One of President Obama’s proposals is to make community college free to students (cost to tax payers would be about $6 billion per year). I personally like this idea, as it could pressure mid and lower tier 4 year colleges/universities to rethink their tuition rates or risk losing students for their freshman and sophmore years.
What think ye? Would any of you send your kids to CC for 2 free years and then have them transfer to a 4 year school to finish their degree?
I know a few people who went to our local CC for two years and then onto Penn, Cornell for the last two. Don’t know if it’s a product of my county’s system, but it seems reasonable to consider it.
Wow, that’s a bigger jump than I would have expected.
Wouldn’t transfer credits just be disallowed if they felt any pressure?
This is not the norm, but I bring it up to show the range of options. Of course most end up joining me at State U in two years or stop with the associates.
I don’t know how it works in other states, but I know state colleges/universities in NJ are required to accept credits from NJ CC’s. They are also required to admit NJ residents who receive an associate’s degree from a NJ CC. The law doesn’t apply to private colleges in NJ, but many of them follow it anyway.
if everyone did this, even kids of AFers, rather than just numbskulls, wouldn’t the cost to run the program be much greater than $6 billion?
The cheapest of my local public research university’s tuition is about three times that of a local community college’s. Why wouldn’t they already feel the pressure?
Pumping more money into education isn’t going to improve it or bring down overall costs.
Which is perfectly fine for the vast majority of people. I wouldn’t expect this to have much of an impact on the Princeton, Harvard and Stanfords of the country, but could see lower tier schools being affected.
So do you think Cockrell would accept physics from a CC?
It’s not his worst idea.
That’s a good point that I struggle with myself. There’s something about “free” that attracts people’s attention though.
I don’t know what the law is in TX.
Ditto Texas. All “College Algebra” classes that meet the criteria have a certain code attached to them. And if you take College Algebra at Local Community College, it transfers to Hacksaw State. As far as I know, this is generally only true for the basics, not the upper-level courses, so once you start taking junior and senior level classes, you better plan to stay at that school, because they’re not guaranteed to transfer.
But WRT should you go to community college and transfer? I think that depends. If Junior goes to the local community college and gets A’s, then I’m sure he can still get into University of Texas or Texas A&M with those grades. If he gets C’s and D’s, then they probably won’t let him in. However, he can still get into Hacksaw State, and graduate with his hacksaw BA.
So the lesson is this–if you plan on getting A’s, go to community college first. If you believe that C’s get degrees, skip CC and go straight to U of Texas.
Google “Texas Common Course Numbering System”, or go to tccns.org.
From this website, you can see what courses at what college will transfer to other courses at other colleges. EG - If I take ACCT 2301 at Midland College, that translates to ACC 311 at University of Texas (Austin).
itera would accuse Obama’s proposal as pondering to the hack saw manufacturers lobby.
On the topic of transfers, many state university systems, like UC, have a quota for transfers from community college or others. So, this does happen every year in some number. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. It’s not like the top 5% of community college students is worse than the bottom 5% of normal college students. Community college students start there for many reasons.
What I do have an issue with, is how some transfer students count credits from different schools in a single GPA without proper disclosure, but that’s another issue.
Also, if you could have gotten into UT out of high school no reason continuing the trend with As in community college would do anything but make you a better candidate.
Ok, let’s take an extremely unlikely scenario for the folks here. Let’s assume your kid is college material, but not Princeton/Harvard/Standford/MIT/etc. material (that’s where it’s unlikely since all our kids will be Princeton/Harvard/Stanford/MIT/etc. material). Said kid is accepted to your state’s most prestigious state college campus and even get’s some scholarships (clearly need-based aid is off the table), bringing tuition down to $12,000 per year plus all the stupid mandatory fees. Do you send your kid to State U for all 4 years, or do you take 2 free years of CC and then have him/her transfer to State U? If you go the CC route, when talking about your kid at parties do you hide the fact that he/she is in CC? Admit that your kid is in CC but point out that he/she was accepted to State U but chose to stay closer to home for a couple of years? Highlight it as a savvy financial move? Highlight it and tell your wife to show everyone the new boobs and butt you bought with the savings?
You’re applying a pretty low standard.
^I’d say he’s earned it.