[eikenberry]

This isn't restricted to untraditional schools. At least one of our local state universities have stopped accepting credits from the community colleges due to the practice of transferring for the final couple years. Might be something similar going on here. It might be that they want the degree to represent the full 4 year experience at the school or it might just be the money. The cynic in me prefers the latter.

[topkai22]

If that was happening in my state I’d definitely be writing my representatives to take action and change that- transferability to a university while being able to live at home and pay less was quite explicitly one of the points of having a community college system when I was growing up.

[throwawaygh]

Many state universities changed those transfer policies when states made deep higher ed budget cuts during the great recession. The alternative in our state was closing branch campuses (thereby making college even less accessible for most of the state).

Lots of universities in the US are lavish and expensive. Our state's branch campuses are the definition of utilitarian. Tuition is some of the lowest in the country. Salaries for professors at the branch campuses are lower than what we pay our high school teachers. Very little admin overhead. There's simply not much to cut.

Anyways, not saying it's right. But if you cut higher ed budgets, higher ed will get more expensive to the end user. Especially if the system was already hyper-efficient. Limiting transfer credits is pretty much the only way to make things more expensive to the end user without increasing tuition.

[topkai22]

Sounds like the set up in your state is to have branch campuses try to serve many of the needs that community colleges serve (or used to serve) in my state.

Whatever the setup, I think it is access to higher education at as local level is important.

[xythian]

A number of states ended up enacting laws to solve this exact problem. Lawmakers had to force the big state universities to accept transfer credits from community and regional colleges.

[non-entity]

> Might be something similar going on here. It might be that they want the degree to represent the full 4 year experience at the school or it might just be the money. The cynic in me prefers the latter.

Everything I've ever heard about and learned of the college admissions and pricing situation makes me prefer that latter.

[uopeoplestudent]

That's surprising. Around me it's mostly been the opposite with schools signing transfer agreements and the community colleges developing programs specifically for students who plan to transfer.

Though, in the case of UoPeople, it's purely about nationally accreditation lacking the prestige (and sometimes rigor) of regional accreditation. It's been that way for at least a couple of decades since I started reading up on higher ed.

[cguess]

A degree says something about the student. I completely understand why universities would not want to accept credits from school below their own qualification level. If they confer a degree to a student that student is representing the university's education quality to everyone that hires them or works with them.

Spending three years at a community college and expecting the credits to transfer to a major university makes no sense for the institution. At that point they did a minority of your training, why would they recommend you?

[pfranz]

I follow your logic, but I really think it's about money since they also put up barriers for testing out of classes.

Usually, a strong state-run community college program lets an Associates degree earned at a community college transfer into any public state university as a Junior. Most non-degree focused classes directly transfer. Going between states (staying in the same regional accreditation) seems to be difficult and not all states are set up like I had described. The theory being that someone who isn't quite ready for university has an opportunity to catch up and in my experience it gives more options when popular prerequisites are full. So the state has a reason to push for this.

I'm also skeptical about universities pointing to their qualification level because I've interviewed graduates from many well known universities and was kind of floored at the basic things many candidates seemed completely unfamiliar with.

Nationally accredited organizations don't have anyone pushing for this relationship. This seems to generally work for those schools because they can advertise as accredited, get a fig leaf of transferring credits, but usually want you to stay and complete tranning there. Most tend to be vocational which makes a lot of that moot.

[TedDoesntTalk]

Your example (3 years) is extreme. I could not get 15 CS credits to transfer from one private, 2nd tier US college to another (Boston university). BU refused and i took the classes again and paid for them twice. It put me in the rare position of being able to compare the quality of education at the two institutions side by side.

[skinnymuch]

Hah! Don’t leave us hanging. What was your experience between the two for classes?

I took some community college programming classes in NJ and NYC. Didn’t have to repeat the ones I did. I was in awe at how weak the curriculum was in both cases. It’s not the student’s faults imo that their programming skills were lacking. The classes weren’t challenging.

Yet some of them eventually transferred to State Uni for comp sci. It really amazed me. Wonder how they fared and if that just means that specific state school is just really easy too.

[awirth]

I'd be curious to hear your observations. I did BA/MS at BU in CS (CAS of course) and found the classes often hit or miss, but the ones that were good were really good. That being said, I did have an interest in theoretical CS while many CS undergrads do not, which is what the department emphasizes.

[TedDoesntTalk]

The student:professor ratios at Boston University CS classes were much higher. I didn't realize the importance of that until i had this comparison with the other institution.

It led to many fewer questions by students, teachers assistants (something the other institution did not have and did not need because one professor could attend to all of his students), and in general less interaction between students with each other and with professors/TAs.

The curriculum at both were essentially the same for this set of classes.

[eikenberry]

I agree except for the fact that these are both state run public schools, part of the same state school system. Citizens should be able to switch between them freely based on the needs of the time and how they wish to pursue their education.

[pnw_hazor]

CCs don't teach Junior or Senior (300 or 400 lv) courses. If you stay at one longer than two years it is because you are going part-time or started with college-prep courses.

I spent 3 years (including Summers) at a CC then transferred into a top 10 engineering program. The 'extra' time was required because I needed to take a year of math classes before calculus.

And IMO, the CC's pre-engineering program left me better prepared for the university's department/major coursework than some of my peers who started at the university.

[rootusrootus]

> Spending three years at a community college

This makes no sense. Spend as long as you want at the community college, transfer all the credits you want, by definition they will all be 1xx or 2xx classes. Your degree will require half the classes to be 3xx & 4xx, so you will always have to spend at least two years at the university.

[cancerSpreads]

The STEM in me says, it should all be the same.

[pvg]

one of our local state universities have stopped accepting credits from the community colleges

Do you remember which state and university?