To educators, employers, college graduates and students: Does 4 Years = 2 + 2 Community College?

College Life
21

Well, no, the courses at a community college may not be directly comparable/equivalent to the courses at Cornell. But one could say the same thing about high school preparation - not all high schools are equal, and I’m sure that the education at Stuyvesant or Andover gives better prep to students than the education at the local public high school in Compton or Newark.

However, those students from Compton or Newark - or the local community college - may have other traits and capabilities that the Stuy kids never had to develop. If you come from the poorest high school or a community college and catch up to your classmates at Elite U, that shows some ambition and perseverance and a strong ability for self-directed learning.

The question is really not whether these groups of students are distinguishable from each other, but whether the differences are large enough to make some kind of difference in their performance on the job or in graduate programs. So far it appears that employees and graduate programs have decided it does not, since they hardly seem to care.

22

Education doesn’t depend on where you go for college. For example one of my kid was also top students in one middle school, we then moved to a different high school with much tougher than her previous high school. When it comes time to admission, she was accepted to USC and not UCLA nor UCB. But friends who attend previous high schools with much lower capabilities were accepted to UCLA and UCB. On CC, USC is not viewed the same caliber as UCLA and UCB, not back in 2008. Looking on Facebook, none of those kids turned out better than my kid. I mean education helps the person and it starts from day one not after k-12. So if you go to a tough boarding school or such, you’ve been sharpening your academic skills all along. So the kids that have been at Cornell all 4 years have their tools sharpening since day one of their college career. It’s not a waste. But it’s still depend on you and not college even if you go to CC and then transfer in.
But I don’t think employers care. When I was interviewing I noticed a difference between a 4-year graduate from UCB and the kids who transferred in from CC to UCB.

23

The physics text used in the course that was part of the pre-engineering program at a CC I had some exposure to is the same text often used at Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, and other “good” schools. The course was taught at an acceptable level of rigor, with problems out of the text, there is a very good lab accompanying the course.

From what I was able to surmise, the main differences in the CC course vs, the same course at Cornell were: at the CC they tended not to give the very hardest problems, and they covered a couple fewer sections each semester.

But the biggest difference is, relatively few of the students in the CC class were up to handling the course material. A lot of the class was flunking and dropped early on. I don’t know if the Prof even curved at all, but if so it would probably have been to a “C”. Out of a class of about 30 there may have been eight students who could really hack it. IIRC only a couple got "A"s.

My personal feeling is someone who got an “A” in that course at the CC could probably have earned at least the mean grade at the same course at Cornell. And quite possibly better. . Furthermore, that person would be perfectly satisfactorily trained to undertake further studies in the engineering program at Cornell.

The entry level texts in the other science courses in the pre- [something] programs were also well-recognized texts used at major “good” universities.

In “general ed” type course like intro psych the student cohort was overall less strong than in the pre[whatever] programs. . The material of a typical college course was covered. But those courses are likely curved, so the weaker cohort probably comes into play, making the grading not in the least comparable vs Cornell et al. Still, the material was. Exams were fact and content based, with no “thought teasers” that a Cornell prof. might throw in just to create a curve. But if you completed the course and did everything you’d have had a decent intro psych course. I believe.

If a transfer student comes to Cornell, and does well there, evidently they had what it takes. On the other hand if they get there and fall on their faces evidently they didn’t.
I’ve witnessed examples of both. Whether transferring from a CC or from a 4 year college.
I don’t know of any statistics available to the public isolating the performance of CC students who transfer in, vs others.

24

Once upon a time, there was a web site called UC Statfinder that allowed generating custom tables, such as one listing GPA in the first year after transfer for students transferring from California CCs to UCs with small ranges of prior college GPA. Those particular tables indicated that those with 3.8-4.0 GPA at CC prior to transfer typically averaged 3.4-3.7 GPA in the first year after transfer (depending on campus). This 0.2-0.5 GPA drop did shrink at lower GPA levels, disappearing at around the 3.0 level (of course, 3.0 transfer applicants are only likely to be admitted to the least selective campuses, not campuses like Berkeley or Los Angeles, most of whose admitted transfers were in the 3.8-4.0 range).