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Comment by skybrian | Hacker News Reader

One alternative might be community college for the first two years, to cut down the cost.

Nice in theory, but maybe not as nice in practice. They tell you "do the first 2 years at the CC, then do the last 2 years at the University".

What actually seems to happen is: "Spend at least 3 years making your way through CC, then somehow still take another 4 years to finish at the University."

Students who can actually manage to complete the 2+2 may be better off just doing the 4 at the University. (And might actually do it in less, due to AP credits and other things.)

> What actually seems to happen is: "Spend at least 3 years making your way through CC, then somehow still take another 4 years to finish at the University."

Any source on this? Because going to CC and then moving on to University in 4 years total is exactly what my sister, and grad school advisor did. His path was particularly good, going CC -> State University -> Ivy League PhD.

If you're going that path, you have to be careful. Double and triple check that your target University is going to accept the credits you think they're going to accept, at the values you think they're going to accept them. Preferably ask them directly, by specific course, and getting it in writing might not be out of line.

I've personally known people to pull off the 2+2 as well, but I've also personally known people who basically had the University look at their two years at CC, pat them on the head, and told them they get basically no credits because they didn't accept the level of courses involved.

It's actually really nice here in Indiana. Two major state schools partnered with the community college Ivy Tech. You can transfer your first 2 years worth of credits to the state college and get a degree from one of those 2 institutions. It works out well from what I've seen. That way too, if after 2 years you decide it's not for you, you're not in as much debt and still have an AS degree.

Agreed, don't pick any random CC. Pick your final university and then find CCs that have agreements on transfer credits. I did 1.5 years at a CC in the same city as the university and on the sign up sheet for classes they would star the classes that could transfer and I had a list of classes I could take that would directly meet requirements for my future major at the university.

Though it does suck to skip out on the experience of being a freshman in a major university without the crutch of returning to mommy's house every night. Nice to be thrown into the deep end.

The crazy costs of university have made us look at university through the lens of job training, but there's a lot more to university than that. It just not worth it when you're going to be $100k in debt.

Yea, five years ago these conversations used to have a lot of "University is about being a well-rounded human", and my response would be "I'm a a bigger believer in that than most, but ask yourself whether playacting some aristocratic fledgling is worth 100-200k".

It seems like as the situation has become more universal and more central to the national conversation, the pendulum has again flipped, and I rarely see people mention the benefits of university beyond job training.

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