I agree with all of this, actually. A community college experience is different than a four-year institution experience. It’s difficult to build a rich extracurricular activity schedule at a commuter campus, although we do try. We do have a monthly campus student newsletter, but our athletics were cut due to state funding cuts several years ago.
However, some people either don’t want those experiences, don’t need them, or can’t afford them.
You can go to a community college and learn therapeutic massage or something similar for massively cheaper than a for profit school would charge. Like 1/10th the cost. Maybe that’s not exactly different than your point about 2 year terminal degrees. But they’re perfectly respectable careers and the education/training is less intensive than even a 2 year nursing degree. The alternative is paying 10x as much. CCs are great for that.
I did the 2-year thing at a CC, transferred over to a 4-year college to get my degree and also took a handful of graduate courses.
Even to this day the courses I got the most out and use all the time are the CC courses and the graduate courses. They were normally taught by people who were not full-time teachers but actual people who worked in the real world in their areas of expertice. The professors at the 4-year were sort of a bunch of jag-offs who taught theory and didn’t really have a clue of skills needed in the real-world workplace. Oversized lectures, TAs, fighting for tenure profs, etc.
Exactly. I’ve gone to 5 different CCs in my life, and 9 different 4 year college/universities. At none of them did I ever desire to be “part of the college experience.” Screw the social life, I’m there to learn the material, get the credits and move on.
On edit: What Hampshire said as well.
That’s just a poorly designed program – what was your major? Literally every journalism professor I had in college (that was my major) had in their very recent past been a reporter and/or editor.
What? How does that work? Piqued my interest!
One thing I know–the English classes at my CC are much harder than the ones at the four year college I went to. It was the CC that seemed to be preparing you for being an English major, while the four-year actually taught you how to write.
Well, I was only thrown out of one of them!
The first couple of years out of high school, I was simultaneously enrolled in one of three different CCs while also attending 2 4 year schools. Then I started moving north. Add the state school I was thrown out of. Then off to Alaska where I attended, off and on, 1 CC and 2 4 years. Back to California, finishing up my degree at a 4 year, while at the same time working on both a teaching credential and a teaching certificate at a different 4 year. Then add another certification, random course work for salary advancement, and a final certification and we are up to date.
San Bernardino Valley College
Crafton Hills College
San Bernardino State University
University of Redlands
Riverside Community College
University of California, Riverside
Humboldt State University
Anchorage Community College
University of Alaska, Anchorage
Alaska Methodist University
UCLA
University of San Diego
Fredrickburg Community College
I think that’s the lot.
eta: I’m forgetting one. Must be Aspen State Teacher’s College. 
I did about a year and a half at the local community college and then transferred to a four year school. My reasons were financial.
Most of my professors were just as dedicated and experienced as the ones I experienced at my four-year. I had quite a few with doctorates, and some without – much the same as the latter.
Calculus is pretty much the same all over. Some schools might have calculus for business majors that is less rigorous, but I wouldn’t expect that to be the only calculus class available at a community college. I’ve attended 2 community colleges and 2 state universities and they all had 2 basic calculus courses depending on the major. From what I remember you couldn’t take Calculus 2 if all you had before was Business Calculus, the more rigorous calculus class was a prerequisite.
Both community colleges I attended had better professors than the state universities I later transferred to. However, both CCs were among the best in my state. In fact, I probably learned more because I went to a CC first. All the engineering majors at the CC were encouraged to take 3 semesters of physics, but when I transferred to the university, only 3 quarters of physics were required. I even managed to cram in an extra semester of chemistry and history because it was cheap.
My alma mater operates both a traditional university and a community college.
University graduates’ starting salaries average 2 to 3 times what the community college graduates can make. If they can find work. Many fields require a master or a doctorate to get work, so there are a lot of unemployed and underemployed graduates.
Community college graduates don’t make as much money, but they seem to have a much easier time finding work. Before the present recession, the community college claimed a 98% placement rate for its graduates.
YMMV, but the community college I went to before university had an excellent math and science department, better than some universities. A lot of engineering students in that region did their maths there before moving on to their main degree at a 4-year school, including my gentleman caller at the time. I got through pre-calculus there with one of the best math teachers I’ve ever had, and then had to struggle with learning from someone’s grad student TA when I went on to take trig at the university, which was annoying.
There’s nothing wrong with them. They’re usually cheaper than a four year college, so if a student does their freshman year in a CC, they will save a bucket of money. They can do academic stuff like English and History that will transfer anywhere, and get it out of the way right up front.
Plus, when it comes time to apply to the four year school, you’re coming in as a transfer student with a proven track record of good grades (hopefully). You’ll get priority for acceptance over the mob of incoming freshmen.
That’s what I did. I’m midway through grad school at this point, and the finest physics teacher and math teacher I’ve ever had were at my community college. The big university (physics and math depts), in comparison, was on the average high on instructor researcher credentials but very wanting on instructional and raw teaching skills. A few classes were fully handed over to TAs to do the teaching, one by a Nobel winner always on the roster as the class professor but absent every term from all of his lectures, and were a miserable failure. Bait and switch academics at its finest.
If I could have attained a 4-year degree at a community college I would have done so in a heartbeat. I don’t give a rat’s ass how many research papers or journals the professor has published outside the classroom, my tuition money is supposed to be paying for me to learn.
I went to a CC for 2 years, and finished a BA at a 4 year.
IMHO, the CC was geared to helping students more. The 4 year was more of a shrine to professors, the admin, etc…
The information content was identical, however.
Best wishes,
hh
I would highly recommend this blog post from Sean Carroll (Professor of Physics at Caltech): “The Purpose of Harvard is Not To Educate People.” Ritzy 4-year universities are not really about eduction - they are about research. That’s the primary job of the professors. That’s not true at community colleges, which makes a big difference.
Obviously, good teaching still exists at universities, etc etc, yadda yadda.
The CC where I live teaches the same material I learned in school between 5 and 9th grade to people with HS diplomas ranging in age from 19 to 50. Some of them end up with vocational licenses to clean up after crazy people while gaining a Federal Pension out fo the view of the public. Others just fall back into the woodwork from whence they came, allowing us to continue looking down a the idea of actually aspiring to the individual and collective economic success that Appalachia has demonstrated over the years.
No I didn’t grow up here.
From an employer’s standpoint they’re a godsend. We’ve hired over 60 electrical and mechanical technicians from the local technical college, and I have no idea how we’d of otherwise filled these positions.
Charge your customers enough so that you can justify an in-house training program instead of asking the rest of us to tax ourselves for your benefit?
How do you plan to thank us for our largesse? 
Community colleges don’t have the cachet of a large university. And as has been mentioned, the most you can obtain is an associate’s degree, which basically means you’ve finished your sophomore year, and really that would not often be considered an end in itself. But for many people, a community college is all they need. Maybe they just want to brush up on a subject or take one up as a hobby but don’t need all the hassle and bureaucracy of enrolling in a four-year institute. I specifically recall a friend in Albuquerque who enrolled in one after receiving a bachelor’s degree in Texas, because he wanted to know more about electrician-type stuff and also hone his photography skills.
Also, in my undergrad university, some lower-level requirements could be met by trnsferring credits over from certain designated community colleges.
Apologies if all of this has been mentioned already. I’ve not looked too closely at all of the posts.