5 ms·

It is a broken system but community colleges are made for people like this. It doesn't take 40k in student loans, it takes 2.5k in funds over 2 years which you

It is a broken system but community colleges are made for people like this. It doesn't take 40k in student loans, it takes 2.5k in funds over 2 years which you can piece together at a minimum wage job or if you really need to take out as a loan. Then you've got an associate degree and half of a bachelor. How expensive is community in Cali? It does seem the system isn't made to inform people of their options.

bsamuels 9y ago
cali community college is around 500-600/semester in tuition. you can get the tuition waived completely if youre from an economically disadvantaged background.
austenallred 9y ago
I was thinking for a bachelor's degree, and in that instance at the community colleges + cheap state school you're looking around $10-20k for tuition plus ~four years of living costs (assuming full-time). You could do it for less, but there's no question it's a lot if you're making minimum wage.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  Does the Pell Grant cover people in this case? I had friends who were working class but not poor and they got that for school.
  - austenallred 9y ago
    Some, not all
  - muninn_ 9y ago
    Full Pell Grant was $5,500 when I received it. And with that being said, it's not necessarily a good thing if people end up using it to go to college to get a degree in an art that they can't use for a good job. (Although I still largely disagree with universities being a vehicle for job training).
nsxwolf 9y ago
I did 3 semesters of community college. Calculus 2, 3, DiffEq, physics 2, 3, chem 1 and 2... It was pretty rigorous, and dirt cheap. Why can't this model be extended into a 4 year school for twice the price?
- nolepointer 9y ago
  I don't know if this is unique to Florida, but most of the community colleges here became state colleges, thus enabling them to provide certain bachelor's degrees.
pdeuchler 9y ago
People know their options. Let's be real... outside of trade professions like programming/carpentry/plumbing/etc. an associates degree is barely a step up from a GED (and sometimes worse: "Why didn't you just take the extra two years and get your bachelors???"). It also doesn't really matter how cheap it is, the main cost for the community college demographic is the opportunity cost. Most don't have support structures to give them the basics while they are at school, so they have to support themselves PLUS earn an extra 2.5k in disposable income, and then keep up with their studies on top of all of that. And since an associates gives you extremely limited social mobility in comparison to a bachelors most just forgo it, often replacing school with an extra job. In terms of social mobility a college degree is the new high school degree, anything less is exactly that and will not give you sufficient social mobility especially when you're on the lower end of the spectrum to begin with. We need to accept this and begin treating college like we did high school, making it free and standardized for everyone. The only other option I can see is trying to radically change social norms that have developed over the past 30-40 years and I just don't think that's feasible outside of select industries like ours.
- Retric 9y ago
  That would just make a masters the new collage degree. The real problem is a huge swath of the US economy is based on reputation not ability. Exclusivity is the goal, so the more people reach benchmark X, the further companies will move the benchmark.
  - pdeuchler 9y ago
    That's an impossible problem though, isn't it? Reputation was used as a proxy for ability until it became an end itself, but until we can correctly attribute some metric of ability (which sounds slightly dystopian) before hiring people we will continue to rely upon proxies to inform our decisions. Of course, you really don't have this problem in economies where middle class jobs aren't scarce...
    - Retric 9y ago
      IMO, it has to do with how zero sum much of the economy is. A factory cares about it's absolute production vs cost. However, a lawsuit is based in part on relative skill.
Z-Widwil 9y ago
It may be different for each state, but the cost of even Community College has increased quite a bit in the last decade. I'm attending one of the cheaper colleges in my state and tuition costs alone are about $4,000 for a full credit year. This does not include things like books or transportation. I'm now going part-time and still have another year and a half to go, but the total cost for me so far has been about $7,200. The doesn't even take into account the return in education you're getting which I believe to be sub par compared to University courses I've taken. While I'll gladly take the cheaper degree compared to those offered in universities, it isn't as cheap as most people anticipate. Many of my co-workers talk about it in a similar fashion and are quite surprised when I show them what I'm being charged.
- pkaye 9y ago
  In California Community Colleges, tuition is about $46/unit or $500/semester for a typical workload. Plus the community colleges have fee waiver for low income individuals. Books can be expensive but from my experience, I could get a semester bus passes for students quite cheap. Cal grants may cover the rest if you are low income from my own experience they are quite generous.

bsamuels 9y ago

cali community college is around 500-600/semester in tuition. you can get the tuition waived completely if youre from an economically disadvantaged background.

austenallred 9y ago

I was thinking for a bachelor's degree, and in that instance at the community colleges + cheap state school you're looking around $10-20k for tuition plus ~four years of living costs (assuming full-time). You could do it for less, but there's no question it's a lot if you're making minimum wage.

aaron-lebo 9y ago
Does the Pell Grant cover people in this case? I had friends who were working class but not poor and they got that for school.
- austenallred 9y ago
  Some, not all
- muninn_ 9y ago
  Full Pell Grant was $5,500 when I received it. And with that being said, it's not necessarily a good thing if people end up using it to go to college to get a degree in an art that they can't use for a good job. (Although I still largely disagree with universities being a vehicle for job training).

nsxwolf 9y ago

I did 3 semesters of community college. Calculus 2, 3, DiffEq, physics 2, 3, chem 1 and 2... It was pretty rigorous, and dirt cheap. Why can't this model be extended into a 4 year school for twice the price?

nolepointer 9y ago
I don't know if this is unique to Florida, but most of the community colleges here became state colleges, thus enabling them to provide certain bachelor's degrees.

pdeuchler 9y ago

People know their options. Let's be real... outside of trade professions like programming/carpentry/plumbing/etc. an associates degree is barely a step up from a GED (and sometimes worse: "Why didn't you just take the extra two years and get your bachelors???"). It also doesn't really matter how cheap it is, the main cost for the community college demographic is the opportunity cost. Most don't have support structures to give them the basics while they are at school, so they have to support themselves PLUS earn an extra 2.5k in disposable income, and then keep up with their studies on top of all of that. And since an associates gives you extremely limited social mobility in comparison to a bachelors most just forgo it, often replacing school with an extra job. In terms of social mobility a college degree is the new high school degree, anything less is exactly that and will not give you sufficient social mobility especially when you're on the lower end of the spectrum to begin with. We need to accept this and begin treating college like we did high school, making it free and standardized for everyone. The only other option I can see is trying to radically change social norms that have developed over the past 30-40 years and I just don't think that's feasible outside of select industries like ours.

Retric 9y ago
That would just make a masters the new collage degree. The real problem is a huge swath of the US economy is based on reputation not ability. Exclusivity is the goal, so the more people reach benchmark X, the further companies will move the benchmark.
- pdeuchler 9y ago
  That's an impossible problem though, isn't it? Reputation was used as a proxy for ability until it became an end itself, but until we can correctly attribute some metric of ability (which sounds slightly dystopian) before hiring people we will continue to rely upon proxies to inform our decisions. Of course, you really don't have this problem in economies where middle class jobs aren't scarce...
  - Retric 9y ago
    IMO, it has to do with how zero sum much of the economy is. A factory cares about it's absolute production vs cost. However, a lawsuit is based in part on relative skill.

Z-Widwil 9y ago

It may be different for each state, but the cost of even Community College has increased quite a bit in the last decade. I'm attending one of the cheaper colleges in my state and tuition costs alone are about $4,000 for a full credit year. This does not include things like books or transportation. I'm now going part-time and still have another year and a half to go, but the total cost for me so far has been about $7,200. The doesn't even take into account the return in education you're getting which I believe to be sub par compared to University courses I've taken. While I'll gladly take the cheaper degree compared to those offered in universities, it isn't as cheap as most people anticipate. Many of my co-workers talk about it in a similar fashion and are quite surprised when I show them what I'm being charged.

pkaye 9y ago
In California Community Colleges, tuition is about $46/unit or $500/semester for a typical workload. Plus the community colleges have fee waiver for low income individuals. Books can be expensive but from my experience, I could get a semester bus passes for students quite cheap. Cal grants may cover the rest if you are low income from my own experience they are quite generous.