Catching Cheaters: Now Is the Time

Sadly, a second German minister with a PhD has been discovered to have plagiarized her dissertation. It is an odd thing about English that this somehow implies that the prior minister was also a woman; that is not the case.

Allow me to say that I am not speaking about dissertation quality. I doubt anyone will read my dissertation. It has some nice parts, and I'm proud of much of it, but it was not of fundamental importance. I have put my lab research on hiatus, so even for me it is gathering dust.

However, the PhD dissertation must be novel research. More than any other academic work, the dissertation can not be plagiarized, since its very purpose is to explain a novel contribution to the discipline.

Arguing this point is not the purpose of this post. I want to talk about two issues surrounding detection: who is currently doing it (and why), and how it should be done.

It seems that both of the Germans were outed by anonymous people who published lists of the stolen material. Since both held important government positions, I have to assume that the outers were motivated by politics. I normally don't support this kind of witch hunt, but I feel equally that I don't feel sorry for these people having been caught at a game many probably play.

We need a mechanism to audit dissertations, which requires a tools and a surrounding process. The tool part is easy: http://turnitin.com/ should be able to catch some, and more depending on integration with Google Books (yes, an academic mentioning Google Books without pillorying it). The process is trickier. This will miss indirect plagiarism (copying ideas or paraphrasing text without citing), but that cannot be automated at this point with existing technology.

Who should do the checking? Well, it can't be the student, since the untrustworthy ones aren't, well, trustworthy. One possibility is the Graduate School; at most US institutions, the Graduate School is an entity independent of other subunits, and they receive and certify the dissertation. However, they do this at the end of the process, usually after the final version has been approved by the student's committee and advisor.

My preference is that this be done by the chair of the student's dissertation committee, who can be the student's advisor, but need not be. It's a minor burden; even a professor with a large research group might do two or three a year. Most faculty do not average one dissertation per year.

The next question is: what do you do when you've discovered plagiarism? There are two choices, and they may not be what you expect, because they are meta-process choices. The first would be to have a policy, at the institution, college/school, or departmental level. The second would be to allow the chair to handle the situation.

If there is a policy, it will inevitably involve a new committee, lots of rules, and high penalties for the caught student. Most likely would be expulsion. I don't know if that's a good idea; it's a permanent black mark. Students working on dissertations are in a real bind; they're under extreme pressure to produce and do so more quickly than they ever have. I can't defend them, but I can see, having been through it, why someone could get tempted. The extraordinary pressure leads to many poor decisions: the number of divorces that happen during one spouse's dissertation process is high.

Personally, my hope would be that an awareness of this looming process would encourage all dissertators to not commit at least direct plagiarism. I think that if I had a students who did plagiarize, and I caught them, I would be tempted to throw them out.

A final note that plagiarism and theft are not new to academia. C. P. Snow (of "Two Cultures" fame) wrote an excellent (fiction) book about this The Affair.

The Necessity of Algebra

When I originally read Andrew Hacker's op-ed in the New York Times calling for abolishing (or at least replacing) algebra as a core requirement, I dismissed it. It reminded me of a colleague and mentor who had stopped writing a critique of a book dismissing computers because there was so much wrong to correct. However, one of my indefatigable students found it and asked my opinion, so here we are.

Hacker's premise are these:

• Algebra is obscure
• Algebra is too hard
• Algebra is not taught well

Of these, I can only agree with the last. We as a nation produce so few talented math teachers that high schools are often unable to offer sufficient coverage for four years. As a computer scientist teaching at a large research institution, I can verify that our students come woefully unprepared in terms of math. However, the solution that Hacker proposes, removing algebra as a requirement, is not going to create more math teachers, or raise their salaries. It would gut math departments. No one likes math, because math is hard. Conversely (or perhaps perversely), everyone likes the things that math can do.

I'm not going to address the second point. The literature from mathematics education indicates that someone of average (as compared to the median) intelligence can learn algebra. The fact that many don't learn has to do more with how we teach math and fund math education.

I can address the idea that algebra is an obscure field with bizarre rules that most of us don't completely remember. Recently, some colleagues in the math department proposed adding an end-of-summer bootcamp for new freshman on math. I was skeptical; was this going to address remedial skills or advanced skills? Who needed the most help?

The profound answer I received convinced me to support their effort enthusiastically. The bootcamp was agnostic in reference to a topic; it was a bootcamp on understanding the rules of algebra. Whether the students were going into college algebra, precalculus, calculus for business, or calculus for scientists/engineers (the latter has trig), they could attend and benefit.

If you aren't in the sciences (and perhaps even if you are), you may be puzzled. Isn't algebra at type of math? The simple answer (not entirely complete, but correct) is that algebra is the fundamental unification of arithmetic that allows useful things to be done.

Being able to use the concepts from algebra effectively allows a students to learn to:

• Balance equations and predict effects in chemistry
• Program computers
• Understand statistics, calculate them, and analyze the outcome

There are others on this list. You would be hard-pressed to find a science (including the social sciences) that do not rely on algebra when analyzing quantitative phenomena (those things that can be counted).

No sane educator would tell you that students don't need to learn to write essays. I regularly push my students to develop their writing. It's not that the exact format of an essay will be used regularly in work, but the tools that it integrates are used constantly. Analysis of a problem or question, forming a response, making an argument in support of the response, adding additional arguments, and then summing up: these are all required to complete a day's worth of email I send.

The needs of our workforce are not thick looking for skills developed purely in the humanities (and I say this as someone who has studied the humanities and holds them as the ne plus ultra of academic pursuits). We need technologists and information workers, and those two need to be able to comprehend and, yes, even conduct math operations at the level of algebra.

I hope I've elucidated the importance of algebra. Hacker's idea of a "citizen statistics" course can't work, because statistics require knowledge of algebra to learn. The use of statistics on an uncritical population led to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli to state "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics." Just as we wouldn't allow a student to run from algebra because it's hard, we should not as a society run from teaching and requiring algebra because it's hard.

I'm going to add another point, one that is more personal to me. The notion of a liberal education is old, and while it has been altered to suit different societies over time, the principles have been tested against hundreds of societies over thousands of years and found to be correct. Our society (along with all stable societies in the past, western or eastern) is run by the products of liberal education. To say to mathematics, "sorry, we don't accept your entry to our system" is absurd, especially when the entry is the foundation of all science in addition to further math.

Hacker is a successful scholar and educator, but I'm bothered by his willingness to dismiss the very substance of the liberal education. He's clever to not dismiss math entirely, but it is not for the political scientists to determine the necessary components of math education, any more than it would be appropriate for a computer scientist to dictate the content of a freshman lit course, claiming that students don't need Shakespeare but do need to write emails.

The Harvard Cheating Scandal: A Response to Farhad Manjoo's Dismissal

In an occurrence that shocked precisely not one person in the world, Harvard is now investigating students cheating on an easy gen-ed class, Introduction to Congress. The nutshell is that, despite the fact that the test specifically forbade students from collaborating, they talked about their answers and did everything they were not supposed to do. This was an open-book, open-note take-home exam, so it's not like they had no other choice, even if they were confused.

Farhad Manjoo wrote an article for Slate "There Is No Harvard Cheating Scandal". It's basically a defense of the students, arguing that they weren't cheating, but "collaborating". Since collaboration is the name of the game in the business/professional world, shouldn't they be allowed to collaborate in college? It might sound reasonable, but...

The purpose of collaboration is NOT to make things easier for the individual; the purpose is to allow multiple committed people to produce something greater than what any individual of the group could create. A simple example can be seen in team sports: Michael Jordan, even though he was the greatest basketball player of an entire generation, could not play and win by himself. He needed other (very talented) players, like Rodman, Pippen, and Grant, to create an amazing basketball legacy. Having worked as part of a team does not diminish his individual contributions but allows those contributions to come to fruition.

Speaking about the specifics of the class, Manjoo stated that the exam questions were "tricky". I would argue that they weren't: the chief one was an open-ended question about the influence of lobbying on the function of Congress. When I took a college course on American government (not even specific to Congress) at a university that was most definitely not Harvard (and quite a long time ago), this topic was covered, and covered well.

Manjoo makes other excuses for the students. He suggests that some of the faculty (probably grad students, and I can assure you that Harvard does not admit idiots into its grad programs, nor does it hire unexceptional faculty) were not as good as others. This is certain to be the case, but doesn't excuse cheating. The students were not prevented from looking at notes their peers made, or reading additional material (the phrase lobbying congress pulls up approximately 14.7 million hits on Google, starting with a Wikipedia article), or checking out YouTube (approximately 6.6 million hits) if they are too lazy to read.

All of this is secondary, though. If there was possible wiggle room, we could perhaps have a real (although pointless) debate about whether or not the students exceeded the allowed activities. However, the exam clearly states (and Manjoo quotes): "students may not discuss the exam with others." Manjoo questions the wisdom of this, but experienced teachers will always explain that they construct assignments and exams around the resources they do and do not allow. Manjoo is, in essence, arguing that there should be no rules about academic integrity.

Am I pushing Manjoo's argument too far? I don't think so. There is always an argument in favor of some form of abuse: crib sheets mean you don't have to memorize and can focus on concepts, working with others is collaboration, and having someone else write your papers is just using professional expertise. The rules may seem arbitrary, but again, faculty tune their tests to whatever environment they want for the exam.

I'll cap off with a couple of anecdotes. First, when I was an undergrad, I missed two weeks of classes due to illness (I was bedridden until a trip to the hospital) and missed an exam; the prof let me take a custom makeup exam that was take-home, but without notes and with a specific time constraint. I honored those requirements. As a PhD candidate, I had to take a comprehensive examination (during which anything could be asked); I was expected to be able to cite relevant research literature from memory. Were those requirements fair? Absolutely. Had I cheated on my comprehensive, I would have been expelled. I knew the rules, I knew what was at stake, and I complied. All that the Harvard students were being asked to do was comply with one simple rule, and they chose not to follow it. It's time to pay the piper.

The Importance of a College Education, or Why Peter Thiel Is Selling a Bad Idea

Peter Thiel is a brilliant and successful man (who happens to have two degrees from Stanford, but that's not the point here) who came up with a neat program, the Thiel Fellowship, which encourages students to drop out of college and pursue starting up a business. If you are selected, you get $100,000 with no strings attached. There's NOTHING WRONG with the Thiel Fellowship. If you have an idea, apply, and if you get a Thiel Fellowship, take it. The fellowship is not Thiel's bad idea.

The bad idea that Peter Thiel is selling is that college isn't worthwhile. He has a whole page on the Thiel Fellow website devoted to the "college bubble". The Thiel Fellowship seems to be more about providing publicity to his "don't go to college message" than it is about helping young entrepreneurs start. I don't think he's being disingenuous, but I have concerns. The simplest one is this: let's say on the off chance you have a great idea and the skill to make it come to reality, all at the tender age of 18 or 19. Then let's go further and say you are one of only twenty people who are selected (I have seen no data on the number of applicants, but I would imagine that the odds are pretty low). Yes, you have two years of your young life to make a business, but don't imagine that $100K is a lot of money when it comes to starting up a business. Just like your friends in college, you are going to be living with roommates, driving a beat up car (or no car), eating ramen, drinking coffee, and working your ass off. At the end of two years you may be ready to pursue real money, hire employees, etc. However, what does the Thiel Fellowship tacitly encourage you to do if you can't realize your dream? Go back to college.

Dick Jumps Into the Job Market, While Jane Goes to School

You will see massive amounts of data on both sides of the college bubble debate, but it's hard to give that context. Yes, some people drop out and make a ton of money. Most college dropouts don't make more money, though; they make less than their peers with college degrees.

I'm going to tell you a story I've seen many times, although I'm going to genericize it. It's about time for high school graduation, and we have two new graduates to meet. They are both intelligent and hard-working, but they have very different plans.

Dick is sick of school; he thinks it is not paced for him, and he doesn't like doing homework. He has a lot of tech skills, so he decides to see if he can get a professional job. Very quickly he finds one doing IT work, and he'll be making $24,000 his first year. He's as happy as can be. He moves out of his parents' home into his own apartment, and he buys a new car.

Jane is a bit more bookish and likes school more than Dick. She is also intelligent, and also has tech skills, so she could follow Dick into the workforce, but she chooses to go to college to study information technology instead. Instead of earning $24K, she'll earn about $8K doing part-time and summer work. She'll be living in a dorm and won't have a car.

Over the next four years, Dick gets to tease Jane frequently, as she is broke all of the time and he has money. In fact, we'll be ridiculously generous and say that Dick gets a $2K raise each year for the next four years, so by the time Jane graduates with $25K in debt (even with working part-time and in the summer), he's making $32K and has earned $108K over the past four years. After Jane graduates, let's say that she's only making as much as Dick, so she gets a job making that same $32K. Now, it's really simple to say that Jane's college degree had a $133K opportunity cost.

That's oversimplifying, though.

First, Jane has some skills and knowledge that Dick doesn't. It's not that he hasn't learned anything in four years, but while Jane could focus on learning, Dick had work to do. He ended up repeating tasks (like setting up computers and unjamming printers). Jane worked hard for her degree, so classes, studying, and part-time employment took more than 40 hours during many weeks, but she was in a structured learning environment, and being broke she didn't have as much as Dick in the way of distractions. She knows a lot of the underpinning theories of technology, so when the current crop of equipment is on the scrap-heap, she'll not only learn the new tech more quickly than Dick will, she probably can anticipate some of the changes. She's also been educated in professional writing and communication, and that looks good for the boss.

Jane's Still Behind, But...

You can probably see where this is going to go. Jane is going to get promoted. Dick will be supportive at first, but as Jane gets promoted higher and given more raises, Dick will become bitter. He's just as intelligent as Jane, but something makes her promotable. To some extent Dick will attribute this to bias, since most of the managers at all levels in the company have college degrees. Yes, that's it, they are prejudiced, Dick says, ignoring the fact that they all may value college education more than he realizes for very practical reasons.

The reasons for Jane's promotability are perhaps not that she can configure a router faster than he can, but she can generally be given additional responsibility with the knowledge that she will be upfront about what progress has been made and what needs to be done. She has no inferiority complex, because she has that "piece of paper". Again, her communication skills, "soft skills" though they may be, mean that others understand what she's doing and how her work impacts others. Jane worked on group projects in college, and has practical experience. When she's asked to lead a group and someone doesn't pull their fair share, she knows how to handle the problem without stomping her feet. When this happens to Dick, he gets angry because he hasn't realized that there will always be loafers; he feels unfairly burdened to have to vet these people. He thinks it's his job to give them "what's coming to them". Jane would never have gotten through college and would be in a straightjacket if she had tried that approach more than once in college.

When Dave asks his manager why Jane got promoted over him, he gets the usual response. This isn't the post office, so seniority means nothing. The easiest point of comparison is the degree, so Dick fixates on that, arguing that it doesn't mean anything. Three years in, Jane's been promoted twice, earned $40K her second year, and is now making $50K, while Dick has gotten his usual $2K raises, which now seem measly. So in the past three years, Dick has made $102K, while Jane has earned $122K. He's still ahead by $88K, but that's dwindling fast; she has low rates on her loans and is repaying them quickly.

Short interlude on why these numbers actually don't mean much. Ask yourself how much you think Dick has saved over the past seven years? He's 25 now, but when he was 18, was he paying himself first? Was he investing in a 401k? What about a Roth IRA? His car is now paid off, and Jane's is not, but his car is 7 years old and he wants a new one. People with college degrees are more likely to save, so Jane hopefully started a little nest egg when she started. Does Dave have anything to show for his first seven years of employment? Sure, he lived better than Jane when she was in college, but ask Jane whether she had fun during college. What do you think she will say?

Moving Into Mid-Career

Let's jump ahead five years. Dick has now been given additional responsibilities and is making $50K a year, but Jane has been promoted and is making $75K. In absolute numbers her opportunity cost of college has now pared  down to below $40K, and she's not even ten years into her career.

Dick thinks that he is mature and responsible and has grown in the past five years (and he has!). He asks about being promoted to a management spot; he sees Jane in her project management role and thinks it looks more fun than administering machines. His boss, being nice, tells Dick to think about going back to school part-time and earning a degree. Dick doesn't hear this, he just hears "we won't promote you without a degree". Dick points to his certifications, and is told that those only show skill at managing technology. The truth is that Dick has never developed creative problem-solving skills because he has never been asked to be creative. If Dick had read A Brave New World, he would see that he had been a beta-minus his whole adult life. Rather than go back to school, Dick hits the bar and complains about how the company won't promote him even though he is as talented and skilled as Jane. He fails to realize that were this the case, he would be promoted. No one has the ability or desire to promote solely on a credential.

Simultaneously, Jane is enjoying her work as a project manager and happy with her pay, but she feels she could go further. She talks to her boss about how to make this happen. Her boss says, "at my level, nearly everyone has a master's degree; it's not a requirement, but it's useful to gain some additional skills." After some soul-searching, Jane decides to pursue a part-time MS in Information Technology. This requires taking the GRE, applying to school, and working hard taking two graduate classes a semester in addition to her job and her life. She thought undergrad was hard, but this is something else. She continues, though, not because of the dream of promotion (which wouldn't be enough to motivate her through this), but because she realizes she enjoys the challenge, the hard classes, the bright peers, and the practical knowledge she's gaining alongside the growth in her abstract thinking. All told, it takes her about four years (including taking time to decide, prepping for and taking the GRE, applying to competitive schools and waiting to get admitted), and at the end, she's given a promotion to lead an entire project. Her company helped pay for her MS, which was expensive, and she's now in middle management, above the first line managers but below the executives. She's starting to influence what the company does.

Then the bottom drops out. Through no fault of either, the company tanks, and Dick and Jane are both laid off.

Climbing Back into the Job Market

Conventional wisdom says that a job search will take about one month for each $10K in annual income you want to replace. Dick hopes to find another job in six months to replace his $60K, while Jane might wait a full year to replace her $120K. However, that's not what happens.

For Dick, he has trouble finding a job. There are other people his age who have similar skills sets, some with college degrees and some without. He realizes that, all other things being equal, a company will hire someone with a degree over someone without. After 17 years in industry, his first years are lost in the noise of other data, so someone with only 12 years (or only five years) is just as competitive, and doesn't make as much. Eventually Dick does find a job, but he's now making $40K again, because the only way he could get back into the market was to lower his salary expectation.

Jane's experience is more valuable because of the experiences that she was offered, not because of her degrees. Her degrees are valuable, especially the MS, because the people hiring her know that someone with an MS from a good, recognized university has skills and a strong work ethic. These people are at a level where the real risk in hiring is not the salary that they have to pay, but the outcome of the project they will put into Jane's hands. It may take her a bit longer, but Jane can command a good salary. The opportunity cost of the degree is long gone. Jane is now established middle class. She's not relying on transient knowledge or skill for her employment anymore, because she has success at running the show.

OK, wow, that was way longer than I thought it would be. Again, this is just a story, a single story, and it doesn't explain every situation. Jane won't always get a master's degree. Sometimes Dick will go back to college.

But What About Entrepreneurialism?

There's a simple solution for Dick: start his own business. He can do it, he's smart and hard-working. Let's see what happens when, after being laid off, both decide it's time to start businesses. Let's assume that each has an idea that has an equal likelihood of succeeding.

Jane starts off the way she was taught, by analyzing the problem. She researches others in the same market space, and what has worked and what hasn't. She sees what has been created and figures out a way to position herself to add something of value. Then she writes a business plan and starts talking to people.

Dick is more about passion; he jumps in and starts trying to build a prototype, thinking that he can leverage the prototype and start turning money over quickly, or perhaps use the prototype to get venture capital (VC).

Who's going to be more successful? Well, probably Jane. Remember, their ideas are equally good. However, Jane has three aces in her pocket: her professional network, her experience, and her degrees. Her professional network means that she is known to the people she needs to influence to get funding. Her experience serves as bona fides to the people who might fund her, lending her credibility as a known quantity. Her degrees helped her get both of these things, and she was able to learn about the world of entrepreneurialism and VC. She doesn't need a prototype, and she's not likely to be the one writing the code anyway. She needs a business plan showing potential investors what she's going to do that's innovative, and how she's going to use that idea to make money.

Summing Up

If tonight I had a flash of brilliance that I was sure would be the next FacePhoneNet, I have means to start a business. I know where money comes from and how it works. I know how to program, but I can also find and train the right people. I could make ten calls before the end of this evening (and it's almost 9PM!) to start the process. I don't know if I could get money, but I know I would be able to do all of the right things to get money, and that I would be competitive.

If you have a flash of brilliance and the means (perhaps rich parents?) to make the idea into something fruitful, by all means go for it. However, before you do, take a look at KickStarter, see how many projects their are by people who don't have degrees and people who do have degrees. What differences can you see? Who's getting funding.

You may not agree with it, but you know the answer. Want to prove me wrong? I encourage it.

The JoCo Factor and Tech Growth

Take a look at Jonathan Coulton's list of tour dates:

• Boston, MA
• New York, NY
• Rochester, NY
• Toronto, ON
• Pittsburgh, PA
• Alexandria, VA
• Philadelphia, PA
• Ann Arbor, MI
• Chicago, IL
• Minneapolis, MN
• San Francisco, CA
• Portland, OR
• Seattle, WA
• Vancouver, BC

Notice anything? You might notice the big cities, but what about Rochester, Pittsburgh, and Ann Arbor? Not big cities, but all of these cities do have a common thread: they are the various centers of technology throughout the US and Canada. If your city/area is not on their, you probably don't have the tech talent pool you want to have.

Who is JoCo, you ask? He's an eccentric balladeer who writes music for geeks and nerds. He became famous among the overeducated and socially inept by spending an entire year creating and distributing free music on YouTube with his Thing-A-Week program, not only allowing free downloads and distribution, but encouraging users to create their own videos. He not only has a wiki, it contains data from a tool designed to count the number of times each song is played live. Sure, you may love your favorite band, you may talk about them on a forum, but how many of you have programmed for your favorite musician? If you haven't heard him, hit YouTube and/or his website. If you like it, buy some music and/or some swag (most of which was developed and is sold (possibly with licensing) by fans).

JoCo developed a loyal following from Thing-A-Week and writing the closing-credit songs for the games Portal and Portal 2. He hits on geek and nerd culture, with humorous songs devoted to topics like loneliness, mad science, Ikea, and fractals (his song "Mandelbrot Set" includes the Mandelbrot Set formula). He releases his music online and generally doesn't worry about copying. All of this makes him very popular with his target audience, the ones who get his jokes and approve of the postmodern capitalism that seems to sustain him just fine.

Unlike many artists, JoCo (mostly) determines his own tour cities. When his star was beginning to rise, he looked at data on the locations of people who bought his music, and played at venues in those cities. The result is what you see above. It's not the most complicated formula, but if you look at the cities and states involved, you'll see the big picture. Since geeks and nerds love JoCo, he goes to places where there are geeks and nerds.

If your city is not on here, you might just be missing something. Do you find it difficult to recruit and keep tech talent? Do you programmer/developer job postings languish? If you want to be the next Silicon Valley, what are you missing that is keeping the tech talent away? I'm going to post about VC and angel investing later, but money is secondary; to build a tech future for your city, you need the JoCo factor.

Now, how to get the JoCo factor, that's a tougher question...

The Myth of the 2+2 (or Using a Community College to Start a Bachelor's Degree)

The idea seems perfect:

• Community colleges (ccs) have lower tuition than four year schools, so you'll save money
• A student at a cc can live at home (there's a cc just about everywhere); that's a big cost savings
• Ccs have smaller classes than large universities
• Ccs are less of a cultural shift from high school than a traditional college or university with lower emphasis on socialization
• Ccs have full-service part-time programs

All of these statements are true, but they hide other crucial factors. What's wrong with this picture? It's incomplete at best, and doesn't consider any of the negatives.

Before I dig in, let me be clear that community colleges are often fantastic institutions that can serve populations and needs that traditional colleges and universities have difficulties with (at best); no one institution can serve and be appropriate/optimal for all students. Money is finite, and a cc is better than not going to school. There are students who are successful in a 2+2, so in that sense it's not a myth. However, before going this route you should carefully consider some consequences, and this essay will explore both the advantages and difficulties.

What's the Idea, and What's the Benefit?

The idea behind a 2+2 is simple: take two years of college courses at a community college and then transfer to a four year school. There are some important advantages:

Community colleges (ccs) have lower tuition than four year schools, so you'll save money

Tuition for a community college is often as low as $3,000 annually,vs. four year schools starting at $6,000, rising up to $15,000 for in-state tuition at a state university, and out-of-state tuition and private schools, well, the sky's the limit.

A student at a cc can live at home (there's a cc just about everywhere); that's a big cost savings

Living at home (zero rent) is cheaper than living in an apartment (if you happen to have friends or family who can support you this way). An apartment is typically cheaper than a dorm.

Ccs have smaller classes than large universities

This is very true. At a large state university, you may have multiple hundreds of classmates in a single course. Your profs might not know you by sight or name. You can be anonymous. At a community college, that's not the case; you will typically have a smaller class size and your profs will be more likely to know you. 

Ccs are less of a cultural shift from high school than a traditional college or university with lower emphasis on socialization

The culture of a cc is not going to emphasize socialization, sports, and other perceived distractions. Fraternities and sororities have no presence. For an immature student, living in a more controlled environment puts a safety net that might help keep students working. It's a way of getting your feet wet without diving in head first. Going to school full time is a major life change, and it's not always possible to make that change. Going to a cc can help bridge the experience, letting a student try to answer the question, "is college right for me?"

Ccs have full-service part-time programs

Even relative to urban universities that regularly offer part-time programs, community colleges tend to do a better job of serving part-time students. Rolling admissions and matriculation mean you can often start in a few weeks, rather than planning out a year ahead, and courses are planned for evenings and weekends. Even issues like parking can be simpler (although not necessarily).

If All of That Is True, What's the Problem?

In my field (computer science/information systems CS/IS), the reality is that the 2+2 outcome is a rare and best-case scenario. Some of this is the responsibility of the student and some the responsibility of the institution, but a lot of it is systemic.

So, the myths:

I'll save money

Not typically and not in the long run if you finish a bachelor's degree. Obviously, if you leave school before completing a bachelor's degree, it's cheaper to go to a cc. Unfortunately, students at ccs often fail to complete coursework for their transfer in two years. Suddenly an additional year of tuition and living expenses have to be factored in, eating into any cost savings. Also, you are delaying entering the workforce for an additional year, and that will impact earning (see the Bureau Of Labor Statistics data on relative earning and unemployment).

Living at home doesn't tend to save much money. Yes, dorms are expensive, but if you add in the expense of a car, gas, and parking, it's tougher to justify. Living in a shared apartment near campus can save money; some schools require freshmen to live on-campus, but very few require students to stay on campus after freshman year.

Everything will transfer

Many states have compacts to guarantee or nearly guarantee transfer of credits, which is nice but misleading. These compacts are not the same as articulation agreements. An articulation agreement is much more detailed and concrete, showing which courses transfer and (more importantly) how those classes transfer. If all transfer credits are general education credits, you'll be starting out your major from scratch.

I see this frequently with CS students. In CS, you'll typically take 2-4 sequenced programming classes before upper-division classes are available to you, and you'll also typically need at least a semester of calculus and possibly some other classes (matrix math, stat/probability, discrete math) as prereqs for the upper division classes. This is quite simply because most upper-division coursework in CS requires a great deal of programming expertise and additional knowledge in math, critical thinking, and logic. Assuming you have to take three sequence classes in programming, you won't start upper-division courses until your fourth semester, and you'll be looking at three years to degree completion.

Suddenly, your 2+2 with a savings of $6-24K is now a 3+3, and you've spent an extra chunk of change on tuition and living expenses before you even consider the lost wages from entering the professional workforce two years later than expected. In addition, some states and schools (including my current institution, UNC Charlotte) have a tuition surcharge for students who exceed a certain number of credits. At UNC Charlotte, you pay an extra 50% after 140 credits.

The lack of extracurricular activities will help me focus

There are many extracurricular activities in college, but they are typically focused on some aspect of professional or personal growth. Intramural sports build teamwork and help develop a healthy lifestyle. Social groups build interpersonal skills. Any organized group needs leaders, so if you get involved and stay involved, you'll likely have the opportunity to learn some leadership skills. Many groups have a service focus or component, and getting involved in service is fulfilling and rewarding in unpredictable ways.

In addition to personal/professional growth, there are many groups that are co-curricular. These groups tend to offer programs that help students learn more about their chosen field. For example, most schools with a CS program have a student chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), which will offer activities to help students master concepts and practices of programming.

Don't underestimate the impact of social networking. The reason students from Ivy League schools do well is somewhat based upon skill, but also based upon the fact that every student has a peer whose mother/father works on Wall Street, in a big law firm, etc. Social and socio-professional networking happens at all schools, but the opportunities are very limited at a cc. Students spend relatively little time on campus and even those who do are unlikely to have extensive networks.

Even living at home is problematic. Residential students tend to outperform non-residential students. The best explanation I can give for this is a residential Learning Community (LC). These are typically self-selected programs where students live in the same dorm (sometimes the same floor or wing) and have special sections for intro courses (often LCs are specific to a major). I help advice a CS/IS LC, and have worked with them before. These students are around each other constantly, so they have a strong social support network. They can roll out of bed into a study group. They need to succeed in order to remain in their peer group.

In short, all of the activities students (and parents) are concerned with tend to improve education, both in-class and beyond.

Summing Up

You will note that nowhere in this essay I have challenged the academic quality of ccs. I'm a supporter. Many community colleges are or are becoming the trade schools of the modern world, providing relatively inexpensive educations and good career options. My point is that community colleges are not the best places to work on a four-year degree for most students.

I'm a fan of value in education; I did my undergrad and PhD at public schools, and attended public K-12 for the most part. I teach at a public school, and my last school (and the school before that) were public schools. I worry about the growth of student debt both for individuals and families and for society as a whole.

However, there is a vast difference between a value-driven decision about education and going with the cheapest option. For some students who have their backs to the proverbial wall, a cc is the only option. However, anyone who has the academic and financial wherewithal to go to a public university may very well save money in the long run.

In a future post, I will address the issue of easing the transition to a four-year school, but here's a hint: it involves planning.

Obsession with Fame

One of my student leaders pointed me to an article about how Ryan Reynolds is not a movie star. The article is about who is and isn't famous (and why), but also a commentary about fame. Unfortunately, the article loses steam and the sports analogies are apt but distracting.

Actually, I don't think the rules have changed. Most films are crappy. Being famous is not a guarantee of success. The best actors and actresses are generally given supporting roles (William H. Macy), and only star in indie films. Actors aren't under contract, as they were up until the late forties or early fifties (I think), but still a studio banks big on a name for most movies. The number of theaters a movie opens in, which strongly correlates to box office take, usually depends on the actors involved. Occasionally there's some "buzz" generated.

I no longer have a TV feed, and with Pandora, I never listen to ads on the radio, so I honestly don't know what's playing or coming out. I used to read IMDb news every day, but they switched formats and linked out everything and put stuff behind their paywall, and as a result I lost interest. I'm still a movie fan, but Netflix suggestions are usually pretty on-target (although Netflix thinks I like horror movies and even has that as a category it prompts me to). I have unintentionally insulated myself from most commercial media, but I don't really mind.