[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.