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Old 09-10-2008, 02:13 PM   #16 (permalink)
snowy
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Location: Oregon
Quote:
Originally Posted by jorgelito View Post
Community College is already very accessible. In fact, it is one of the wonders of this country. I went to community college working on a Starbucks salary. You really can't get cheaper than community college. Even at the whopping cost of $20/unit, you would have to be fiscally irresponsible not to be able to afford to go to cc. A full-time load of 12 units is a $240 tuition bill for the semester. Add some used books or library books and you're looking a real bargain. Plus, many cc profesoors are from nearby universities. My cc years were filled with profs from UCLA, USC, and Pepperdine (I know these are shitty schools but at least it's something). So in essence, you are getting a quality education from decent profs (if you're on the east coast then even better) for a cheap price.

2-4 years of community college also reduces your over-all tuition because you only have two years of university left. CC also has the benefit of being a vocational school as well so students can go for 2 years and get an AA or certificate in a real skill while the rest can go for liberal arts.

The money may be better spent on transition programs or at the high school, intermediary years. Programs for getting people ready for college and returning students.
It's about $900 here for a full courseload at a CC per term, and about $2400 for a full courseload at the state 4-year university. Like I said in my first post, the cost of tuition varies widely from state to state depending on how much funding the state is willing to provide. California does a much better job than Oregon does in this respect. And ace, even with "other costs", it still only cost me about $10,000/yr to go to school--less when I moved out of the dorms.

And ace, yes, there have been many cuts to funding tertiary education in Oregon--actual cuts to our funding. It is usually the first thing to get cut when it comes to the budget. We've also had a steady increase in enrollment rates over the last 8 years, from 14,500 or so students when I started to over 20,000 expected this fall. It puts a real strain on our facilities. Our facilities are not in the greatest of shape, our faculty aren't overpaid, and so there really isn't anything to be cut or lessened at the university itself. We're reliant on donations to help fund capital improvement projects, though that is one area we can get funding from the state for. However, until the last Legislature session, that money was really hard to come by, and our campus really suffered because of it.

And universities have admission caps because you cannot accept more students than your core facilities will support--that's just common sense. It has nothing to do with increasing the value of the degree; the value of a degree is determined by the quality of the faculty and the effort put into attaining it by the student. We can cram more bodies into classrooms, but at some point you begin to overtax the other facilities on campus--the computer labs, the library, the bathrooms. It's the same thing at the elementary and secondary level--sure, you can put more kids in a school, you can add portable classrooms, but then you'll have to add lunches, think about building some new bathrooms, and so on. Furthermore, a lot of universities and colleges depend on the goodwill of the community they are part of, be it a big city or a small one, and taxing the infrastructure of that city or town is not exactly good business. If we truly wanted to do away with admission caps, someone would have to cough up the dough for some serious capital improvement projects, and that's just not going to happen.

And I've taken classes online, and taken classes with a taped lecture--they do not compare (if we're going for educational value) with a small group of students led in discussion by a professor, in person. There is no interaction with a taped lecture, and there is much to be gained on the part of the student from interaction with faculty, and interaction with fellow students isn't exactly encouraged. As for online classes, there is usually a discussion component via some kind of discussion board similar to TFP, but to be frank about my experience, it seems that TFP is better at having true discussions regarding academic topics than any discussion group I ever took part in via an online class. There isn't a whole lot of interaction going on with your classmates via these discussion boards. And that really is key to the whole college education experience--interaction with your peers as scholars and interaction with faculty as scholars. Otherwise, the student just isn't getting as much out of their education--or value from their education--as they could be.

I have to wonder, ace, when was the last time you stepped foot on a college campus, be it a community college or a four-year school?
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