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Ivy League schools are so good at marketing that they have brainwashed the youth into thinking community colleges are worthless. Spoiler: all bachelors are fou

Ivy League schools are so good at marketing that they have brainwashed the youth into thinking community colleges are worthless. Spoiler: all bachelors are foundational, meaning they are taught basically the same not only in the US but around the world and don’t require any fancy equipment or laboratory to complete

lotsofpulp 3y ago
90% of students are not aiming to go to a top school, and of those that do, they know the benefit is networking with peers at the top schools, not the labs or fancy equipment.
- boringg 3y ago
  Except, you know, the top tier research labs with the most talented minds working in them. That absolutely has value. Is it worth the money that you are paying for your diploma - I don't know. The denigration of our best technical programs to say they don't have that much value above and beyond networking benefits really undermines some of the core values of our educational institutions.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    Sorry, I was only referring to bachelor level education.
    - boringg 3y ago
      You still need quality labs to run experiments for engineering and science programs at a bachelor level education.
    - kelipso 3y ago
      If not most, a significant number of grad students did undergrad research.
kelipso 3y ago
> Spoiler: all bachelors are foundational, meaning they are taught basically the same That is just really really not true. Variance in quality of professors is huge. Also they clearly don't all follow the same textbooks or course syllabus.
- Almondsetat 3y ago
  basically is not exactly exactly
- BeetleB 3y ago
  > Variance in quality of professors is huge. But are relatively independent of rank of institution (some would say inversely correlated). I went to a mediocre state school (definitely not in top 100), and a top 3 grad school. By and large, the mediocre school's professors cared more about teaching and put more effort into it.
  - jackcosgrove 3y ago
    This is well known in education, that level of instruction is inversely correlated with time spent on pedagogy, and positively correlated with time spent on content. In other words, kindergarten teachers think a lot about how to teach, while professors think about what to teach. The quality of instruction would probably be worse at a research university than at a college focused mainly on undergraduate education.
- anjel 3y ago
  It's totally true about law schools
User23 3y ago
Having taken some community college courses and also having audited at an Ivy, the latter really do have superior professors. Whether that improvement is worth it is another question. Oh, and the community college professors were entirely competent.
- Almondsetat 3y ago
  I’ll take a good linear algebra professor over an excellent linear algebra professor and crippling debts
  - sarchertech 3y ago
    Ivy League isn’t going to leave you with crippling debt. The majority of students don’t pay anywhere close to the sticker price, and the network you build is worth the cost of admission. It’s the lesser known private schools where you can rack up massive debt in private loans that don’t have income based repayment plans. That’s when you get into trouble.
    - clusterhacks 3y ago
      At Harvard, 28% of students receive no aid at all. So they pay full sticker price. Average net price by income in 2021-2022 [1]: Income Cost 0-$30,000 -- $5900 $30,001-$48,000 -- $3,002 $48,001-$75,000 -- $4,180 $75,001-$110,000 -- $17,037 $110,001+ -- $52,634 If your household makes $110,000 per year in California, the take home pay I found calculated online was ~$75,000. So that means paying around 22% of take home pay to go to Harvard? Can the average household actually put 22% of their take home pay into tuition without taking on debt? [1] https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=harvard&s=all&id=166027#netprc https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=harvard&s=all&id=166...
      - sarchertech 3y ago
        I said the majority not all, and I didn’t say no debt. And $52k is the average paid by all students with a family income of above $110k. Not the price paid by every student once you hit $110k. This average is skewed by people making much more than that. For specific numbers, if your parents make $150k, they are expected to contribute 10% of their income. You can look up the numbers here https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculator https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculat... For a family with an income of $150k and one student in college, they are expected to pay $15k per year. If they were instead making $110k, they are expected to pay $5k per year. If they make $85k or less, they are expected to pay nothing. Harvard also looks at assets but excludes primary residence and retirement savings. So yes the vast majority of people can afford to attend harvard with almost no debt. Even in the rare situation where you take on large amounts of debt, the connections made there and the brand recognition of the degree are almost definitely worth it from a financial perspective.
lupusreal 3y ago
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JCM9 3y ago
For the hard sciences things lab lab equipment can matter even for undergrad. The ironic thing here is that in the US large public universities often have far better labs and equipment that the Ivies. A few are decent at science but many others very much not so. I’d take a Chemistry undergrad from a UC Berkeley, UCLA, or Penn State over one from Brown or Dartmouth all day long. You’d literally be paying a ton more for an objectively less good degree.
- dixie_land 3y ago
  My understanding is that the Ivies are traditionally known for their business and law schools. For that matter, you go to Ivies for the connections, not the education per se.
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> they have brainwashed the youth into thinking they brainwashed parents of the youth, they hold the purse strings
- pauldenton 3y ago
  Actually it's the Federal Government who is ultimately backing these student loans, and it is the Federal Government that made student debt non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. The best way to deal with it would put colleges on the hook for it. If a student declares bankruptcy their student debt is gone, and the college using their massive endowments can eat it.
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    > student debt non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. Debt bondage, also known as debt slavery, bonded labour, or peonage, is the pledge of a person's services as security for the repayment for a debt or other obligation. Where the terms of the repayment are not clearly or reasonably stated, or where the debt is excessively large the person who holds the debt has thus some control over the laborer, whose freedom depends on the undefined or excessive debt repayment.
BeetleB 3y ago
> and don’t require any fancy equipment or laboratory to complete Not everyone gets a CS or math degree. For things like ME/EE/Civil Eng, equipment absolutely matters. And they aren't cheap.
deleted 3y ago
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blagie 3y ago
Super-spoiler: This is absolutely, completely incorrect. 1) Teaching quality doesn't correlate much with quality (if anything, the inverse), so an Ivy is likely to have similar or worse teaching than a community college. 2) There is a HUGE difference in a community college bachelor degree and a proper university. Look at the curriculum. Much of what's covered in community college, Ivy students will have done in high school, and a community college will have (quite literally) NO advanced courses, equivalent to what university juniors and seniors might take. If you want identical, you can compare elite schools to large state universities (University of Texas, University of California, ASU, etc.). At that point, classes are more-or-less identical to elite schools. Major remaining difference is brand stamp and network (which, coming from an elite school, I can say matter a lot). However, community colleges serve a different purpose, and do not try to accomplish the same thing. They give a leg up into basic professional work. If you work at McD's or the local supermarket, and want a living income as a nurse, IT technician, AV work, or similar, community colleges will do a very good job for not a lot of money and with experience about being practical for people with the kinds of real-world constraints that come with e.g. minimum wage labor. You will NOT be on a path to a job as a doctor, engineer, or similar. However, a community college education can allow you the basic standard of living to provide that kind of socioeconomic mobility to your kids.
- vel0city 3y ago
  Coursework at community colleges often transfers to the basic classes at a state university at a fraction of the cost. A 12-hour undergrad semester at the state school near me is ~$8,200 in tuition alone not including a few hundred dollars in fees and a few hundred dollars in books. 12 hours at the community college nearby is $744 including books, tuition, and fees. The majority of the first three semesters in an engineering degree from the state school will be mostly transferrable classes available at the community college, the fourth semester will be pretty mixed between major related classes that can't be transferred and transferrable classes. Starting classes at community college and transferring to the state university later is a good strategy but is often ignored.
  - blagie 3y ago
ohdannyboy 3y ago
I have to disagree. I did both community college and a top ranked tech school for undergrad. I also know someone who attended some CS classes at this school but went on to get a CS degree from a mid ranked school (he was a chem engineering major first). The difference between the CS classes at the community college and the high ranked university were night and day. If you try at a CC you'll get an A and you really have to fuck up to fail. Those classes were basically lectures, reading and tests. The curriculum at the top ranked school was far far more robust and As were hard earned. The labs, office hours and other learning I did with other people was vital. The difference between the mid and top ranked program was mostly students. My friend said the curriculum was similar but the curves were different so the expectations were lower. Fair or not, connections also matter. Interning for Intel was a big deal for future prospects and being at a top university put me in a better position for that. Ivy league isn't dominant in tech but they are in plenty of other fields like law.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

lotsofpulp 3y ago

90% of students are not aiming to go to a top school, and of those that do, they know the benefit is networking with peers at the top schools, not the labs or fancy equipment.

boringg 3y ago
Except, you know, the top tier research labs with the most talented minds working in them. That absolutely has value. Is it worth the money that you are paying for your diploma - I don't know. The denigration of our best technical programs to say they don't have that much value above and beyond networking benefits really undermines some of the core values of our educational institutions.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Sorry, I was only referring to bachelor level education.
  - boringg 3y ago
    You still need quality labs to run experiments for engineering and science programs at a bachelor level education.
  - kelipso 3y ago
    If not most, a significant number of grad students did undergrad research.

kelipso 3y ago

> Spoiler: all bachelors are foundational, meaning they are taught basically the same That is just really really not true. Variance in quality of professors is huge. Also they clearly don't all follow the same textbooks or course syllabus.

Almondsetat 3y ago
basically is not exactly exactly
BeetleB 3y ago
> Variance in quality of professors is huge. But are relatively independent of rank of institution (some would say inversely correlated). I went to a mediocre state school (definitely not in top 100), and a top 3 grad school. By and large, the mediocre school's professors cared more about teaching and put more effort into it.
- jackcosgrove 3y ago
  This is well known in education, that level of instruction is inversely correlated with time spent on pedagogy, and positively correlated with time spent on content. In other words, kindergarten teachers think a lot about how to teach, while professors think about what to teach. The quality of instruction would probably be worse at a research university than at a college focused mainly on undergraduate education.
anjel 3y ago
It's totally true about law schools

User23 3y ago

Having taken some community college courses and also having audited at an Ivy, the latter really do have superior professors. Whether that improvement is worth it is another question. Oh, and the community college professors were entirely competent.

Almondsetat 3y ago
I’ll take a good linear algebra professor over an excellent linear algebra professor and crippling debts
- sarchertech 3y ago
  Ivy League isn’t going to leave you with crippling debt. The majority of students don’t pay anywhere close to the sticker price, and the network you build is worth the cost of admission. It’s the lesser known private schools where you can rack up massive debt in private loans that don’t have income based repayment plans. That’s when you get into trouble.
  - clusterhacks 3y ago
    At Harvard, 28% of students receive no aid at all. So they pay full sticker price. Average net price by income in 2021-2022 [1]: Income Cost 0-$30,000 -- $5900 $30,001-$48,000 -- $3,002 $48,001-$75,000 -- $4,180 $75,001-$110,000 -- $17,037 $110,001+ -- $52,634 If your household makes $110,000 per year in California, the take home pay I found calculated online was ~$75,000. So that means paying around 22% of take home pay to go to Harvard? Can the average household actually put 22% of their take home pay into tuition without taking on debt? [1] https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=harvard&s=all&id=166027#netprc https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=harvard&s=all&id=166...
    - sarchertech 3y ago
      I said the majority not all, and I didn’t say no debt. And $52k is the average paid by all students with a family income of above $110k. Not the price paid by every student once you hit $110k. This average is skewed by people making much more than that. For specific numbers, if your parents make $150k, they are expected to contribute 10% of their income. You can look up the numbers here https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculator https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculat... For a family with an income of $150k and one student in college, they are expected to pay $15k per year. If they were instead making $110k, they are expected to pay $5k per year. If they make $85k or less, they are expected to pay nothing. Harvard also looks at assets but excludes primary residence and retirement savings. So yes the vast majority of people can afford to attend harvard with almost no debt. Even in the rare situation where you take on large amounts of debt, the connections made there and the brand recognition of the degree are almost definitely worth it from a financial perspective.

lupusreal 3y ago

[dead]

JCM9 3y ago

For the hard sciences things lab lab equipment can matter even for undergrad. The ironic thing here is that in the US large public universities often have far better labs and equipment that the Ivies. A few are decent at science but many others very much not so. I’d take a Chemistry undergrad from a UC Berkeley, UCLA, or Penn State over one from Brown or Dartmouth all day long. You’d literally be paying a ton more for an objectively less good degree.

dixie_land 3y ago
My understanding is that the Ivies are traditionally known for their business and law schools. For that matter, you go to Ivies for the connections, not the education per se.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago

> they have brainwashed the youth into thinking they brainwashed parents of the youth, they hold the purse strings

pauldenton 3y ago
Actually it's the Federal Government who is ultimately backing these student loans, and it is the Federal Government that made student debt non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. The best way to deal with it would put colleges on the hook for it. If a student declares bankruptcy their student debt is gone, and the college using their massive endowments can eat it.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  > student debt non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. Debt bondage, also known as debt slavery, bonded labour, or peonage, is the pledge of a person's services as security for the repayment for a debt or other obligation. Where the terms of the repayment are not clearly or reasonably stated, or where the debt is excessively large the person who holds the debt has thus some control over the laborer, whose freedom depends on the undefined or excessive debt repayment.

BeetleB 3y ago

> and don’t require any fancy equipment or laboratory to complete Not everyone gets a CS or math degree. For things like ME/EE/Civil Eng, equipment absolutely matters. And they aren't cheap.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

blagie 3y ago

Super-spoiler: This is absolutely, completely incorrect. 1) Teaching quality doesn't correlate much with quality (if anything, the inverse), so an Ivy is likely to have similar or worse teaching than a community college. 2) There is a HUGE difference in a community college bachelor degree and a proper university. Look at the curriculum. Much of what's covered in community college, Ivy students will have done in high school, and a community college will have (quite literally) NO advanced courses, equivalent to what university juniors and seniors might take. If you want identical, you can compare elite schools to large state universities (University of Texas, University of California, ASU, etc.). At that point, classes are more-or-less identical to elite schools. Major remaining difference is brand stamp and network (which, coming from an elite school, I can say matter a lot). However, community colleges serve a different purpose, and do not try to accomplish the same thing. They give a leg up into basic professional work. If you work at McD's or the local supermarket, and want a living income as a nurse, IT technician, AV work, or similar, community colleges will do a very good job for not a lot of money and with experience about being practical for people with the kinds of real-world constraints that come with e.g. minimum wage labor. You will NOT be on a path to a job as a doctor, engineer, or similar. However, a community college education can allow you the basic standard of living to provide that kind of socioeconomic mobility to your kids.

vel0city 3y ago
Coursework at community colleges often transfers to the basic classes at a state university at a fraction of the cost. A 12-hour undergrad semester at the state school near me is ~$8,200 in tuition alone not including a few hundred dollars in fees and a few hundred dollars in books. 12 hours at the community college nearby is $744 including books, tuition, and fees. The majority of the first three semesters in an engineering degree from the state school will be mostly transferrable classes available at the community college, the fourth semester will be pretty mixed between major related classes that can't be transferred and transferrable classes. Starting classes at community college and transferring to the state university later is a good strategy but is often ignored.
- blagie 3y ago

ohdannyboy 3y ago

I have to disagree. I did both community college and a top ranked tech school for undergrad. I also know someone who attended some CS classes at this school but went on to get a CS degree from a mid ranked school (he was a chem engineering major first). The difference between the CS classes at the community college and the high ranked university were night and day. If you try at a CC you'll get an A and you really have to fuck up to fail. Those classes were basically lectures, reading and tests. The curriculum at the top ranked school was far far more robust and As were hard earned. The labs, office hours and other learning I did with other people was vital. The difference between the mid and top ranked program was mostly students. My friend said the curriculum was similar but the curves were different so the expectations were lower. Fair or not, connections also matter. Interning for Intel was a big deal for future prospects and being at a top university put me in a better position for that. Ivy league isn't dominant in tech but they are in plenty of other fields like law.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]