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Some curriculum is specialized from the get-go. I don't think I wouldn't been able to get the same quality introductory foundational computer science courses --

Some curriculum is specialized from the get-go. I don't think I wouldn't been able to get the same quality introductory foundational computer science courses -- into to programming, data structures & algorithms, & object-oriented programming at a community college. Possible observation bias, but a generalized community college education will only take out liberal arts classes. And you weren't spending those semesters building up your hard skills necessary for industry. For a bachelor's, that would leave you with just 2 years to really refine the craft. And I think most people need 4 years of academic programming experience before going into industry. You need to see enough and have established a basic level of experience to make quality judgment calls when working on enterprise software.

austenallred 9y ago
Community college is a great way to get the stuff that won't ever affect your career out of the way. If you want to go to a top engineering college it's pretty insane to keep paying $20k/semester for the mediocre liberal arts portion as well.
- dkarapetyan 9y ago
  Exactly. The lower division requirements can be done at any community college and they are on average much better taught at a community college than a research university.
omegaham 9y ago
Community college alum here, currently going into my senior year at a 4-year university. CC CS classes were clown-shoes. The math and physics classes were excellent, but the CS classes were not on par with the expectations that most 4-year colleges have for upper-division classes. That being said, it was still a very good deal for me; I'd been tinkering with programming for ~8 years by the time that I went to school, and self-study easily got me up to speed. Thus, I took my freshman and sophomore classes for less than half of what it would have cost at a 4-year university. --- Portland State does a proficiency demo for CC transfers with basic data structures questions, (linked lists, binary trees, recursion, etc). If you don't pass, you don't get into the upper-division classes. It's a bloodbath every single year. You don't have much of an excuse to fail, either - they give a description of everything that they will test you on more than a month before the demo[1]. [1] https://www.scribd.com/document/351661090/PSU-Proficiency-Exam-Application-Process-8-16 https://www.scribd.com/document/351661090/PSU-Proficiency-Ex...
dkarapetyan 9y ago
I studied math. Now I program for a living. I have missed nothing from a specialized CS education. I could see maybe EE or robotics being something that a good university would have an edge over your local community college. But even here you could get by without access to a good lab if you were motivated enough. Going into debt is almost never the answer.

austenallred 9y ago

Community college is a great way to get the stuff that won't ever affect your career out of the way. If you want to go to a top engineering college it's pretty insane to keep paying $20k/semester for the mediocre liberal arts portion as well.

dkarapetyan 9y ago
Exactly. The lower division requirements can be done at any community college and they are on average much better taught at a community college than a research university.

omegaham 9y ago

Community college alum here, currently going into my senior year at a 4-year university. CC CS classes were clown-shoes. The math and physics classes were excellent, but the CS classes were not on par with the expectations that most 4-year colleges have for upper-division classes. That being said, it was still a very good deal for me; I'd been tinkering with programming for ~8 years by the time that I went to school, and self-study easily got me up to speed. Thus, I took my freshman and sophomore classes for less than half of what it would have cost at a 4-year university. --- Portland State does a proficiency demo for CC transfers with basic data structures questions, (linked lists, binary trees, recursion, etc). If you don't pass, you don't get into the upper-division classes. It's a bloodbath every single year. You don't have much of an excuse to fail, either - they give a description of everything that they will test you on more than a month before the demo[1]. [1] https://www.scribd.com/document/351661090/PSU-Proficiency-Exam-Application-Process-8-16 https://www.scribd.com/document/351661090/PSU-Proficiency-Ex...

dkarapetyan 9y ago

I studied math. Now I program for a living. I have missed nothing from a specialized CS education. I could see maybe EE or robotics being something that a good university would have an edge over your local community college. But even here you could get by without access to a good lab if you were motivated enough. Going into debt is almost never the answer.