[scottLobster]

My wife briefly (a couple of semesters) tried to go through a software development curriculum at our community college, which is apparently decently funded as community colleges go.

Having gone through a 4-year Bachelor's in Computer Engineering at an ABET accredited university, the community college program was pathetic by comparison. There was one professor who seemed to have his shit together and worth the money. The rest were clearly half-assing it, assignments were poorly explained, grading was ludicrously pedantic (red marks for number of spaces on indentations in hand-written HTML), and the curriculum didn't structure prerequisites adequately so if you didn't know any better you'd be learning how to use a command line for the first time while someone is trying to teach you about RLC circuits with Arduino. It was quite bizarre, and they were clearly mostly dealing with the dregs who couldn't make it in a more serious university or in industry.

I guess I can't blame them, I can't imagine a community college teaching position pays all that well. But the only reason to go through that program is to do the bare minimum required for 2 years to trade up to a superior four year program at a major university, and you'll probably have to do a lot of remedial work when you get there.

[screwturner68]

I don't know if that was the schools issue or what is going on in higher-education in general. I've been out of college for over 30 years but I like to take a class every year to learn things -I like a classroom setting. The first time I did this it was at the local CC and the prof was really behind the times are far as what is going on in industry, I learned a lot of good basics but I felt bad for the other students because they were learning stuff that was relevant 5 years ago. That said the students were fucking horrible, they were on their phones or playing games on the computers and didn't contribute or pay very much attention. The prof didn't seem to care and gave everyone an A because he didn't want to figure out Virtual Box. I've taken other classes at other universities, some of the best in the country and I'm not particularly impressed some are good and others are indifferent, like so many things you get out what you put in and you can't rely on a prof to inspire you.

[scottLobster]

Perhaps not "inspire", but if you can't rely on the prof for adequate direction and explanation what the hell are you paying for?

[the_only_law]

I was at a community college for a couple months after high school before leaving for a full time job. Frankly, it just felt like high school, except I paid for it directly.

I’m sure there are very good community colleges all across the nation, unfortunately, education isn’t something you can really shop around for.