Quote:
Originally Posted by jorgelito
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.
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You can't use California as an example to try and understand what happens in any other state. We have a special system that Ronald Reagan set up before leaving office. Whereas we pay about $10 per credit and our JCs have guaranteed programs to transfer to 4 year universities, places like Oregon don't have that type of infrastructure and have to charge $45+ per credit (that was nearly 8 years ago, though).
And "cuts" in Oregon's context mean cuts...or clearcutting to be more precise.
The education system in Oregon is in shambles. The population is becoming older, along with people moving from other states (such as California) to retire, and they have no sales tax. The only way to raise money is through initiative, and retirees that have no personal stake in educating young people and are living on fixed incomes anyway regularly vote down initiatives for school funding.
If you don't think it's serious, perhaps you would if you were one of the kids whose school was shut down entirely and you had to be bussed to the next closest middle school on a staggered schedule with the population that was already at the school (you go to school at 6am and leave at 2pm and the kids who attended the school before your school was merged go in at 7am and leave at 3pm, for example).
Deptartment heads have been asked to squeeze blood from turnips for about 10 years now. Things like charging students for printing in labs, making them print their own syllabii from an online course listing instead of passing them out in class, and hiring professors part-time and paying them a portion of full time professors' salaries.
Hey, maybe you think that professors shouldn't be paid as much as they were, but the fact is that the best students and professors just leave where they can get better education and higher pay...if it's moving from Oregon to California that's one thing (that doesn't really affect you unless you're an Oregonian). If it means people leaving to Canada or the UK, for example, it's a net loss to the entire country's pool of workers and educators.
If you're actually curious what I'm talking about, the term to google would be "brain drain"