Schools How Do Community College Experiences Shape Career Choices?

[perennial]

For what it's worth...I wanted to give my opinion on the whole community college thing. I'm currently attending a local CC (Diablo Valley College)...my understanding is that it's regarding as one of the top on California and though I don't know the exact figures...I know they transfer a bunch of students to the UC system. I'm a Civil Engineering major and am currently working on the engineering core classes (all the math, physics, chem, and engineering lower division).

My experience has been that the students themselves are to blame for the CC's having to lower their expectations from them and as a consequence not being able to prepare them for when they transfer. When the time comes to choose courses, most students would rather go by "who's easiest" and by online reviews of professors instead of by the quality of instruction that they would be receiving had they taken the "harder" professor. However, I've been fortunate enough to take professors who in a CC classroom are teaching at a UC level. My physics professor this semester told us that he is basically teaching from the material he was taught from at Berkeley and he models his tests the same way. A chemistry professor I took was also the same way. If the CCs would have nothing but professors of this caliber, I can see the lack of preparation problem going away once people transfer to a UC.

Now...I haven't transferred yet, but my wife just did, from the same CC I'm attending to Cal (as a Statistics/Math major). She feels that she didn't have the preparation necessary from the CC. She transferred with a 4.0 (the woman doesn't even know what it's like to get a B), but once she got to Cal...she didn't necessarily hit the ground running as expected. Simply put...the classes at Cal are way harder than anything that she took at the CC. However...she has pointed out to me several times that she wishes that she had taken professors like the ones I mentioned above because she feels that professors like that would have prepared her better for what was to come. She has run into people from our CC and they feel the same way, the teachers were too easy.

The only thing that I have noticed and am pretty certain about is that part-time instructors are the worst thing that a CC can have. For the most part they are working in the field as engineers and chemists or whatnot but it seems that when it's time to teach...the classroom "gets in the way of their lives". When I've been unfortunate enough to have to take en evening class with a part-time instructor...it's been nothing but frustrations and disappointments. Basically the class ends and you feel that it was a waste of time. It's the full-time instructors who provide the better education...and of the full-time instructors...the ones that people seem to avoid are the ones that should be taken.

I haven't the slightest idea of what studying engineering will be once I transfer to a UC. I know it's going to be hard...but the only thing I feel that I can do...is take the hardest professors at the local CC and do my best once I transfer.

Community Colleges are a good stepping stone...if you know how to use them.

 

[starchild75]

How much difference is there between CC and university classes if I were to just take the first 3 to 4 calc classes and the first 2 calc based physics classes at CC?

Also, how much responsibility falls on the student to make sure (s)he is prepared for university classes?

 

[JSBeckton]

I went to CC for the first 2 years and transferred flawlessly, I don't understand how people somehow think that calculus is different in CC than a university, its been pretty much the same for hundreds of years, same books, same chapters, same questions. The same goes for basic physics, chem and don't even get me started on soc/hum classes.

The tests at the University are way harder but that's kinda misleading, I would say that the average scores in my upper level classes are in the 50's-60's compared the the CC where that averages were 80-85%. So you probabally won't get 95-100 anymore but you can still expect to score 10-15% above average if you try hard and will still get an A-B even if you get a 75% on the test.

You can expect the tests to get harder, the competition to be a bit tougher (and since they usually grade on a curve there is competition now) but if you learned the material in CC and continue to work hard, no problem!

I would say that my average professor in CC was much better than my professors now who are some of the best paid professors in the Country (Pitt). Sure there are exceptions, but you will find that many univesity professors are really brilliant people who generage a lot of research money for the school, but couldn't teach a dog to play catch. Your CC teacher has only one job.

They are there to do research, teaching is just a required chore for some of them and you will find that they are far les acessable than a CC teacher. You will usually ber referred to the TA who has no teaching experience whatsoever.

In the end, its up to you how much you get out of a class.

 

[colin.mcenroe]

I went to CC for the first 2 years and transferred flawlessly, I don't understand how people somehow think that calculus is different in CC than a university, its been pretty much the same for hundreds of years, same books, same chapters, same questions. The same goes for basic physics, chem and don't even get me started on soc/hum classes.

The tests at the University are way harder but that's kinda misleading, I would say that the average scores in my upper level classes are in the 50's-60's compared the the CC where that averages were 80-85%. So you probabally won't get 95-100 anymore but you can still expect to score 10-15% above average if you try hard and will still get an A-B even if you get a 75% on the test.

You can expect the tests to get harder, the competition to be a bit tougher (and since they usually grade on a curve there is competition now) but if you learned the material in CC and continue to work hard, no problem!

I would say that my average professor in CC was much better than my professors now who are some of the best paid professors in the Country (Pitt). Sure there are exceptions, but you will find that many univesity professors are really brilliant people who generage a lot of research money for the school, but couldn't teach a dog to play catch. Your CC teacher has only one job.

They are there to do research, teaching is just a required chore for some of them and you will find that they are far les acessable than a CC teacher. You will usually ber referred to the TA who has no teaching experience whatsoever.

In the end, its up to you how much you get out of a class.

I couldn't agree with your last statement more. It is good to hear from one person who had a good experience transferring.

 

[sexicutioner]

I went to a california JC before transferring to UCLA as a junior and feel the preparation was adequate. The coursework simply becomes more challenging when you transfer to upper division. I was also nervous when transferring but later realized that around 70% of my classmates were also in-state JC transfers who were in the same position as I was.

One disadvantage of doing the JC transfer is applying to grad school. While I noticed many students (who started off as freshman at UCLA) applying at the end of their junior / beginning of senior year to grad programs, I didn't notice any transfers applying this early. Most were simply not ready to apply to a new school after being at a new campus for only one year. I imagine that one year is not sufficient time to adjust to the pace of a new school, find a lab to do research in, and prepare for the GREs.

However, taking an extra year or so in classes is a relatively small price compared with the money saved at the JC. In addition, I would HIGHLY advise any people attending california JC's and planning to tranfer to an in-state college to finish IGETC. This process will save you from having to take numerous electrives at the university, and some UCs will not accept you if you do not complete it by the time of transferring.

Hope that was moderately helpful to the JC physics crowd!

 

[heafnerj]

my perspective

I've taught undergraduate astronomy and physics at all levels at a community college for 15 years so I have to chime in on this thread.

It is true that many, if not most, community college science courses are watered down. Then again, many university science courses are also completely inadequate in that they don't foster reasoning skills and instead focus almost entirely on rote problem solving. Many incompetent faculty end up in community colleges, althought there is great variation. Many community colleges are managed by incompetent administrators, again with great variation from school to school. Community colleges are usually seen as a dumping ground for students who can't (by someone's arbitrary definition in come cases) cut it at the university. Sadly, this is true in many cases but I can offer direct evidence to the contrary.

In my opinion, the single most important issue other than instructor competence is student attitude. The hardest part of my job is convincing students that they actually have to do something outside of the classroom in order to succeed. I'm increasingly seeing school becoming more and more of a pastime between partime jobs and family obligations. Across the board education has lost its priority. That's another whole issue I could go into, but I'll save that for later.

Another important issue is that too many community colleges offer courses that attempt to mimic traditional university physics courses, which is an endeavor doomed to failure from the beginning because emulating mediocrity only leads to more mediocrity. I have a hard time convicing my students that university faculty are hired and fired based on research and publishing obligations and not quality classroom instruction. Students who eventually transfer to the universities learn this quickly; students who are at community college after failing at a university already know this.

In the mid 1990s, I made some radical changes to the way I teach and to what I teach. I stopped using the traditional calc-based physics texts and switched to a truly innovative text (Matter & Interactions by Chabay and Sherwood). At the time, mine was the only school in the state using this text and the state's largest public university was courting the authors to work in their PER group. The university department chair was worried that their undergrads wouldn't be able to handle the radically different text (radical especially with respect to content, but also somewhat to pedagogy). I'm told by the authors, who were indeed hired, that once the department chair learned that the new materials were being used successfully at a lowly community college, he agreed to try them at the university. That's another different story that I'll save for later.

More to the point, I can tell you that with the right materials and the right instructors, community college students can not only succeed, but sometimes outperform their university peers. I have had many students who wanted to become engineers, but they simply didn't make it. I have had a handful of students who went on to get their degrees in engineering, computer science, chemistry, physyics, and mathematics and blow their university peers out of the water. There was one student who transferred to the state's largest university as a junior and took advanced/graduate level pchem and quantum courses as an undergraduate and also received a prestigious NSF grant for summer research in carbon nanotubes at U. of Maryland. Another student transferred to our state's second largest public university as a junior and was so disenchanted with the quality of undergrad instruction there that she transferred to another state. Upon graduation, she entered grad school in chemistry at U. of Hawaii where, I'm told by a mutual friend, she was the first entering student in about ten years to completely ace all chemistry placement exams, including earning a perfect score on the organic entrance exam. Then there are the two students who took physics with me and transferred to the state's largest university only to be hired as undergraduate teaching assistants in physics sections taught by the textbooks' authors (same ones mentioned above). Their level of preparation was far above that of the the home grown students. Then there are the students who take tests and homework assignments from my courses to their friends taking physics at the universities and come back and tell me their friends couldn't work the problems! In all but one instance when the quality of my course was questioned relative to a university's own course, my course was shown to be not only equivalent but many times also higher in scope and quality than the university's course. Oh, and that one institution that balked at me is now using the same materials I'm using! Oh the irony! The student involved told this school, a very large southern engineering school, to get stuffed and accepted a full scholarship from another engineering university.

There are more such stories I could relate. You have every right to be skeptical of these stories by the way.

It is indeed true that these students represent the minority of community college students however. Most do eventually transfer and complete their undergraduate degrees. Many, though, have to change their goals to make them more realistic. I have no qualms in claiming that the quality of instruction at a very good community college is far superior to that which *any* university is remotely capable of offering. The hard part is finding a very good community college.

Here's the bottom line. For every negative stereotypical image of community colleges you cite, I will quite loudly and forcefully cite a counter example and will take great pride in doing so...every time.

Any students here considering taking physics from a community college please PM me and I'll discuss it with you to your heart's content.

 

[colin.mcenroe]

Wow, thanks for your post and insights!

It is now my second quarter at UCD. Having successfully transfered, I can say that I definitely feel that the community college I went to prepared me for the big university. I have had one poor professor so far, but she was a math professor and it was not a class required for my major. Other than that I have had very good professors that are quite engaging and seem to enjoy teaching. I am sure things will change a bit when I hit my upper division courses, but for now I am very happy.

I am currently finishing off my lower division physics courses with my first at the university- modern physics. My professor is very well spoken, approachable, offers problem solving sessions, and even wrote the book for the course, and even better, it is actually a well written text! I can easily say that my preparation at the CC was adequate. We left off only a couple of concepts which I can easily pick up while working problems. My CC professor taught us excellent problem solving skills and critical thinking by teaching us to start from the most fundamental things we know about the problems and working from there. This has paid off by allowing me to see the big conservation principles necessary to solve the problems and any other big conceptual ideas that had ought to be deployed.

As far as testing goes, I have not found it to be insanely difficult compared to my community college. The curve is quite a bit different, but I actually really appreciate it. I feel like I have been doing very well in my courses so far and have been learning quite a bit.

The hardest thing for me about transfering was probably moving (and it really wasn't that hard). I have never lived on my own before, so it took me a while to get used to grocery shopping, managing money, and cooking. Now all that is second nature, and I have my own very quiet room to sleep and study in, and I really enjoy my housemates' company so it has all worked out well. Davis is a very neat little town and it seems like because it is small, it has developed its own little weirdness and quirks just waiting to be uncovered; it is a really nice place to live so far.

I will be here for about 2 years and 2 quarters, so I still have some time to worry about grad school admissions and the likes. I am not too worried about it yet, but I will probably start getting there by the end of next year! I am not sure what class I am in right now, I suppose I am a third year student taking second year courses :) The whole IGETC thing is great, but one really nice thing about the UC's general ed is that you can knock the whole thing out with about 6 classes total. I didn't finish the IGETC before I transferred, but it didn't matter. Many of the GE courses I took at the CC came over with me and left me with about 3 classes I needed to finish to end my GE. I am glad I did it this way because it has allowed me to explore electives that were not previously available to me (such as Bulgarian Folk Music and upper division math classes).

Anyway, things have gone well, and I would recommend CC to any motivated student.

 

[proton]

I've finishing my second year at a community college and I feel pretty prepared to transfer. However, I did most of the studying on my own and rarely asked for help from professors. Most of the professors seem pretty bitter and unhappy with their jobs. The men seem unhappy, but the women seem to accept what they have. Two of my professors often used sarcasm to mock students and rant about their frustrations. I've spoken with a few university professors at UCI and they seemed nice and approachable. Most of the students, even the ones who got accepted to UC Berkeley, were lazy, crammed for exams, and only cared about their grades, little about what they learned. But I still think I made the right choice because I saved a lot of money, used the same textbooks that are used at universities, and probably learned the same amount of material as the university physics majors learned in their lower-div classes.

 

[600burger]

I did EXACTLY what you did.

Transfered from JC (American river college in Sac) to UCD as a Mech/Aero.

JC is a lot easier, lots of time to do nothing, but i think most lower div is.

When i transferred here i was a junior and took a class called ENG180, one of the hardest eng math classes on campus (due to the pace). Anyways, since i was so freaked out about falling behind everyone that was used to the quarter schedual i worked my ass off and wound up with an A-, on of a few in the class.

Its essential that you LOVE your major, other wise you'll just not care.