Degree Hack: Cobbling Together Credit Hours For Cheap 368
McGruber writes "The Chronicle of Higher Education has a web episode about Richard Linder, a US college student who was determined to do the impossible: earn a U.S. college degree while not taking on any student debt. Mr. Linder cobbled together an associate degree in liberal arts for a mere $3,000. He did it by transferring academic credits to Excelsior College, a regionally accredited institution that doesn't require students to take any of its own courses. Mr. Linder's earned his transferred credit hours from an array of unexpected sources: from high school Advanced Placement courses to classes taught by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Fire Academy. He even managed to get one credit hour from Microsoft." I find his creativity in breadth and sources of credit-worthy instruction more interesting than the pricetag, though the commenters on the linked story are sharply divided on the value of the courses taken. While $3,000 is cheap for an associate's degree compared to many U.S. colleges, it's not unheard of; tuition for locals at a community college near me wouldn't be too far off that, even without transferring in any credits.
I'd hire him (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'd hire this guy in a flash. This kind of stunt shows a level of creativity, commitment and out of the box thinking that's worth more than any college degree.
Careful ... that's how Microsoft got started.
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Yeah. That degree itself doesn't say squat, how he got it shows cleverness and a desire to put effort into a goal, as well as a drive to cost effectiveness.
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Re:I'd hire him (Score:5, Funny)
I never really got an education, seeing as I was born an orphan and went to art college...
BORN an orphan? Now there's a disgusting image...
Re:I'd hire him (Score:5, Funny)
However, the Art College thing is entirely his fault.
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Have things changed so much in education that this is astounding? I went to va tech (in state) and paid for it and living out of summer job cash as did most of the other engineering students with whom I attended in the late eighties (cool story bro) (tuition was like $2500 per year iirc). Even if the tuition costs have tripled I can't imagine that it's that hard to live of the economy or summer in more lucrative places to save ahead. Va tech at the time was a top twenty overall engineering school .... Unm n
degree != college education (Score:3)
I agree he's hirable...but he demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of learning...
You didn't go to college unless you studied *all* disciplines as a survey and study *most* of *one* subject under the supervision of recognized experts in the subject..
If you didn't do that you didn't get a *college education* you got a *piece of paper*
However, he does demonstrate intelligence and more importantly persistence. He followed through with his stupid plan to the end...that means something.
I wouldn't consider
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Good for you and your pointless anecdotes. I'd like to see actual data on who has it easier, though. And how many people who don't have degrees find it "easy" to get top offers.
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...valuing a piece of paper acquired by any means over actual subject matter knowledge
Oh wait - you mean, like 99.9% of employers and the entire US "higher-learning" education system? It's not him at all that has the problem - quite the opposite, in fact. Sounds like he knows exactly what the piece of paper is worth, and just decided it wasn't worth signing over his arm and leg to get something that worthless. The only points I take issue with are the assumption that one needs a degree to get ahead in life (I don't have one and am doing just fine, thank you - and I'm not an anomaly in my
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Sounds like it's worth it (Score:3)
Re:Sounds like it's worth it (Score:4, Insightful)
Contempt for associates degrees is part of the mechanics that drive up the cost of college degrees. If you're ever in a hiring role, I hope you'll reconsider your position. With the huge percentage of people going to a four year school and simply not caring about academics, the distinction of a BA doesn't seem like it holds much more(if any) value than an associates.
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Contempt for bachelors degrees is part of the mechanics that drive up the cost of college degrees. The fact that bachelors are the new high school diploma is why so many people now need a Master's to distinguish themselves in any way.
Lots of Cheap Education (Score:5, Insightful)
You can get a degree for very cheap, even a decent one.
1. Find a good state school
2 Pick a degree and read all the requirements for that degree very carefully.
3. Look in the transfer database for that school. Take every course that can transfer in exactly from a local community college
4. Take the rest of the courses from that state school.
I got my Engineering degree without taking a single general elective from the school. Everything came from online/summer community college courses for 1/4 the price. Most people spend to much at college because they go where it is convenient and they don't pick a degree until the 3rd or 4th year.
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All good points and very doable. Understand that it will take you at least five years to do this.
To be fair, it's becoming more common for the "4-year" Bachelor's degree to take five or more years anyway, at least with engineering.
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To be fair, it's becoming more common for the "4-year" Bachelor's degree to take five or more years anyway, at least with engineering.
It's happening with lots of fields. One thing that I've seen happen to students in all types of degree programs is that they'll need one more class to complete their requirements but the school isn't offering the class they need this semester, due to budget cuts.
Also, anyone who has strict scheduling requirements -- say, they have a job to pay for all this school, so they can only take night classes on certain days -- is especially susceptible to this.
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Only if the degree itself would normally take 5 years, which typically only happens when switching majors.
It takes only four years depend on your lifestyle (Score:2)
at least for the first two years in a community college, "summer vacation" did not exist in my vocabulary. I managed to crank out 133 semester hours in two years with no student loans.
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You can get a degree for very cheap, even a decent one.
1. Find a good state school
2 Pick a degree and read all the requirements for that degree very carefully.
3. Look in the transfer database for that school. Take every course that can transfer in exactly from a local community college
4. Take the rest of the courses from that state school.
I got my Engineering degree without taking a single general elective from the school. Everything came from online/summer community college courses for 1/4 the price. Most people spend to much at college because they go where it is convenient and they don't pick a degree until the 3rd or 4th year.
Or you can find some full-time job in the university so your tuition is largely covered as a fringe benefit, like I did. 2 degrees (c:
Fees and books I still had to foot, but that was insignificant compared to the price of tuition.
I really hadn't though about it before, but that fringe benefit has opened a lot of doors and kept me in wasabi peas for a mighty long time and I never really tallied up the amount in zorkmids my employer footed. Pretty good deal all around. HOYVIN-GLAVIN!
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Yep.
Actually, the state university I work for, encourages exactly that behavior. Heck, we even encourage students to take lower level major courses offered by the local community colleges, at the CCs. I've heard a few groups talk about getting us out of the lower-level course offerings, and just working with the local CCs since they tend to do it better anyway (we a a research institution, and a lot of our profs don't want to be bothered with lower level stuff).
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Yep.
Actually, the state university I work for, encourages exactly that behavior. Heck, we even encourage students to take lower level major courses offered by the local community colleges, at the CCs. I've heard a few groups talk about getting us out of the lower-level course offerings, and just working with the local CCs since they tend to do it better anyway (we a a research institution, and a lot of our profs don't want to be bothered with lower level stuff).
Yeah, those JC's and Community Colleges work pretty well. A friend had a full scholarship to Stanford, but found his first semester was not to his liking - sitting in 300+ student lecture halls taking notes while a TA flips through slides and answers questions with an accent so thick he had to ask three times for it to be repeated. Came back home, knocked off his first two years in classes of 20-40 students and then returned to Stanford to finish up.
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I had smaller classes at the large university, than a friend had at the local CC (but I took honors courses). Class isn't always indicated.
More value then you think (Score:2)
An associate degree in liberal arts is a highly valuable degree quite contrary to what most posters will say. Most 4 year schools will accept an AA to meet all of the universities general education requirements allowing the student to move on to upper division course work in their interest area. That same course work would need to be completed in your first two years anyway, but would cost at lest 4 times as much. A good student could complete the course work listed in the article in well under an academic
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Not that useful for any serous science/engineering/math degree.
Any math or science taken in the _bachelors_ of Liberal Arts program would be remedial for STEM programs. If your not in real Calculus 1st semester you're going to take more then 4 years, just on stacked up prerequisites.
Which leaves you with a little english, history, a foreign language, maybe econ (econ would have been the 'bear' class in the liberal arts track). Maybe 30 credits transferred.
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Most STEM programs have calc as part of the degree requirements and can easily be done in the first year. As long as he is calculus ready there is no hold up. At most it would take 2.5-3 years to complete but he is still ahead of the game. Very few are able to complete a STEM program in 4 years unless they arrive with AP calc, chem, phys, comp, etc.
Any state school will take all 60 credits will transfer and exempt you from whatever gen ed program exists and cover any electives that may exist once your progr
Excelsior College (Score:5, Informative)
Is not just "regionally" accredited - it falls under the SUNY accreditation, and is a real, valid college degree. I should know: I have a BS from there (or rather, from when it was called Regents' College). You get accredited credits from colleges, accredited tests, etc, and when you have the right point spread, you get your degree. None of this crap from every other college about "oh, well, yes, you took compiler design there, but they have a different *emphasis*, and so we'll only call it an anonymous in-program upper-level elective, and you'll have to take it again", as UT at Austin told me in '91.
There's also no more of this "you have to take the last 30 or 60 credits of your degree *here* (and pay us the money), and those credits aren't transferrable....
It was created in '72 specifically for nursing and... can't remember, another program - students who were in the military, and "yes, we know you're three months from your degree, but Uncle is sending you to Germany for the next two years."
Note this is *not* U of Phoenix, or some such, nor just a "credit bank".
mark, BS, CIS '95, and proud of it.
A Worthless degree for only $3000 (Score:2)
Not only is an AA a worthless degree but it only cost him $3000. I guess it is better than spending more on an equally worthless degree.
Thomas Edison State College (NJ) (Score:3, Interesting)
When I decided that my music degree wasn't going to give me the career I wanted, I decided to get an accounting degree. I used Thomas Edison State College in NJ which is regionally accredited but was all non-resident at that time. I was able to use CLEP, ACT, and other similar tests to test out of 75 accounting and business credits over 2 years. TESC combined those with my liberal arts credits from my music degree to award my accounting degree. When I went to Trenton State for graduate study I was prepared to explain my degree, but I didn't need to. The admissions person said that they had very good luck with Thomas Edison grads because they knew how to study on their own.
I've got that beat (Score:5, Interesting)
$3,000 not that impressive (Score:2)
Much Easier Way - SAT Scores (Score:3)
The route described in the article is kind of arcane, and he leaves out one of the easiest ways, not just for getting partial funding, but even getting all of your costs funded: High SAT scores.
There are plenty of fully accredited 4-year universities out there who will pay for everything just based on SAT scores or a combination of GPA and SAT scores.
We're talking "Full Ride", like tuition, room, board, and books in many cases:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ridescholarships.html [collegeconfidential.com]
or significant scholarships that can get the net 4-year cost down to varying levels:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html?highlight=automatic [collegeconfidential.com]
All based on quantitative measurements alone.
It's hard to say why Richard Linder went through such obscure means in order to get his credits rather than just studying his ass off for the SAT's, but I suspect the reason why he went for "cheap credits" is where the real untold story is.
Scholarships and the Army (Score:3)
1. Smart enough to get a schollarship
2. Join the military.
While in the military, any classes you take in the military at any college, are paid for by the military.(still have to do your duties as a solider in the mean time). University of Phoenix specializes in doing this for soliders.
Two, GI Bill, 3 years of active duty or more, and you get the New GI Bill, which gives you 36 months of education in an accredited school, payed for %100, by the army. in addition the government gives a stipend for living expenses.
We need a badges system that is not big years+ b (Score:2)
We need a badges system that is not big years+ blocks that a Degrees are.
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Badges? BADGES? We don't need no STINKING BADGES!
A Gateway Degree (Score:2)
There's more you can do with just a little debt... (Score:2)
"the impossible"? (Score:2)
Winston University (Score:2)
Community colleges and 4-yr degrees (Score:3)
Although community colleges are often low-cost, it is hard to find one that gives more than a 2-year degree. One of the reasons is that private colleges, such as University of Phoenix, have lobbied against it, since it would hurt their profits.
Reference: University of Phoenix' plot to corner the cheap education market [salon.com]
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Hell, Harvard is free too, if your family makes under $60k (about the 60th percentile). Well, assuming you can get into Harvard.
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Hell, Harvard is free too, if your family makes under $60k (about the 60th percentile). Well, assuming you can get into Harvard.
Yep. One thing to get that free ride, another to have a place to reside during those years (notice how I didn't use the mythical word 'sleep')
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The Harvard version actually covers the full "cost of attendance", including the price of staying in the dorms and buying a meal plan.
Not possible any more (Score:2)
I also finished college with under 10k in debt for a CS degree at a great college.
However look at the tuition for any school now - even working full time there's no way it would be possible to escape any modern college without significant debt.
Something is going to have to give as there are just WAY too many students now who will never be able to pay back the debt they owe. Some might recommend global debt clearing for students but is it really fair to funnel so many taxpayer dollars into colleges who get
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Well, you could just not use taxpayer dollars. If it's possible to determine which college the student has gone to to collect the debt, how about billing them?
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I believe it was around 10k/year when I went. I worked part time, I also had some grants as well.
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I am currently taking classes at a public university, and paying as I go. I am avoiding debt and also allowing myself time for a full time career and the opportunity to participate in my children's lives. I have the advantage of not needing school as I am well into my career, so this is purely for personal gain with no hurry to the finish line. That said, with the fees that get tacked on every semester, I am paying more than $1100 per class, before books. If I took 3 at a time I could get that down below $9
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The cost of attendance at the University of Minnesota is $24,718. That includes room, board, tuition, and some expenses. The same student would need at least and extra $3,400 for expenses during summer break based on the schools calculation. A full time job at minimum wage after taxes brings in $12,617.28 if worked year round. If the student qualified for Pell grants, something that most all middle class students wont, he would receive $5,500.00. That would leave $3,200 in loans per year if the student was
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I posted above but with respect to state schools it not. I witness thousands do it every year in my city of half a million.
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law school at an Ivy league with a total of 5,000 in debt.
Um, Ivy League and other high-end private universities offer insane amounts of tuition assistance to any and all students who manage to get accepted. You don't make it into the Ivy League and leave buried in debt. You're either super-wealthy when you go in, or you're one of the very rare public high school graduates who made the cut and received heavy amounts of financial aid in return.
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There are a couple possibilities here.
1) You guys really worked the financial aid system. All the Ivies have excellent financial aid systems. They pride themselves on never losing a kid due to his inability to pay, and they've got the brand-name to charge scions of the Kennedy clan enough to cover their own education, plus a full scholarship for some other kid, plus the staff to to teach a bunch of 18-year-olds who suck at paperwork how to apply for said scholarships. They also have large endowments.
Paradox
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That's a lot less doable now then when you did it in the early '90s. In Ohio full-time minimum wage during the summer (call it 12 weeks), plus half-time the other 40, earns les then $10k. Tuition at state schools starts at $4.5k per semester. If you get a $5k scholarship you have $6k to live on, all year. It has to cover taxes, car repair, food, gas, cell phone, parking, books, rent, and clothes. This will not work.
Granted change some assumptions (16 weeks of summer, slightly more then minimum wage, 25 hour
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How many years ago was that?
Even when I went to college the yearly cost exceeded what someone making minimum wage or near it would have for a gross income. Never mind that you also have to eat.
Re:Impossible? (Score:5, Funny)
On a college campus and you can't find a better gig then minimum wage?
Seriously?
Start a birth control delivery service. 30 minutes or it's free. All you need is a phone, inventory and an unusual sleep pattern.
Sell pot. Make fake IDs. Start an underground brewpub. Buy an old slushy machine and rent it out for parties (get deposits). Not your job to keep tequila out of it.
A very large percentage of college kids are suburban rich kids following a script provided by the rents. They are often flush with cash and short on sense. Take them for all they are worth before they flunk out. It's a life habit that will serve you well.
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Yes, MISTER Wolowitz.
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
Here come the degree snobs.
"You didn't really get an education unless you paid a fortune for it, like me."
Or
"You didn't really get an education, unless you are massively in debt, like me."
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I got my PhD without any debt along the way or money from my parents. Go to a good undergrad that gives grants instead of loans to cover most of financial need (the annual price tag was $30+k, but few people actually paid anywhere near that...). Work a summer job to cover the rest, which doubles as gaining experience by working in a lab, etc (which often would be enough to cover most state university programs without any grants). Then most engineering and science programs will pay you to go to graduate school if you work as a TA, or better, as an RA essentially be paid to get your thesis done and papers to pad your resume.
A friend of mine is having his PhD entirely footed by the university he's performing research work at. How sweet it can be!
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A friend of mine is having his PhD entirely footed by the university he's performing research work at. How sweet it can be!
That's how I did mine ... combination of TA and RA = no grad school debt plus ~$1500-1800/mo income (back in the mid-late 90s) to scrape by on.
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Nah. Got a full bachelors of science without debt. No parental help either. Scholarships and grants.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Or
"You didn't really get an education unless you completed a full degree program."
In the U.S., associate degrees are generally two-year college degrees. They are NOT the equivalent of a university degree. They are the kind of degrees you get if you want to go into specialized professions, like being a lab assistant, or some types of nursing (though many hospitals now require four-year degrees), and various other things.
Don't get me wrong, it can't hurt you to get an associate degree. But an associate degree is not generally what most employers want to see when they're looking at your CV.
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Wrong.
You can get one through a vocational school but they are also part of university programs as well. Also, there are different types of associate degrees.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm calling bullshit on bullshit. My associates has landed me two decent jobs (sys admin).
To be fair - all my electives were geek classes - like network security and various programming. School is entirely what you make of it. You can float through, get your paper, and learn nothing. Or you can rock the fuck out and learn a lot of cool, useful, shit.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't mean for it to appear "whoosh-like", but I found a BA in Philosophy to be something that was fairly useful.
Much like high school calculus and chemistry don't teach anything about calculus or chemistry, but give you tools to solve problems; philosophy equips you with the ability to quickly wrap your head around things that you don't already know much about, and appreciate your own shortcomings enough to realize that you can learn something from almost everything.
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No but you DO get what you pay for in life.
A Bachelors in Liberal Arts is "almost" worthless in terms getting a job(avg . A associate degree is worth less then less half that...
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
No but you DO get what you pay for in life.
A Bachelors in Liberal Arts is "almost" worthless in terms getting a job(avg . A associate degree is worth less then less half that...
Degrees only make the Filters in HR deparments happy when screening job applicants.
I've been on interview committees where we've scanned portfolios and been mildly impressed until we asked a few questions to see how the applicant uses that hard earned knowledge. Beats me how some people get their degrees. Some have been utter frauds. Meanwhile, some of the brightest, most energetic people I've known only have a high school diploma, associates degree, certificate from a technical school or spent some time in the armed forces doing the sort of work which is largely being outsourced by the DoD these days.
It's what you make of it and how you spent your time while pursuing it. On the evening of my 21st birthday I was pulling an all-nighter in the computer lab while my friends were all getting drunk at a party in my honor.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
I participated in a contest held annually in Phoenix called the Avnet Tech Games. In the event I was doing, which included not only practical lab work, but also a written test, the community college students scored 90% and above. The university students were all below 70%.
It only makes sense too when you think about it. Universities focus on the theoretical while community colleges focus on the practical. That, and community college teachers are there to teach, and genuinely care for the success of the students. Most university professors on the other hand are there to do research, and have upwards of 300 students to a class.
I've mentioned on slashdot before about how I have zero debt and the benefits of community college, and the replies I often get are from people with terrible grammar (I've only taken one English class before, by the way) who tell me that I got a cheap education because community college sucks, though they can never offer any reason why they say that. I mean if it was Harvard or MIT, sure, but most public universities that most people attend aren't anything special, yet are still expensive.
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The bigger a degree, the more interest it'll engender. I've know people who've succeeded with associates degrees, but typically they don't get very far, very quick. The bachelors crowd tends to do a bit better.
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I don't know about that? I'd say that there's more of a bell curve in effect here. You can *generally* get further along, faster in the job market with the bachelors than the associates, but those going beyond that to earn masters' degrees often wind up unable to convert them to productive, higher-paying jobs.
There's such as thing as becoming "too educated" for the majority of people to take an interest in hiring you. Sure, it works out great if someone is really seeking the niche you're specialized in and
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What part of 'tends to' was confusing?
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I dropped out of a BS program, have 6 years of career experience, a dozen years total experience, and have never had a door shut on me (that I know of) due to my lack of "formal" education.
But I also recognize the gaps that a formal education would have filled, and work to educate myself.
A degree is nothing without the ambition, and ambition is everything.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't know about that. I dropped out of an associate's degree program, so don't have any degree, and my career is doing just fine. There are plenty of people with the same amount of experience and a bachelor's who are well below me on the career ladder.
There are always exceptions to the rule ... and I'm not even sure I agree that it's a "rule" that you need a degree.
But, not having a degree myself, I can say that it does make things harder for you in some ways. You're going to have to struggle a bit. Your career might progress more slowly than if you had a degree. But then, on the other hand, college takes at least four years of your life to complete and it can be pretty hard, so isn't it sort of a toss-up?
Maybe the only real rule is that if you want to get anywhere in life, you're going to have to work hard, one way or the other. Some people make the wrong choices and end up doing their hard work on a factory floor.
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notice the 'quick' part, 30 years isn't quick.
Also, I said 'tends to' not 'always', so a sample size of one doesn't really even come close to countering what I'm saying.
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The HOPE scholarship is a scholarship for people who would have likely gone on to college anyways.
Where is the scholarship for repletion who happened to have fucked up once? or take into account that person was also supporting a family and an alcoholic mother?
Another divide to prevent people from getting out of a low income hard life.
How about a universal education program?
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Welcome to old age.
The word you are looking for is 'Comma', also I was going to put in an unnecessary, gratuitous, run on, comma spliced sentence, just to annoy you, but I decided not too.
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You probably need to start using a bigger font in your old age if you read that semicolon as a comma. Or a better font the f and the ; might merge and look like f, in some.
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Read the writings of educated 18th century people, the comma was popular while semicolons were not; today the semicolon is popular, but a profusion of commas is not.
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like my hero Yoda, the voice in my head when reading them is similar to
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That's how we used to do this in the olden days.
They still exist, but I don't think they cover as much as they once did. Something I became quite aware of was the "Raise The Tuition Through Fees Game" which became quite popular a couple decades back. Higher education realised they could only get away with so much in "Tuition" so they added "high cost fees (for courses requiring an expensive setting or special equipment)", "lab fees", "renoberation fees", "froylavin fees" and "potrzebie fees", which tacked onto tuition began to hurt, particularly as Sch
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This. The state schools in my state raised tuition by a multiple of 15 in the last 20 years, but when you add in the fees 20 years ago and the fees now, the net effect is a 30 fold increase in 20 years. Yes, fully half of the cost of attending a class at this school is made up of fees.This is outside of the cost of residence, although a lot of the fees you would think would be tied to residence, like
Re:Oh the critics... (Score:5, Insightful)
Any society that does not enable citizens to persue higher education if they wish fails at civilization. We do not exist merely to eat sleep shit and fuck. No everybody doesn't need to go to college, everybody shouldn't need to or have to go to college. But everybody deserves the chance to better themselves, and society as a whole benefits when they do.
It's deeply troubling that the response to "tuitions are too high" is "not everyone needs to go to college" these days. Education is not a luxury that we can afford to go without, it is civilization itself.
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Education is still very affordable in most fields for anyone who bothers to take the time to plan it out before committing. The problem stems from people also wanting a big screen TV and all the major consoles at the same time as working for their degree. I can't speak for most other states, but NY's state university system offers a huge range of degrees and the vast majority of the population lives within a short distance of at least one - often more - two-year state school. Four-year state schools are on
Re:Oh the critics... (Score:4, Insightful)
Education is still very affordable in most fields for anyone who bothers to take the time to plan it out before committing.
My bullshit-o-meter just broke on that. Seriously, you killed it. Let's roll some numbers, mkays?
Now tuition doesn't cover the cost of books (That'll be another $600), or supplies ($250), or any incidentals you may need like a computer, car, furniture, etc. But we'll ignore those incidentals -- you're still looking at about $20 grand a year. Most of these things you aren't going to have at 18 unless your parents were affluent and gave them to you. Which means... you're gonna have to buy them to live on your own. Even with a roomate. Or several. Oh wait... you have no employable skills -- that's what you're going to college for!. Say hello to minimum wage at $9.50 an hour. And from 18-25, the student loans you can take out are capped, and although most parents do not contribute to their child's education, outdated calcuations based on your parents' income still determine eligibility for a wide variety of assistance programs. Your first year of college will be capped at $5,500 in loans. That's only a mere $14,500 short of what you need to survive your first year. But hey, let's say you take that summer job and you work a full 40 hours a week for three months straight (ahahahaa! Crazy, I know, but Republicans believe it's possible, so let's play along)... Congratulations! Your full time job has earned you... $4,936 gross. Oh wait... forgot taxes. That'll be $4,066.. net.
OH NOES! You're still short $10,434. So about that "very affordable" and how you were "not even exceptional effort" bit? How about a nice resounding Fuck you from the Department Of People Who Can Do Basic Math. There's a reason there's a trillion plus dollar student loan crisis out there, and an entire generation going bankrupt. You don't get to just handwave and say "Well, I was smart. Everyone else was just stupid." It doesn't work that way. You got lucky. Most people didn't. Statistical. Factual. Truth.
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Education is not a luxury that we can afford to go without
I think you're confused. The cost of education at the University level is egregiously prohibitive for many ordinary "citizens". Just because it's available to a select few is hardly making anything better for society. It only "makes it better" for those who can afford to absorb a $50k debt.
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I have basic arithmetic students at my college who can only divide 22 by 2 if they count on their fingers (2, 4, 6, 8... then see how many steps it took to get to 22... onoes, ran out of fingers). More generally, about 1/3 of this lowest-level class never memorized the one-digit multiplication table. Do they need to go to college? Does the state need to fund the attempt with financial aid?
I agree that society should support higher education, but I think by necessity there has to be some criteria by which on
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Yeah..sadly, I have to agree with you.
This 'degree' on your resume...will likely get your application directly filed in the circular filesystem by the HR person who will rapidly go to the next resume with a more 'real' degree....
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It's may not be worthless.
Some universities will take an associates as part of a transfer compact agreement to knock out the 2 years of bullshit gened's everyone has to take. I don't know that the school he used would qualify.
I have a community college up the street from me that's much larger, nicer, and well funded than many universities in the country, and it starts at about $110 per credit hour. So it's a great way to knock out all the garbage a university makes you do just for added revenue, but on the
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On the one hand, an Associates Degree by itself is about as useful as a solar panel in northeastern Ohio. It doesn't qualify you for anything that you weren't already qualified for with a high school diploma.
On the other hand, many schools will accept a larger number of (undergrad) credits in transfer if you have an Associates Degree than otherwise. That is, after all, the main purpose of an Associates: to bundle up the two years' worth of gen ed courses you've already taken, from a school tha
Re:Lib Arts Assoc Degree for $3000 (Score:5, Interesting)
> You can knock out a lot of your gen ed *before* going to the better, more expensive four-year college where you intend to complete your degree.
Assuming that you, unlike roughly 97% of your peers, have the *slightest* idea what you actually want to do for the next 40 years when you're 19 or 20. That's the whole problem with the "get your general education credits out of the way" plan of community colleges... by packing all of your "major" courses into two years, and by extension DEFERRING nearly all of them until years 3 and 4, you've raised the stakes considerably, and made changing your mind about your major a much, much more disruptive and expensive process.
If you wait until the fall semester of your third year to take your first real courses in your major, then discover you don't actually LIKE your major after all, you've just *incinerated" at least one semester... maybe two. In contrast, if you've taken the first 4 courses in your major by the middle of your sophomore year, then discover you don't really like it after all, you've only REALLY wasted one or two of those classes, because the others ended up satisfying your general-ed requiremends anyway.
That's why most private colleges and universities encourage you to spread out your general-ed classes, and to begin taking your "major" classes early and often, and why they encourage you to satisfy many of your "general ed" classes with classes that do double-duty as the "intro/survey/101" courses for other majors. They have every incentive to help you graduate in 4 years... they're expensive, they know it, and they know there's a nontrivial chance you might not graduate at all if they seriously derail you. They know that 70% of their students change their majors at least once before year 3, and most of them have had more than a hundred years to refine the formula and get it right.
The generic community-college scenario only really works for two groups of students... those whose only goal is "a degree", regardless of what it might be in, and those for whom community college is a second chance to shine, catch up, and redeem themselves. A student who's already at the top of his high school class and a shoo-in at just about any university is basically just wasting his time, and is actually INCREASING his odds of stumbling and losing his way before graduation.
The fact is, the "2+2" formula just doesn't work for the majority of students.
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That is the price of not having 32 years of .NET experience.