[mhurron]

You already know this but University and Community College are not the same thing, and they don't offer the same things.

Even throwing that out as a valid alternative simply continues the position of only those who have money are worthy of getting knowledge.

[Amezarak]

You can go to a community college for two years and then transfer to a four-year university, which will generally save substantial amounts of money.

[moron4hire]

This is actually a bit of a boondoggle, because your university will either not recognize your community college credits, or they will have their own requirements likely to be incompatible with the credits you took at community college, leaving those first two years basically wasted. So you get to pay for 2 years at a community college, then 4 years at a university. That's not saving money.

Hell, it might not even work to transfer from one university to another! I transferred after 2 years at a satellite campus of Penn State (where the curriculum is identical to the main campus) to a state school, stayed in Computer Science, and had to cram 4 years of CS at that school into 3 years just to be able to cut some of my losses because apparently taking intro to CS at a school that does it in C means you have to take it over again in a school that does it in Java.

[Amezarak]

> This is actually a bit of a boondoggle, because your university will either not recognize your community college credits, or they will have their own requirements likely to be incompatible with the credits you took at community college, leaving those first two years basically wasted.

Well, you certainly can't do it willy-nilly - you need to have a idea of where you're going after community college and what your major is. Generally, most community colleges work with local universities to ensure that their programs will transfer wholesale if you take the prescribed courses, which do not necessarily match up with what the community college recommends for other students.

I have indeed heard a lot of horror stories about transferring credits in general between universities or colleges - if the institutions don't have a relationship that keeps transfer students in mind it seems you're pretty much boned.

I did this, following community college direction, and all my courses transferred and I wasn't set back at all, though I was highly front-loaded on general education rather than CS-specific courses. At the time community college tuition and fees was $800/semester, while university tuition and fees was $5000/semester. That would have been a substantial savings! As it was, I really lost money, because I would have qualified for a full scholarship to my university academically anyway, but I lost it since transferred in and ended up paying the next three years (one year of grad school) out of my minimum-wage-earning pocket.

[VLM]

Another way to work it is CLEP tests. If they don't accept a transfer credit for ... american history or whatever, but you took the class, and they do accept CLEP tests and those aren't terribly hard... Note there are exam fees and transfer fees to consider, usually nominal.

My personal experience at a couple schools is the smaller the school the more often exceptions will be granted. Or maybe rephrased across all sizes of school the (someone) will grant 10 exceptions per year and maybe 1% of students will try to get an exception, which is awesome odds if its a 500 person private college, not so awesome odds at a larger 5K person school. So even if on paper, calculus won't transfer, if you make a bit of a pest of yourself the dean or dept chair will eventually sign off. Also you can game the system, OK you won't accept my calculus transfer credits, very well, I will get instructor permission to take diffeqs without pre-reqs and when I pass diffeqs I will petition the dept head yet again for calc credit.

[moron4hire]

I was supposed to be able to transfer with no problems, as I was supposedly going between two "state system" schools in a supported degree program. My degree program was designed to be completed in four years, and the class schedule was built around that. Certain required classes just weren't offered every year, and they were prerequisites for other such classes. If you didn't start on the right beat, you were off schedule and couldn't get all of your requirements taken care of in 4 years.

[king_jester]

This is true, but generally aid and scholarships aren't enough to cover costs for one full year, let alone two. Many students will take out loans because of this.