<p>This will undoubtedly make a few heads on here explode, but so be it. It's a discussion worth having.</p>
<p>BTW Cornell's trustees obviously thought so little of Beth Garrett when they agreed to bring her in as president. Apparently those degrees from the University of Oklahoma and the University of Virginia Law School hindered her professional ascendance. Ditto Elizabeth Warren going to Harvard and the U.S. Senate from (oh the horror) the University of Houston.</p>
<p>I agree it’s all horrible. I read the article and was as disappointed as I was unsurprised. Nikias believes in the stratification of USC undergraduates among several tiers and classes, from Trustee Scholars to Spring admits to university transfers to cc transfers to residential scholars and all in between, diluting the diplomas of high achieving fall admits upon whose shoulders the backdoor admits - and sacred USNWR ranking - rest. I think all fall admits should be awarded full tuition as fair consideration for subsidizing the transfers that Nikias encourages to save money by attending ccs. Alternatively, how about a reverse tuition credit whereby high school matriculates get free tuition for their junior and senior years?</p>
<p>As USC heads inevitably toward Nikias’ goal of transforming USC into a private version of SUNY Buffalo, with at least 20,000 undergraduates packed into the new Village, I hope he doesn’t forget the fall admits who deserve to be treated better.</p>
<p>^ Lol. For a supposed lawyer that went to a top law school, you can’t read good.</p>
<p>(See what I did there?)</p>
<p>I’m perfectly fine with USC admitting students from community colleges. It’s giving opportunities to non-traditional students that other top schools are too snooty to offer.</p>
<p>If by snooty you mean HYSP, then you have proven my point. Institutionalizing tiers of students and fostering resentment among them, especially between the matriculating, high achieving fall admits and bargain-hunting, low achieving transfers is what Nikias has promoted. I’m just calling him out… You’re welcome.</p>
<p>The only person here who’s institutionalizing tiers of students and fostering resentment among them is you, Seattle. You seem to be oblivious to the fact that college now costs $65,000 a year and that’s ridiculously beyond the affordability of middle class families, particularly those with multiple children. You are old enough now to have college-aged children of your own and yet it perplexes me that you make no mention of any said children, since the majority of high school kids I coach in an extra-curricular have parents your age. Personally, I’m just sick and tired of seeing lots of good, honest, hard working parents with fantastic kids bend over backwards and, smiling through gritted teeth, put their lifetime savings, home equity, and retirement security in jeopardy to pay for schools that a generation ago, adjusted for inflation, cost a fraction of what they do now - one of my kids’ parents went to UCLA when you were at USC and paid all of $700 per quarter. This also ignores the crippling debt on the back end for the student. At some point, it is no longer worth it.</p>
<p>In the meantime, I’d be curious to know exactly what you base your claim of “bargain-hunting, low achieving transfers” upon. One girl ahead of me at my community college won a Rhodes Scholarship (what a slacker) and several of my friends who were CC transfers into USC (probably a majority, actually) were trustee scholars, while nearly all of them graduated with Latin honors. Friends of mine from my CC transferred to Harvard, Duke, Northwestern, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois engineering school. Nikias is promoting CC transfers because California has by far the best CC system in the country, which is why so many families in this state are using it nowadays - because they still “work hard and play by the rules,” but schools like USC and UCLA no longer cost $700 per quarter, or $2100 per year. They cost $65,000 per year, which is ridiculous, no matter how much they try to paper this over with financial aid (price discrimination) and talk of scholarships.</p>
<p>Warren Buffett has also weighed in on colleges nowadays, reminding students and parents not to confuse cost with value, which is why a growing number of companies don’t even recruit at top private schools anymore - because they are becoming bastions of privilege rather than achievement, and if you sat in on an honors seminar at any decent community college you would see right away what I mean. The difference, in your context, is that rather than a $100,000 Mercedes with a license plate frame from the Lakeside School, the car parked outside is a 15 year old Honda with 200,000 miles on it and a license plate frame from Joe’s Used Car Shack. But the brains are just the same, and that’s what I doubt you fully appreciate. This is also where, as someone who came to California to get involved in Hollywood and Silicon Valley, I also appreciate Peter Thiel’s fellowships which are now paying high achieving high school seniors to NOT go to college, and instead to move to San Francisco and start businesses.</p>
<p>CCs are remedial and California has among the worst in the country. I say let them in but for every year in tuition they save give a four-year USC student a credit equal to that amount. That will level the playing field.</p>
<p>I’m planning to adopt a foster kid who lived in at least 50 homes. He’s got no family at all but is tough and smart and needs a stable home. I’ve given him one, and it’s not cheap. He’s got real extenuating circumstances, so cry me a river about college tuition. If you have a dependent then you need to invest in them to the extent you can and if that means sacrifice so be it. Be blessed that you have a family. </p>
<p>My comment regarding low achieving transfers was in reference to Nikias’ recommendation that kids forego studying hard and trying to matriculate from high school and instead attend a remedial CC and coast through with straight As while saving tons of money and then apply to SUNY Buffalo I mean UC Berkeley I mean a land grant university I mean USC and get in. He’s wrong.</p>
<p>None of the transfers you mention falls into that category because none of the private schools you mention has the magnitude of transfers that USC does. We’re huge and growing, thanks to Nikias.</p>
<p>@USCAlum05 cited some specific people in his personal experience. Are we supposed to take @SeattleTW at face value, with no back-up or proof? >>CCs are remedial and California has among the worst in the country.<< I, PERSONALLY know, first hand,a student who just transferred to MIT from community college, and his classmates matriculated to many excellent schools (I recall some of the Seven Sisters, and all of the UC’s), just in one graduating class in one CC. The courses were first-rate, in contrast to Gen Ed classes at some 4-year schools.</p>
<p>We are huge and growing thanks to the groundwork laid over decades by Steven Sample. Nikias has barely been on the job.</p>
<p>“remedial CC” is insulting and baseless. Please cite some backup to your incendiary comments.</p>
<p>Here are the graduation rates for these fine institutions:</p>
<p>Pasadena CC: 32%
Glendale CC: 47%
Rio Hondo CC: 24%
Santa Monica CC: 28%</p>
<p>Seattle CC: 12%</p>
<p>VERSUS</p>
<p>“High achieving” high school:</p>
<p>Pomona High School (CA): 53%</p>
<p>@SeattleTW, What is the graduation rate for Navy SEAL training? Do you consider that remedial? Top students at a CC can get a non-remedial, great experience. People graduate or do not graduate depending upon their goals (and life circumstances). Not everyone who matriculates is there to graduate, and many others are struggling with real life obstacles. Studiousness when in class is more important.</p>
<p>Seattle, you still don’t get it. You are confusing the part with the whole - the individual student with the institution. Lots of GREAT kids are starting at community colleges nowadays, not merely because of the cost of the undergraduate degree but also because of the cost afterwards of graduate school. You seem to also believe that the parents who send their kids to a CC are bad parents to begin with. Not true at all. Take a nice professional salary nowadays - $250,000, for example - and right off the bat, you pay half of that in taxes. Then pay a mortgage and property taxes in a decent school district. Pay for two decent but not fancy cars. And try and put away for your kids’ educations and your retirement, and there’s not much left. Doing so on $100,000 in California nowadays is practically impossible, and that’s where a lot of school districts now have more discipline issues than they did a generation ago - because both parents have to work to pay the bills, whereas a generation ago a stay at home mom (or dad) was still a possibility.</p>
<p>I stand by my statement that California has the best public university system in the country. Top to bottom, the UCs and CSUs have no comparison. When you mention graduation rates, you are ignoring the fact that, as mentioned above, graduation rates aren’t necessary a relevant metric for CCs because they have three very different and overlapping missions - a UNIVERSITY PARALLEL curriculum (note the term; what you call remedial), vocational training, and community enrichment - programs for kids and older adults and whatnot. They are not merely remedial schools, as that’s the difference between a junior college and a community college, and lots of people in that world would appreciate it if most people knew the difference.</p>
<p>Here in L.A., I’ve worked with kids whose parents were movie stars (lucky sperm club) and tutored kids in South Central who had nothing. A lot of times, they had about the same amount of brains. Not everyone has the same amount of resources, and that’s the difference. It takes exponentially more talent, drive, and ambition to succeed out of a mediocre public school or a community college than it does out of a boarding school. I have no problem whatsoever with people who have more money than me, but you don’t seem to appreciate what I am calling the difference between a meritocracy and an aristocracy. Top schools nowadays have too many incompetent trust fund brats and not enough Horatio Algiers. One kid from my community college, for example, was the outstanding male grad and got a trustee scholarship to USC for half tuition, but it wasn’t enough and he had to leave after a year. His parents were Filipino immigrants who didn’t qualify for credit-based aid. He then graduated from a regional state school in Illinois far beneath his talents. That kind of thing should never be happening in America, period.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Now that’s snooty, and ignorant to boot.</p>
<p>People have different circumstances coming out of high school. For some, going to CC is remedial. On the other hand, students might enroll at a CC because they want to save money, or outright don’t have the money for tuition. For others, it may be because they can’t travel away from home and have to attend the local CC. If California thought its CCs were crap, the state wouldn’t guarantee admission to the UCs for many CC grads.</p>
<p>As a transfer student from an out-of-state community college–in the immediate delivery area of the Washington Post, no less!–who had the opportunity to meet Max Nikias recently (albeit briefly), I think it’s safe to say I win and SeattleTW loses.</p>
<p>I’m a big advocate for transfer students from community colleges. They are often some of my favorite folks at the university. </p>
<p>This elitist attitude is repulsive and does not represent USC well. Kind of a huge turn off for us. know, I know…a few rotten apples… Fortunately our kid’s “elite” university had a much kinder, gentler attitude. </p>
<p>Seattle is short sighted in his obsession for USC to become a great university in the mold of HYPSM. He thinks cc transfers dilute the USC talent and degree. I agree with many of the poinst USCAlum05 made regarding financing a college education. A few decades ago, I know of people who gone first to community colleges and then got the grades to transfer to UC Berkeley. They went to cc primarily for financial reasons. Many were children of immigrant parents and were first generation college students. From Berkeley, these kids were able to go on to top graduate schools by getting MBA’s or graduate degrees from UCB, Stanford, etc. or medical degrees from UCSF. I met a person who went to a CC and then transferred to Stanford. After Stanford, he got a MBA from USC. I am sure with the high cost of college, many students attend cc before transferring to a 4 year college… My point is the cc students who do well at the cc are able to transfer to high ranked colleges. Many transfers, who do well at their high ranked 4 year colleges, go on to top graduate schools. Many save a lot of money by doing the CC route before transferring.</p>
<p>The level of education at all of the CCs I named is no better than a typical public high school. I encourage each of you to sit in a CC class on virtually any subject and you will be shocked by the low level of interest and engagement by the students, and need to teach at the lowest common denominator, more indicative of high school than college. A typical private high school is far more rigorous, IMO. Just because a kid saves money by attending a CC doesn’t mean she is obtaining a decent education; she is not, but is merely consuming tax dollar subsidies, collecting easy As as compared to her less competitive and barely literate classmates, and deluding herself that she is now eminently qualified to transfer to a university. That is but one way in which CC transfers dilute the class.</p>
<p>Philosophically, I don’t believe in public higher education because I don’t believe taxpayers should be burdened by institutions that do not serve them and generally fail to meet their ROI in terms of graduation and placement rates. They are failures at the CC level and are generally much too subsidised and expensive at the university level, mainly because of gross bureaucratic inefficiencies, high drop out rates and open door admissions. Cal State L.A.comes to mind. Except for California, virtually all other states have traditionally relied on private colleges and universities, which have served their local taxpayers just fine. Your obsession with public higher education is unique to California. </p>
<p>@SeattleTW, you do not have a very tight argument, nor a particularly compelling one on either count. I realize this is the USC thread, but I would challenge you to compare USC to UCBerkeley, UCLA, UMich, UVa, UToronto, UBC, etc. Also, realize that graduation is not the logical terminus to Community Colleges (many people collect credits and transfer without ever graduating, and are very successful, leaving behind the low graduation rates that you cite as their legacy). More California students are accepted into UCs through CC transfer than through freshman admission, yet these institutions have sterling results in terms of job placement (or pretty much any other metric).</p>
<p>Do sit in on those classes- but also sit in on some of the stultifying GE-requirement-fulfilling courses at a private university. You may be shocked to find the Community College classes to be superior. Community colleges offer no upper division: they are designed to break down the lower division classes to make them more accessible (multiple levels, from honors to remedial; and smaller class sizes). They have a specific mission and they fulfill it well. You are talking through your hat on this.</p>
<p>You are right about this: >>Just because a kid saves money by attending a CC doesn’t mean she is obtaining a decent education; she is not<<
Each community college, each class, each professor must stand on its own reputation. She MAY be obtaining a decent education, but it is because she is in a great class, not just because she is saving money- that is an added bonus!</p>
<p>Oh, and tell New York about the massive failure of their SUNYs and CUNYs and Macauley; and tell Colorado and other states about the failure of their state SLAC’s and Uni’s.</p>
<p>It must be wonderful to wield a broad brush and not have to trouble oneself with particular details or even with supporting evidence or backup.</p>
<p>There you go folks. Anyone who cannot afford a private, 4 year education directly out of high school is clearly sub par and not fit to grace the halls of our nation’s “hallowed” halls of learning. Wow. Just wow. </p>
<p>^HYSPSc…</p>
<p>Here is the backup:</p>
<p>Shanghai:
HSM<a href=“#4”>PSc</a>
<a href=“http://www.shanghairanking.com”>http://www.shanghairanking.com</a></p>
<p>USN&WR (#3):
HM[PSc]SOxfCamb
<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/rankings?int=9cf408”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/rankings?int=9cf408</a></p>
<p>Times of London:
HMSCambOxf <a href=“#6”>PSc</a>
<a href=“World Reputation Rankings 2014 | Times Higher Education (THE)”>http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2014/reputation-ranking</a></p>
<p>QS- #20
<a href=“QS World University Rankings 2015: Top Global Universities | Top Universities”>QS World University Rankings 2015: Top Global Universities | Top Universities;
<p>Though I did mention Public Universities here, I apologize, I did NOT mention USC, but then I did not go further than 20 deep…</p>