| I cannot agree with you more. I'm also in that broad spectrum of "millennial college graduate" -- specifically, my college years were during the beginning of the last financial crisis (the 2008 "great recession"). I remember the stigma about going to community college (even in the Bay Area, California) when all my high school peers were going straight to Stanford, UC Berkeley, Brown, etc. But I remember that the CC classes were tough, afforded me a ton of independence and personal responsibility, and to my surprise, found my professors were also concurrently teaching at Stanford or UC Berkeley. The CC had guaranteed transfer agreements with certain University of California (UC) campuses, and also had a neat program called https://assist.org which allows students to be smart about mapping the relevant CC courses with the equivalent [transferable] courses at the 4-year institution of choice. I saved a ton of money, worked my way through CC, took a gap year to work full-time to save up (and/or internships to build my resume), and was able to graduate UC in only 1.5 years afterwards (while also working on campus). E.g. 2 years CC + 1.5 years UC. Sure, I missed out on some college experiences, but I matured quick, it allowed me to ride out the recession into a very strong position, and I cannot recommend it enough to young folks today. Especially today. For those wondering, I graduated into a down market, but ended up in various tech and engineering positions, with no discernible difference between my peers who had gone straight to Stanford or Brown or wherever else -- and in most cases, I somehow [luckily?] ended up faring a lot better than most of them. Lastly -- your resume will only reflect the diploma from the 4-year institution, not that anyone's asked, but you do not get put into a second-tier or second-class position because you started at a CC and transferred into a UC or 4-year, which I recall, was one of my early worries when I was starting. I'd love to reverse the stigma about CC's, because I'm immensely proud whenever I see other CC success stories -- it is the path less taken, and in many cases a lot harder upfront because of that stigma and the amount of independence and personal responsibility involved -- but I think the dividends can be rewarding long-term. |