real college or that a real college isn't good enough for them, either way.

[pfranz]

In my experience Universities seem to actively filter students. Perhaps I didn't reach out (or the University I attended was particularly bad), but I don't remember much support services when I attended.

[ivarv]

I think OP was suggesting to go to a community college for the first two years, then transfer to a university for the second half of your undergrad. Most colleges (at least in Canada & US) have transferable credits at this level. I agree with OP that this is a good approach. In addition to being cheaper, the community college experience tends to be better in the first year or two because the instructor to student ratio in the mandatory courses tends to be better.

[netsharc]

As a EUian: look overseas. Many universities in Europe offer programs in English. It'll be an even mind-broadening experience, and it's significantly more affordable (I'll take this link from 2018 as a baseline: https://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/student-finance... ).

[sverhagen]

As a EUian, college in your own country could be near free, some fees but heavily government sponsored. For foreign students the pricing model is completely different, in fact this is the college's big cash cow, so that may make the equation very different for those you're so kindly inviting in. I'm all for the exchange experience, though!

[briandear]

> The people around you will be vastly less ambitious. This will rub off on you.

Most community college people I have encountered are extremely ambitious — they are working full time while busting ass to achieve in school. The myth that community college is a bastion of the academically weak is wrong. I saw plenty of people at my prestigious school with ambitions that centered around parties and getting laid.

[intrepidhero]

This was my experience as well. Pretty much everyone at CC was there to get an education, usually with specific employment goals. At University, it was more like 50%.

[phrodo]

Could it be that the perceived necessity of attending a 4 year school from the get-go is causing some of these issues? If the expectation is that good students go to 4 year schools, which I believe it currently is, then only the less ambitious students will go to community colleges. It's a positive feedback loop that could be broken by making prospective students aware of the financial and self-discovery benefits of community colleges.

Some of the best professors I had were at the community college I attended before transferring to a much larger 4 year school. The class sizes were smaller and they had more time to help their students than their 4 year school counterparts.

[jimbob45]

Hard disagree. You’ll find just as many unambitious individuals in any given first-year course at a university as you might at a CC. It’s a better investment all around.