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I'm a returning student about to complete my degree at the end of this year. I went to an art school for a few years out of high school and ended up in customer

I'm a returning student about to complete my degree at the end of this year. I went to an art school for a few years out of high school and ended up in customer service positions with some great companies. I didn't want to continue in customer service, so I decided to go back to school. Started with two years at community college, and now finishing up my last two at university. Some insights I picked up along the way: - community college have great professors - community college treats you like the adult you are - community college is underrated - university treats you like a child - university professors are more selfish and self-serving - university is busy dealing with so much extra-curricular stuff that most adults don't care about, it makes you question your decision - Different "schools" within the university do things differently - as an adult, it sucks to work in groups with young students - I picked up way more knowledge in the "real world" than I realized as a lot of what is being taught is redundant - there should be 4 semesters a year, not 2, people should graduate in 2 years, not 4+ At the onset of this journey, I was enthusiastic to learn, but along the way I've been beat down to just wanting to get "the piece of paper" and be done. It's been a long three years and each day forward is increasingly difficult to stomach since I realized I can learn all of what is being taught to me faster on my own. I don't think anyone needs a degree anymore to get to where they're going. However, it does make it easier depending on one's path.

whatshisface 8y ago
>there should be 4 semesters a year, not 2, people should graduate in 2 years, not 4+ Could you provide some more details about the community college curriculum you are talking about? To my knowledge, the local community colleges offer what is essentially the first two years of a university education, with a reduced emphasis on your actual major. >each day forward is increasingly difficult to stomach since I realized I can learn all of what is being taught to me faster on my own. This means that you are not taking advantage of the resources available to you. Typically, the advice to people with energy left over after classes is that they should contact the labs at their institution and become miniature grad students. You also should try to register for graduate level courses, talking to whoever is in charge at your institution if necessary. Universities offer many avenues for gifted students that want to do more work than everybody else, and I would say that fact is the main thing that separates them from community colleges.
- two2two 8y ago
  You're correct -- community college courses were "core" or "foundation" prior to the major. What I was attempting to suggest is 16-week semesters are too long (CC and Uni) and feel unnecessarily long for most subjects.
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - cortesoft 8y ago
    Most of the UCs in California (i think all except UC Berkeley) are on the quarter system (10 week quarters) 3 during the normal school year, and then an optional summer quarter.
fhood 8y ago
I agree that many college degrees seem to take far longer than is actually necessary, even technical ones at good school. The result seems to be that you can graduate with acceptable grades in 4 years, having spent maybe ten hours a week on school related activities. But. I feel that this should make it easier for an adult that would like to keep their job/income while attending school. I also agree with most of your other gripes, having seen them at the large state school that I went to, but our neighboring state university (still a high quality school) was well known as a commuter school and went out of its way to accommodate adults. In essence, I don't think that your experience necessarily has to be universal. P.S. Working in groups with young students is terrible even if you are a young student, and the only way I ever found to alleviate that was to select courses that were infamous for their difficulty. Easy class? Worthless group. Very hard class? Useful people that can be trusted to accomplish their part on their own time without supervision/hand holding.
pooppaint 8y ago
You are overgeneralizing. Also I quite enjoyed working with students about 14 years my junior, so that’s like just your opinion, man. (I also have a suspicion you’re much younger than me, which I find amusing). > I don't think anyone needs a degree anymore to get to where they're going. There are plenty of professions outside of tech where formalized education is held in the same regard as 100 years ago. The “times have changed” thing is very much a tech bubblethink. Good luck entering medicine or academia without a degree. There are outliers in these fields but that isn’t anything new.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  >Good luck entering [...] academia without a degree. Given that a PhD is basically a training course on how to be a professor, I think that one might actually be fair. The harshest criticism of PhDs is that they are only vocational training for professors, even.
  - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
    At least ideally, a PhD is a training course on how to do research professionally.
dsajames 8y ago
I don't know where you went to school, but I did some CC and completed a BS. It was the opposite for me. CC treated people like hs kids, at uni, I did all the research I could desire. Classes were way harder, the subject matter infinitely more in depth, etc.
- dx87 8y ago
  My wife had the same experience teaching at a CC. The school accepted anybody who applied, and they pressured professors to pass everyone regardless of their grades because they just wanted the tuition money. She stopped teaching there after 1 semester because she said it felt like being a babysitter and salesperson instead of a teacher.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    Going to a CC I got the feeling that any professors who weren't fresh out of their own education who taught there were those who'd lost their passion and were happy to just totter along until retirement.
SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
I've had the exact opposite experience - community college (as well as a technical institute - I've been around) was filled with high school class equivalents taught by professors who treated you all like children. When I got into university with classes in the hundreds was the minute that you needed to get to work cause no one cared.
- zanny 8y ago
  Those 100+ person classes are the biggest wastes of time though. You can self-organize around a book in a Facebook group and watch any top ivy league professor lecture through it. The only reason to pay for college, the only value they have, is in the experience of the professors and what they can offer you one on one. Everything else is replicated outside the walls with far less effort than the cost of university.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    >Everything else is replicated outside the walls with far less effort than the cost of university. Except for actually holding the degree. And yes, the 100+ person classes are the introductory classes offered in first and second year before things get whittled down to something more personal. However, they really set the tone for those first couple of years, saying "You're not in high school anymore".
    - zanny 8y ago
      Thats a very expensive wakeup call if they cost an average of $4-8k a piece (8-12 classes a year for $40-$60k per). I'm sure the kids really appreciate the experience four years down the line when they can look back at sophomores in a real job and think "gosh, wasn't it great my first two years of college cost me 3-4 years of my post-graduate income and gave me the wonderful value for all that money of 'waking me up' to how hard college will be when I actually start getting value from it!"
      - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
xyzzyz 8y ago
- there should be 4 semesters a year, not 2, people should graduate in 2 years, not 4+ At the onset of this journey, I was enthusiastic to learn, but along the way I've been beat down to just wanting to get "the piece of paper" and be done. It's been a long three years and each day forward is increasingly difficult to stomach since I realized I can learn all of what is being taught to me faster on my own. The fact that it’s a 4-year slog is one of the factors that make university degree holders earn premium in the labor marketplace — conscientiousness, conformity and consistency required to slog through 4 years needed for school to certify it send employers a strong signal that you’re the kind of person who will do their job well. Thus, don’t give up, the paper certifying it is more important than the “education” you are getting.
- BeetleB 8y ago
  >The fact that it’s a 4-year slog is one of the factors that make university degree holders earn premium in the labor marketplace — conscientiousness, conformity and consistency required to slog through 4 years needed for school to certify it send employers a strong signal that you’re the kind of person who will do their job well. In my career, everyone I've worked with had at least a Bachelor's. Most had a Master's and a few had a PhD. Only one did not finish undergrad. I can assure you, people who hold a university degree are not particularly conscientious or consistent. I'll admit they probably do well in the "slog through mind numbingly boring work", but that's often a negative. Whenever I've been in a team full of people who have no problem doing the most tedious work you can imagine, the result have been the very same people tend to oppose ways to improve efficiency (usually "automate the boring work"). And the management doesn't care either (automating boring work will not help you in your career). I don't want to work with people who don't mind really really boring work. I want to work with people who hate it enough to eliminate the need to do it. Engineers tend to be of the former category, and software people of the latter. Also, depending on which school you go to, getting a degree from it is just its own skill. Knowing how to work the system (e.g. get previous years' homeworks and exams, etc) can play a big role. I went to a low ranked undergrad and a top 5 grad school. My experience mirrors this person's if you substitute community college for undergrad and undergrad for grad. At the low ranked school, professors did not reuse homework or exams. They focused a lot more on what you were learning and less on how well you can do on the final exam. They had plenty of office hours - ranging from 3-12 hours a week (3 was considered low). Much fewer students per class. No TA's in between - faculty taught almost all the courses, and the office hours were with them. There are down sides to a low ranked school (lack of smart peers and perhaps a slightly watered down curriculum), but I think quality of instruction is not one of them.
zerohp 8y ago
I started college for the first time at 35 years old, and finished earlier this year after getting a BS CS, BS EE, and MS ECE. After 3 semesters at a community college, I transferred to a competitive engineering school (UIUC). My experience was very different from yours. Community college had a few great professors, but most were not good. They did not have high expectations for students, and it showed in the way that classes were taught. It was far too easy and most students were not prepared for the increased difficulty of STEM classes after they transferred. I don't think my university treated me as a child, but they scheduled labs and exams in a way that expects you to be available at all hours. That made things difficult for the few adults students that have other obligations outside of school. I was lucky in that I could afford to quit work and focus 100% on school. Most adults can't do that, but it is the best way to learn quickly. Professors were selfish and self-serving, but that never affected me until graduate school. The professors in the earlier engineering classes at the 100, 200, and 300 levels were outstanding and incomparable to any professor I had in community college. In general, they were unselfish and would go very far out of their way to help students succeed. Different colleges within the university were very different. That shouldn't be a problem for a transfer student because you don't have that much interaction with colleges other than your own. I only took 3 classes outside of the College of Engineering. I was a software developer for years before I got a degree, and I still learned a tremendous amount. I consider my time at university to be the best time of my life. I would not have my current job (at a FAANG) if not for what I learned in classes and research. In fact, I have never met anyone (at any company) in my subfield that does not have a degree.
- dwoot 8y ago
  Thank you for sharing this. A couple of questions: 1. Curious as to which sub-field you're currently working in 2. What was the impetus for you to make the decision to quit work full time and study again full-time? 3. When you say that you've not met anyone in your subfield that doesn't have a degree, how sure are you? I'd like to imagine that there are at least one or two that started school but didn't finish
  - zerohp 8y ago
    1. Chip design 2. Prior to going to school I was a full stack web dev. I was tired of the framework of the week treadmill and didn't think it was something I could find fulfilling for the next 20-30 years until retirement. 3. I'm very sure. Hardware is a different beast than software. In order to excel as a modern hardware designer you need all of the fundamental EE knowledge and a lot of the fundamental CS/programming knowledge.
twblalock 8y ago
I did my first few years of college at a community college and my experience was that the college had to be very strict about attendance and dropping students who didn't show up. Frankly a lot of them were stoners who were only in school because their parents would cut off support if they dropped out. The professors were underpaid and many of them didn't care -- some did care and were excellent teachers, but a lot of them were bitter about their career outcomes and just went through the motions. My best professors were the ones who had careers outside of the community college and taught part time, including a tenured professor at Stanford and a professional archeologist. Honestly it's hard for me to recommend community college to people who are driven and dedicated to their educations, because so many of the other people in those institutions are not like that. If I could go back in time I would gladly borrow an extra $20k to go to a university from the beginning. Over the time scale of a lifetime, or even just a decade, that's not a lot of money.
- bsder 8y ago
  > The professors were underpaid and many of them didn't care -- some did care and were excellent teachers, but a lot of them were bitter about their career outcomes and just went through the motions. Given how little it pays to teach in a community college, I'm surprised there is any teacher who didn't care.
  - darpa_escapee 8y ago
    This was my experience. I started in a community college, and my professors were there after retiring from industry, so they had little use for the meager salary they earned. The other professors worked at nearby universities, as well. They genuinely liked to teach and loved it when they could get their students to care about a subject as much as they did themselves. You could tell they did it out of passion, and moreover, for the students.
- BigChiefSmokem 8y ago
  This sounds like you went to a bad and busy city college in a big city. I for example went to a community college in Tallahassee, FL and it was fantastic and better than the university there, which was run amok with scandal and politics with the local community, something typical of these major college towns. Everyone has an anecdote.
ssttoo 8y ago
One more data point for "community college is great": this was my experience too. I guess it depends on the school/program/prof, but after 4 semesters of music, I only had great professors who care about their course and the students. I'm 40+
learc83 8y ago
I also went back as an adult. I felt like the semesters were too short if anything. The types in-depth projects we did in upper division classes needed 15 week semesters. Even without the long projects, the vast majority of students in my CS and math classes couldn't have handled 2x the information. The shorter summer versions of hard classes always had a much higher fail rate. At my university you could also take up to 21 hours if you had a good GPA, and you could go during the summer. If you could handle this, you could complete most degrees in 2.5 years. I also didn't feel like my school treated me like a child, and 90% of my professors were fantastic. When I had a class that covered a topic I was already familiar with, I used the opportunity to get even more familiar it with by tutoring, working on harder projects, and picking the professor's brain. I also took harder theoretical classes at every opportunity. I worked as a programmer for almost a decade before i went back for CS, and I only had 2 classes that I thought were a waste of time (both practical non-theory classes taught by the same guy).
- deleted 8y ago
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- ams6110 8y ago
  > I also didn't feel like my school treated me like a child It depends on the subject in my experience. At my school (major state university) undergraduate business school classes were run like high school. Attendance taken, assigned seats, pop quizes, etc. Science and Math courses were most "adult" in their treatment of students. Elective social sciences (100-level psych, sociology, history, political science, etc.) varied somewhere in between. I completed all my English lit and writing requirements in high school so not sure how those classes worked things.
  - learc83 8y ago
    You're probably right. I took a few undergrad business courses when I went to college the first time. They were the most...regimented I guess is the best way to describe it. Every single section of the lower level business classes had their tests all together in a big 300 person auditorium on Saturdays. Upper level courses also required students to wear suits to class. It's probably mostly a function of how much they feel the need to treat students like kids. Even though my university had a very highly ranked business school, business in general was kind of the refuge for people who wanted to go to college but weren't sure what they wanted to do. >I completed all my English lit and writing requirements in high school so not sure how those classes worked things. I took 1103 instead of 1101 and 1102 because that was a thing you could do if your SAT score was high enough. It was much less high school like than the business classes. World Lit was an elective and it was nothing like high school, no attendance requirements, and no grades except for a 2 papers.
azhenley 8y ago
It is quite possible to graduate quickly with a 4 year degree from a university. Just take more than the minimum courses per semester and take classes during the summer. I did 5 years of credit in 3 years. I wish I hadn't rushed through though. The university experience is great. I wish I had socialized more, spent more time on side projects, and did internships in undergrad.
CalRobert 8y ago
Thank you!!! I spent way too long getting a useless degree in physics at Cal Poly SLO. They wouldn't let you switch majors (because every 17 year old knows what they want to do with their life) but it turns out changing schools is tough when your grades show you've hated your major the last 2 years. The best thing I EVER did was sign up for classes at Santa Monica College after getting my Bachelor's. They're fantastic - this was a while back, but offering everything from Assembly to Android Dev and having great profs who actually listened to you was fantastic. I can't praise that school highly enough. Funny enough, my wife and I both took German from _the same professor at the same time_. But I did it at SMC at night for basically free (I think $140 or so), and she paid a couple grand for the privilege at UCLA. Community Colleges also don't destroy young lives with crushing debt that can never be discharged. We should be encouraging them and end with the cargo cult that is "everyone should go to a 4 year university"
- knicholes 8y ago
  How did you and your wife take German from the same professor at the same time? Was he broadcasting his lesson, were you and your wife in the same location as the teacher, was the teacher able to duplicate himself, or is "at the same time" more of a "during the same semester" and not literally at the exact same time?
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - wincy 8y ago
    I can’t help but feel that clarification on any of these points is absolutely useless to the thrust of what he was trying to say. If I had to guess I’d probably go with the duplication, though. That’s probably how he did it.
  - travisjungroth 8y ago
    Since he said he took them "at night" and didn't mention her time, I bet it's the same time in the sense that their schedules overlapped.
  - 8y ago
l9k 8y ago
* there should be 4 semesters a year, not 2, people should graduate in 2 years, not 4+ The word "semester" literally means "six month" so you can only have two. What you might want is to have more work during these two period.
cliffdover 8y ago
>I don't think anyone needs a degree anymore to get to where they're going False, unless by "anyone" you mean people in the US. I'm from Colombia and back to college to get the degree because I can't find a job anywhere without it. In here 90% of job offers require a degree and some only count your experience after the graduation date.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  Any coveted job in the US is the same. First step in hiring funnel is to throw out resumes without 4 year degrees.
morpheuskafka 8y ago
> - as an adult, it sucks to work in groups with young students Wondering if you would share any details on this and/or suggestions for traditional age students working with adults?
spiritcat 8y ago
pretty similar to my community college transfer experience don't forget how much cheaper it is!
sbov 8y ago
I did my first 2 semesters in community college then transferred to a CSU (California State University), and my experience with the teachers were roughly similar. But CSUs don't focus as much on research so maybe that is part of why.
wwweston 8y ago
While attending a private university, I found professors who treated me like an annoyance, a child, and an adult. I had professors who were poor instructors, and professors who were great. Since leaving university, I've found many situations where neither degree nor education matter much... and some where it did. I'd believe many community colleges are underrated, and the modern university system has a lot of flaws and ways in which it poorly serves its participants (faculty and students alike), but the value in a specific path of participation seems a lot like a YMMV kindof thing.
skookumchuck 8y ago
> there should be 4 semesters a year My father went to university after WW2 on the GI Bill. They ran semesters year round, because there were so many vets wanting to go. End result was he graduated in 3 years.
InclinedPlane 8y ago
What are you studying, out of curiosity?
docbrown 8y ago
> - university professors are more selfish and self-serving With respect to academia, this point seems to come up a lot, which is highly dependent on school, subject, etc. But in my opinion, a lot of times it boils down to a couple things. 1. Research is your main job. 2. becoming tenured is basically your get out of jail free card. without doing something /legally/ wrong or ethically wrong, your salary is basically guaranteed until retirement. at R1 institutions, your main focus is publishing work to gain tenure. by mixing the above two points, you produce professors who “treats you like a child.”

whatshisface 8y ago

>there should be 4 semesters a year, not 2, people should graduate in 2 years, not 4+ Could you provide some more details about the community college curriculum you are talking about? To my knowledge, the local community colleges offer what is essentially the first two years of a university education, with a reduced emphasis on your actual major. >each day forward is increasingly difficult to stomach since I realized I can learn all of what is being taught to me faster on my own. This means that you are not taking advantage of the resources available to you. Typically, the advice to people with energy left over after classes is that they should contact the labs at their institution and become miniature grad students. You also should try to register for graduate level courses, talking to whoever is in charge at your institution if necessary. Universities offer many avenues for gifted students that want to do more work than everybody else, and I would say that fact is the main thing that separates them from community colleges.

two2two 8y ago
You're correct -- community college courses were "core" or "foundation" prior to the major. What I was attempting to suggest is 16-week semesters are too long (CC and Uni) and feel unnecessarily long for most subjects.
- deleted 8y ago
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- cortesoft 8y ago
  Most of the UCs in California (i think all except UC Berkeley) are on the quarter system (10 week quarters) 3 during the normal school year, and then an optional summer quarter.

fhood 8y ago

I agree that many college degrees seem to take far longer than is actually necessary, even technical ones at good school. The result seems to be that you can graduate with acceptable grades in 4 years, having spent maybe ten hours a week on school related activities. But. I feel that this should make it easier for an adult that would like to keep their job/income while attending school. I also agree with most of your other gripes, having seen them at the large state school that I went to, but our neighboring state university (still a high quality school) was well known as a commuter school and went out of its way to accommodate adults. In essence, I don't think that your experience necessarily has to be universal. P.S. Working in groups with young students is terrible even if you are a young student, and the only way I ever found to alleviate that was to select courses that were infamous for their difficulty. Easy class? Worthless group. Very hard class? Useful people that can be trusted to accomplish their part on their own time without supervision/hand holding.

pooppaint 8y ago

You are overgeneralizing. Also I quite enjoyed working with students about 14 years my junior, so that’s like just your opinion, man. (I also have a suspicion you’re much younger than me, which I find amusing). > I don't think anyone needs a degree anymore to get to where they're going. There are plenty of professions outside of tech where formalized education is held in the same regard as 100 years ago. The “times have changed” thing is very much a tech bubblethink. Good luck entering medicine or academia without a degree. There are outliers in these fields but that isn’t anything new.

whatshisface 8y ago
>Good luck entering [...] academia without a degree. Given that a PhD is basically a training course on how to be a professor, I think that one might actually be fair. The harshest criticism of PhDs is that they are only vocational training for professors, even.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  At least ideally, a PhD is a training course on how to do research professionally.

dsajames 8y ago

I don't know where you went to school, but I did some CC and completed a BS. It was the opposite for me. CC treated people like hs kids, at uni, I did all the research I could desire. Classes were way harder, the subject matter infinitely more in depth, etc.

dx87 8y ago
My wife had the same experience teaching at a CC. The school accepted anybody who applied, and they pressured professors to pass everyone regardless of their grades because they just wanted the tuition money. She stopped teaching there after 1 semester because she said it felt like being a babysitter and salesperson instead of a teacher.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  Going to a CC I got the feeling that any professors who weren't fresh out of their own education who taught there were those who'd lost their passion and were happy to just totter along until retirement.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago

I've had the exact opposite experience - community college (as well as a technical institute - I've been around) was filled with high school class equivalents taught by professors who treated you all like children. When I got into university with classes in the hundreds was the minute that you needed to get to work cause no one cared.

zanny 8y ago
Those 100+ person classes are the biggest wastes of time though. You can self-organize around a book in a Facebook group and watch any top ivy league professor lecture through it. The only reason to pay for college, the only value they have, is in the experience of the professors and what they can offer you one on one. Everything else is replicated outside the walls with far less effort than the cost of university.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  >Everything else is replicated outside the walls with far less effort than the cost of university. Except for actually holding the degree. And yes, the 100+ person classes are the introductory classes offered in first and second year before things get whittled down to something more personal. However, they really set the tone for those first couple of years, saying "You're not in high school anymore".
  - zanny 8y ago
    Thats a very expensive wakeup call if they cost an average of $4-8k a piece (8-12 classes a year for $40-$60k per). I'm sure the kids really appreciate the experience four years down the line when they can look back at sophomores in a real job and think "gosh, wasn't it great my first two years of college cost me 3-4 years of my post-graduate income and gave me the wonderful value for all that money of 'waking me up' to how hard college will be when I actually start getting value from it!"
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago

xyzzyz 8y ago

- there should be 4 semesters a year, not 2, people should graduate in 2 years, not 4+ At the onset of this journey, I was enthusiastic to learn, but along the way I've been beat down to just wanting to get "the piece of paper" and be done. It's been a long three years and each day forward is increasingly difficult to stomach since I realized I can learn all of what is being taught to me faster on my own. The fact that it’s a 4-year slog is one of the factors that make university degree holders earn premium in the labor marketplace — conscientiousness, conformity and consistency required to slog through 4 years needed for school to certify it send employers a strong signal that you’re the kind of person who will do their job well. Thus, don’t give up, the paper certifying it is more important than the “education” you are getting.

BeetleB 8y ago
>The fact that it’s a 4-year slog is one of the factors that make university degree holders earn premium in the labor marketplace — conscientiousness, conformity and consistency required to slog through 4 years needed for school to certify it send employers a strong signal that you’re the kind of person who will do their job well. In my career, everyone I've worked with had at least a Bachelor's. Most had a Master's and a few had a PhD. Only one did not finish undergrad. I can assure you, people who hold a university degree are not particularly conscientious or consistent. I'll admit they probably do well in the "slog through mind numbingly boring work", but that's often a negative. Whenever I've been in a team full of people who have no problem doing the most tedious work you can imagine, the result have been the very same people tend to oppose ways to improve efficiency (usually "automate the boring work"). And the management doesn't care either (automating boring work will not help you in your career). I don't want to work with people who don't mind really really boring work. I want to work with people who hate it enough to eliminate the need to do it. Engineers tend to be of the former category, and software people of the latter. Also, depending on which school you go to, getting a degree from it is just its own skill. Knowing how to work the system (e.g. get previous years' homeworks and exams, etc) can play a big role. I went to a low ranked undergrad and a top 5 grad school. My experience mirrors this person's if you substitute community college for undergrad and undergrad for grad. At the low ranked school, professors did not reuse homework or exams. They focused a lot more on what you were learning and less on how well you can do on the final exam. They had plenty of office hours - ranging from 3-12 hours a week (3 was considered low). Much fewer students per class. No TA's in between - faculty taught almost all the courses, and the office hours were with them. There are down sides to a low ranked school (lack of smart peers and perhaps a slightly watered down curriculum), but I think quality of instruction is not one of them.

zerohp 8y ago

I started college for the first time at 35 years old, and finished earlier this year after getting a BS CS, BS EE, and MS ECE. After 3 semesters at a community college, I transferred to a competitive engineering school (UIUC). My experience was very different from yours. Community college had a few great professors, but most were not good. They did not have high expectations for students, and it showed in the way that classes were taught. It was far too easy and most students were not prepared for the increased difficulty of STEM classes after they transferred. I don't think my university treated me as a child, but they scheduled labs and exams in a way that expects you to be available at all hours. That made things difficult for the few adults students that have other obligations outside of school. I was lucky in that I could afford to quit work and focus 100% on school. Most adults can't do that, but it is the best way to learn quickly. Professors were selfish and self-serving, but that never affected me until graduate school. The professors in the earlier engineering classes at the 100, 200, and 300 levels were outstanding and incomparable to any professor I had in community college. In general, they were unselfish and would go very far out of their way to help students succeed. Different colleges within the university were very different. That shouldn't be a problem for a transfer student because you don't have that much interaction with colleges other than your own. I only took 3 classes outside of the College of Engineering. I was a software developer for years before I got a degree, and I still learned a tremendous amount. I consider my time at university to be the best time of my life. I would not have my current job (at a FAANG) if not for what I learned in classes and research. In fact, I have never met anyone (at any company) in my subfield that does not have a degree.

dwoot 8y ago
Thank you for sharing this. A couple of questions: 1. Curious as to which sub-field you're currently working in 2. What was the impetus for you to make the decision to quit work full time and study again full-time? 3. When you say that you've not met anyone in your subfield that doesn't have a degree, how sure are you? I'd like to imagine that there are at least one or two that started school but didn't finish
- zerohp 8y ago
  1. Chip design 2. Prior to going to school I was a full stack web dev. I was tired of the framework of the week treadmill and didn't think it was something I could find fulfilling for the next 20-30 years until retirement. 3. I'm very sure. Hardware is a different beast than software. In order to excel as a modern hardware designer you need all of the fundamental EE knowledge and a lot of the fundamental CS/programming knowledge.

twblalock 8y ago

I did my first few years of college at a community college and my experience was that the college had to be very strict about attendance and dropping students who didn't show up. Frankly a lot of them were stoners who were only in school because their parents would cut off support if they dropped out. The professors were underpaid and many of them didn't care -- some did care and were excellent teachers, but a lot of them were bitter about their career outcomes and just went through the motions. My best professors were the ones who had careers outside of the community college and taught part time, including a tenured professor at Stanford and a professional archeologist. Honestly it's hard for me to recommend community college to people who are driven and dedicated to their educations, because so many of the other people in those institutions are not like that. If I could go back in time I would gladly borrow an extra $20k to go to a university from the beginning. Over the time scale of a lifetime, or even just a decade, that's not a lot of money.

bsder 8y ago
> The professors were underpaid and many of them didn't care -- some did care and were excellent teachers, but a lot of them were bitter about their career outcomes and just went through the motions. Given how little it pays to teach in a community college, I'm surprised there is any teacher who didn't care.
- darpa_escapee 8y ago
  This was my experience. I started in a community college, and my professors were there after retiring from industry, so they had little use for the meager salary they earned. The other professors worked at nearby universities, as well. They genuinely liked to teach and loved it when they could get their students to care about a subject as much as they did themselves. You could tell they did it out of passion, and moreover, for the students.
BigChiefSmokem 8y ago
This sounds like you went to a bad and busy city college in a big city. I for example went to a community college in Tallahassee, FL and it was fantastic and better than the university there, which was run amok with scandal and politics with the local community, something typical of these major college towns. Everyone has an anecdote.

ssttoo 8y ago

One more data point for "community college is great": this was my experience too. I guess it depends on the school/program/prof, but after 4 semesters of music, I only had great professors who care about their course and the students. I'm 40+

learc83 8y ago

I also went back as an adult. I felt like the semesters were too short if anything. The types in-depth projects we did in upper division classes needed 15 week semesters. Even without the long projects, the vast majority of students in my CS and math classes couldn't have handled 2x the information. The shorter summer versions of hard classes always had a much higher fail rate. At my university you could also take up to 21 hours if you had a good GPA, and you could go during the summer. If you could handle this, you could complete most degrees in 2.5 years. I also didn't feel like my school treated me like a child, and 90% of my professors were fantastic. When I had a class that covered a topic I was already familiar with, I used the opportunity to get even more familiar it with by tutoring, working on harder projects, and picking the professor's brain. I also took harder theoretical classes at every opportunity. I worked as a programmer for almost a decade before i went back for CS, and I only had 2 classes that I thought were a waste of time (both practical non-theory classes taught by the same guy).

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ams6110 8y ago
> I also didn't feel like my school treated me like a child It depends on the subject in my experience. At my school (major state university) undergraduate business school classes were run like high school. Attendance taken, assigned seats, pop quizes, etc. Science and Math courses were most "adult" in their treatment of students. Elective social sciences (100-level psych, sociology, history, political science, etc.) varied somewhere in between. I completed all my English lit and writing requirements in high school so not sure how those classes worked things.
- learc83 8y ago
  You're probably right. I took a few undergrad business courses when I went to college the first time. They were the most...regimented I guess is the best way to describe it. Every single section of the lower level business classes had their tests all together in a big 300 person auditorium on Saturdays. Upper level courses also required students to wear suits to class. It's probably mostly a function of how much they feel the need to treat students like kids. Even though my university had a very highly ranked business school, business in general was kind of the refuge for people who wanted to go to college but weren't sure what they wanted to do. >I completed all my English lit and writing requirements in high school so not sure how those classes worked things. I took 1103 instead of 1101 and 1102 because that was a thing you could do if your SAT score was high enough. It was much less high school like than the business classes. World Lit was an elective and it was nothing like high school, no attendance requirements, and no grades except for a 2 papers.

azhenley 8y ago

It is quite possible to graduate quickly with a 4 year degree from a university. Just take more than the minimum courses per semester and take classes during the summer. I did 5 years of credit in 3 years. I wish I hadn't rushed through though. The university experience is great. I wish I had socialized more, spent more time on side projects, and did internships in undergrad.

CalRobert 8y ago

Thank you!!! I spent way too long getting a useless degree in physics at Cal Poly SLO. They wouldn't let you switch majors (because every 17 year old knows what they want to do with their life) but it turns out changing schools is tough when your grades show you've hated your major the last 2 years. The best thing I EVER did was sign up for classes at Santa Monica College after getting my Bachelor's. They're fantastic - this was a while back, but offering everything from Assembly to Android Dev and having great profs who actually listened to you was fantastic. I can't praise that school highly enough. Funny enough, my wife and I both took German from _the same professor at the same time_. But I did it at SMC at night for basically free (I think $140 or so), and she paid a couple grand for the privilege at UCLA. Community Colleges also don't destroy young lives with crushing debt that can never be discharged. We should be encouraging them and end with the cargo cult that is "everyone should go to a 4 year university"

knicholes 8y ago
How did you and your wife take German from the same professor at the same time? Was he broadcasting his lesson, were you and your wife in the same location as the teacher, was the teacher able to duplicate himself, or is "at the same time" more of a "during the same semester" and not literally at the exact same time?
- deleted 8y ago
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- wincy 8y ago
  I can’t help but feel that clarification on any of these points is absolutely useless to the thrust of what he was trying to say. If I had to guess I’d probably go with the duplication, though. That’s probably how he did it.
- travisjungroth 8y ago
  Since he said he took them "at night" and didn't mention her time, I bet it's the same time in the sense that their schedules overlapped.
- 8y ago

l9k 8y ago

* there should be 4 semesters a year, not 2, people should graduate in 2 years, not 4+ The word "semester" literally means "six month" so you can only have two. What you might want is to have more work during these two period.

cliffdover 8y ago

>I don't think anyone needs a degree anymore to get to where they're going False, unless by "anyone" you mean people in the US. I'm from Colombia and back to college to get the degree because I can't find a job anywhere without it. In here 90% of job offers require a degree and some only count your experience after the graduation date.

mixmastamyk 8y ago
Any coveted job in the US is the same. First step in hiring funnel is to throw out resumes without 4 year degrees.

morpheuskafka 8y ago

> - as an adult, it sucks to work in groups with young students Wondering if you would share any details on this and/or suggestions for traditional age students working with adults?

spiritcat 8y ago

pretty similar to my community college transfer experience don't forget how much cheaper it is!

sbov 8y ago

I did my first 2 semesters in community college then transferred to a CSU (California State University), and my experience with the teachers were roughly similar. But CSUs don't focus as much on research so maybe that is part of why.

wwweston 8y ago

While attending a private university, I found professors who treated me like an annoyance, a child, and an adult. I had professors who were poor instructors, and professors who were great. Since leaving university, I've found many situations where neither degree nor education matter much... and some where it did. I'd believe many community colleges are underrated, and the modern university system has a lot of flaws and ways in which it poorly serves its participants (faculty and students alike), but the value in a specific path of participation seems a lot like a YMMV kindof thing.

skookumchuck 8y ago

> there should be 4 semesters a year My father went to university after WW2 on the GI Bill. They ran semesters year round, because there were so many vets wanting to go. End result was he graduated in 3 years.

InclinedPlane 8y ago

What are you studying, out of curiosity?

docbrown 8y ago

> - university professors are more selfish and self-serving With respect to academia, this point seems to come up a lot, which is highly dependent on school, subject, etc. But in my opinion, a lot of times it boils down to a couple things. 1. Research is your main job. 2. becoming tenured is basically your get out of jail free card. without doing something /legally/ wrong or ethically wrong, your salary is basically guaranteed until retirement. at R1 institutions, your main focus is publishing work to gain tenure. by mixing the above two points, you produce professors who “treats you like a child.”