[two2two]

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.

[twblalock]

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.

[johnmaguire2013]

I only went to a community college, but my experience is fairly similar to yours. I was lucky that the community college (Washtenaw Community College) was in a city with a decent university (University of Michigan). As such, many of the professors worked at both. These were the best professors.

Similarly, there were many professors who did not care at all. However, my girlfriend is currently attending the Ohio State University as a medical student, and similarly many professors either (a) do not care about their students or whether they are effectively teaching them material, or (b) have too many students and are unable to effectively teach them all.

While I attended some classes at the community college that had 150+ students (less than her largest classes, to be fair), those professors actually were some of the best I had. Maybe I just got lucky.

FWIW, she also attended Eastern Michigan University and Washtenaw Community College (with me) prior to this. The community college was her favorite.

In any case, there are plenty of skills I'd like to learn, or learn more about (e.g. mechanical skills, art skills, etc.) and without a doubt I would choose a community college -- and research my professors! -- over a university. In either case, you should pick your professors carefully; but the price difference (even on a software engineer's salary) is simply not worth going to a university IMO.

Don't forget that money spent at the beginning of your career is worth more than money spent at the end! (Assuming you're investing well.) Compounding interest and all.

[bsder]

> 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.

[BigChiefSmokem]

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.

[lsc]

>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.

The problem for me is that (like many people who didn't go to college the first time around) I didn't do particularly well in high school. And from what I've seen, the schools that won't hold my grades from 20 years ago against me are not better than the aforementioned community colleges.

Right now I'm doing a self-paced online thing... it's not better than a community college, but we will see how it turns out.

[CalRobert]

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"

[repiret]

It’s not impossible to switch majors at CP SLO. My wife was a physics major at CalPoly SLO until she got tired of being the only girl in all her classes and switched to biochem.

[hoorayimhelping]

Thank you for this post! I just moved to Santa Monica from the NYC metro area and I've been looking for a place to take classes.

[zerohp]

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]

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

[pooppaint]

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]

>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.

[xyzzyz]

- 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]

>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.

[lordnacho]

> 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

Aren't you on holiday for a lot of those 4 years?

I went to uni for 4 years, and it was 3 terms of 8 weeks each, per year. In other words, 96 weeks.

Throw in the occasional rest week and it should really fit in two years.

[ams6110]

If you take a full load of summer classes you can get a four year undergraduate degree done in 2-ish years.

[munchbunny]

That really depends.

If you're just trying to get trained for a vocation, then yeah, you don't need 4 years. However, I do think a 4-year degree is a unique opportunity, and it shouldn't be seen as a screen for people who can slog so much as a fit question of "do you need the other things that come with a 4-year degree?"

I'd guess that a bit less than half of my 4 years was spent on academics, of which it was 2/3 CS degree and 1/3 liberal arts. The rest was summer internships, hobbies, personal projects, engineering teams, research, and just playing around as an 18-22 year old.

I agree with the parent poster's advice though. Outside of my academics, I learned skills like writing, speaking, organizing, diplomacy, etc. which you often learn anyway through work experience. People returning to school need that much less than people who never worked do, so there's no need for them to pay the time tax on extracurriculars.

[whatshisface]

>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]

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.

[SketchySeaBeast]

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]

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.

[fhood]

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.

[cliffdover]

>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]

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

[learc83]

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).

[ams6110]

> 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.

[ssttoo]

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+

[docbrown]

> - 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.”

[wwweston]

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.

[azhenley]

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.

[dsajames]

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]

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.

[sbov]

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.

[l9k]

* 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.

[skookumchuck]

> 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.

[morpheuskafka]

> - 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]

pretty similar to my community college transfer experience

don't forget how much cheaper it is!

[InclinedPlane]

What are you studying, out of curiosity?