Is it about to burst? Given the degree to which it’s been driven by government money, and the coming fiscal meltdown, I’d say so.
…consumers seem to be reading the cues in the marketplace.
An increasing number of students are spending their first two years after high school in low-cost community colleges and then transferring to four-year schools.
A recent Wall Street Journal story reported that out-of-staters are flocking to low-tuition North Dakota State in frigid Fargo.
I went to community college my first two years before transferring to Ann Arbor, where I picked up all the basics for engineering — calculus, physics, chemistry, etc. I’m convinced that I got both a cheaper and better education there than those who were freshman and sophomores at Michigan, based on their descriptions of their classes (giant lecture halls taught by grad students for whom English was a second language). But I missed out on a couple years of the “college experience.”
[Update early evening]
The bubble will pop this decade, and here’s one reason why.
[Bumped]
As Department Chair at a four-year community college and having spent my first year at a community college I agree students are better off going that route.
The strategy you describe makes a lot of sense to me. I went to a highly selective private college, but although I always did well in math and science, I wasn’t brilliant with either one. I did fine in the college classes I took in those fields, but it often felt like the large, intro-level science classes were more geared towards weeding out potential pre-meds than really inspiring mastery of the material. I sometimes wonder if I would have pursued a scientific or technical field had I attended a different sort of institution instead.
Not only that, but if one is blessed (or “chooses wisely”) with an excellent lower-division program at the CC, one may acquire a wide base of knowledge that might be prohibitively expensive up the food chain. I racked-up well over 200 units at the undergrad level, so great was my thirst. Consequently, I can do most every job in my factory from electro/mechanical design to building with my own two hands (not to mention fixtures, documentation and inevitable repairs along the way.) Of course, it’s all heavily-subsidized by the taxpayer, but hey, them’s the tragedy of the commons…
I really enjoy following “Transterrestrial Musings”, Rand. Thanks for keeping it going.
There’s no link in the early evening update.