[AthenaDX]

I can't speak for Community College folks, but I didn't learn jack from the University I went to. Almost everything I know about coding I learned on my own.

As long as you have a piece of paper that will get you an interview, and you prove you know your stuff, you'll be fine. Make sure to get your portfolio all nicely rounded as well, and don't slack off, do work outside of school. That is the most important thing.

[jon.kiparsky]

Quote

There was a girl in my class that got straight a's in the computer fundamentals, & then didn't know why the files on her network drive were lost. She was accessing the floppy drive rather than the network mapped R: drive.

You're saying this wasn't you, B9?

[no2pencil]

BenignDesign, on 15 November 2012 - 01:46 PM, said:

Not every community college graduate is a moronic waste of space. No one "gave" me passing grades in my courses.

As I stated, I am a graduate too. (imo) It is useless to those that tried hard when anyone that paid the bill also got passing grades.

Why does my statement constantly need to be black & white? For crying out loud, in one post I go from saying every university student is the right candidate to saying every community college grad is an idiot.

I'm simply answering the question as to why they are looked down upon, with my own experiences. ffs

[BenignDesign]

I don't see how it was useless to try hard. Odds are, by trying, I got a lot more out of those courses than anyone who skated through it just by paying the bill.

Personally, I think someone who is willing to try hard - even if they are presented with a situation where it's not really necessary - is going to be better for it in the long run.

Spoiler

Given your personal experience with community college graduates, and given that I have done a fair amount of work for you, pimp daddy, you are saying that I am a less-than-acceptable jarb applicant.

That stings a little.

I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME!

[stackoverflow]

Like I said-- the plague is shitty students.

If a student feels they didn't learn much (or anything). It's the student's fault. You go to school (community college or university) to learn. Expecting the school or staff to give you knowledge is absurd.

Feeling the school or staff owe you anything because you pay tuition is absurd. Not "trying" because you didn't feel motivated is your own fault. You can't blame anyone else. Learning doesn't happen in the classroom.

The classroom is essentially the "buckshot" approach to teaching. Schools use a general classroom experience to try an teach as many students as they can in one time slot. It's highly ineffective for many students (as students learn in different ways).

Learning happens outside the classroom _on_your_own_time.

The school and staff are only there to help you learn. Any teachers I have ever met in _any_ school has been nothing but enthusiastic to help students learn that wanted to learn (in class and outside of class).

At the end of the day the non-shitty students will learn at community college and/or university.

This post has been edited by stackoverflow: 29 November 2012 - 11:12 PM

[NecroWinter]

BenignDesign, on 15 November 2012 - 09:24 AM, said:

I am a proud community college graduate. Was I prepared for a career straight out of school? No. But I've met CS majors from Ivy Leagues who are ill-prepared for the workforce as well.

Regardless of where you go for your schooling, it will take initiative on your part to learn the practice of coding, not just the theory they'll cover in the classroom.

There is always a learning curve once you finally get on the job. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a community college education. In the end, we're all in debt for a magical piece of paper. The educational elitism astounds me.

Do what works best for you, your time, and your budget. Build your portfolio and be proud of what you do. I've yet to be denied a job because I didn't have a degree from a big, expensive school.

this. As someone who started at a community college, I feel that community colleges are dare I say, better than universities. They are less bureaucratic, and that means, the professor can actually teach things in creative ways. My Calc 2 professor came up with some interesting solutions to help the class learn the material, and by the end, people who dont really like math ended up really liking calc 2, which is supposedly the one people struggle with the most. You dont really see this at Universities because you're just rotting in class during a lecture.

The programming classes were all hands on, we were told to read the material, and in class we would actually do what the chapters had, with the professors helping people who get stuck. If there were lectures, they were usually accompanied by a project of some sort being done on a projector.

Meanwhile, in my CS classes at my university, its all on a chalk board

its also worth pointing out that my community college did not have any kind of grade curving, but im pretty sure most universities do. If you got lower than a 60 on something, you failed it, no matter what the class average was. This would just not happen where im at now.

This post has been edited by NecroWinter: 15 November 2012 - 02:41 PM

[jon.kiparsky]

Interesting fun facts:

• Good teachers teach well, even when they have bad students, and you can find them anywhere. Good students learn well, even from bad teachers, and those can also be found anywhere.
  
• Bad teachers and bad students can also be found anywhere you want to look for them.
  
• More prestigious institutions typically have faculty who are deeply involved in research. This can be great, in that they are intimately concerned with the cutting-edge issues in the field. It can be terrible, if this means they are not interested in the particular things that you most need to learn.
  
• A teacher who knows 99% of the subject and is only interested in explaining the top 10% isn't going to do much for a student who knows the first 30% and needs to get up to about 75% in this intro course.
  
• A student who blames their teacher or their school is probably not a very good student, regardless of whether their teacher or their school are any good. A teacher who blames their students is probably not a very good teacher, regardless of whether their students are any good.

[lordofduct]

I agree

I tried implying it before. But I like that community colleges are nice because they tend to have smaller one on one classes.

I've been to math courses at universities with 100+ students in them, and I've been at the same class at community college with 20 students in them. Those 20 students got a hell of a lot more out of their professor.


[edit]
I also agree with jon.kiparsky, I didnt' see his post until after. Wanted to make sure it's known this post wasn't a response to that.

This post has been edited by lordofduct: 15 November 2012 - 02:55 PM

[macosxnerd101]

Quote

Feeling the school or staff owe you anything because you pay tuition is absurd.

@stackoverflow: While I agree with most of your points, this one I tend to disagree with. If I'm paying tuition, I do expect an accessible professor that I can email or go in to seek help from. I don't expect to be handed a good grade, but a fair chance to learn, earn it, and seek help where I am having difficulties.

[jjl]

I spent three years at a community college before transferring to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. To be honest, I feel like my community college prepared me better than what the 4-year university could of for my upper division courses. When I first started out a Cal Poly I felt way ahead of the ball.

Here is my theory, spending a couple years after high school in a community college lets you really find what you want to do for the rest of your life. Rather than piling up student loans at a 4-year university in a major that you blindly chose, you get to test drive the major somewhat at a JC. Once you find out what route you want to take in your community college, you can then pick the right path to continue on for higher education.

This post has been edited by jjl: 16 November 2012 - 08:02 PM

[YasuoDancez]

From my point of view, there is nothing wrong with community colleges. That is almost suggesting that learning is bad. It is better to go push drugs on a street corner then go to a CC. Seriously, going to a CC was the best choice I could have ever made before I continue to a University. I'm currently coming to my last semester at a CC, and I've learned so much within these two years. Not only from general education, but especially Math and CSC. In CSC, we have had a lot of hands on projects; it is not only theory. We have done such things as building mathematical polynomial functions, and nth root programs in Data Structures, to currently building a simulated Assembly language through a virtual machine in Assembler class.

Like a few have said, it is what you make of the experience. Pay attention in classes, study hard, do homework, and devote most of your free time to school work and research, and you can and will benefit and learn greatly.

Nothing is handed to students at a CC. Just because we pay tuition does not mean we get good grades. In a way, I wish that was true, but then again, I would not have learned a single thing. Actually, I would have because I want to learn.

Reiterating again, There is nothing at all wrong with a Community College. It is a great starting point, grab an Associates, and move upwards from that.

[Binary101]

I live in Canada, and here college and university are a bit different things. In the US the terms are used interchangeably, but what we consider colleges are often institutions that offer two year diploma programs. Our colleges tend to focus on a lot of hands on work with the topic of study, and your class would usually only be about 20 students. I go to the college in my city, called Assiniboine Community College. It's a great school with a good reputation in my province as compared to other colleges around the country. Though the word community is in the name, it is no less thought of then any other college in the country. Our universities on the other hand are your big schools for four plus years of study for a degree.

[lordofduct]

no thats about what we call our schools. fau... florida atlantic university, they are 4 yr minimum schools for bachelors. there are specialized masters and i think a couple doctorate programs.

palm beach comm college... now recently changed to state college. 2 yr school for associates.

and the naming is nearly consistent around the country for state schools. where our names get jumbled are the private for profit schools. they often by schools that already are accredited, revamp the tuition and class selection, add a wing to it, and start charging 3 times as much. these schools because they just buy schools that have names might end up changing it so the name implies one thing but you get another.

[xfire]

Being a CC student at Northwest Community College, I feel like I have learned more from my teacher/instructor in the same amount of time I would have by myself.
Agreeable, in my Java class of 10 people, we have done nearly 9 programs, no GUIS and we are almost at the end of the semester, each program runs as a console program so far.
The semester project we have to do covers a bit of different things, including loops, input/output, user input, and user program exit (statement saying for program to exit).
My semester project is GUI based and so I had to learn it myself, confronting my teacher about it, he helped me with the designing and laying out of, as for the coding, he gave me some ideas and a few pointers that did help me out.
So my opinion is that depending on the CC you go to, depends on your level of education.
Taking 15 hours, i have a high b in my Java class, and mostly b or higher.

[Unen]

Graxun, on 12 November 2012 - 08:28 PM, said:

I always here people talk about community college like a bad thing. Is it that bad? Whats your opinion? I want to go to college for Computer Science/Programming and the college I was looking at offered everything I want, including certificates for Java Programming. Also it is close to my house "15-20 miles", and it's cheap.

I went to Austin community college for two years before transferring to a university.I can honestly say (at least in austin TX) if you want to learn go to CC, if you want a piece of paper saying you 'learned' go to university. I learned more in my second programming class at ACC than in any of my upper level CS classes at university. All in all it boils down to 1 who is setting up the curriculum of the CS program and 2 who the teachers are. For me all of my teachers at university either retired years and years ago and hadn't kept up with whats in demand or couldn't make it and went straight into teaching when they got out of college, where as at ACC all of my teachers were part time teachers part time developers who were teaching because they loved helping people learn.