Current Events > Community college > Large Universities for actual learning

(+) Yeah! (+)

The classes in community college are like regular classes... 20 or so people in a room being taught by a teacher.

In large universities classes are often hundreds of people and the teacher is often a graduate student.

This is at least true for the first two or so years of college.
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Damn_Underscore posted...

This is at least true for the first two or so years of college.

Which are the years you don't really learn much. My final few classes including capstone had under ten people in them. The more concentrated your major gets, the more hands on professors are.
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RedWhiteBlue posted...

Eh, if you actually put effort in you can visit the Uni professor's office hours or their aids and get personal help, which is always more effective than class and lecture hall teaching as it caters to you.

You can also do this at community college. You can also talk to the teacher fairly extensively after class, which becomes less feasible the bigger a class gets.
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Ambience posted...

Damn_Underscore posted...

This is at least true for the first two or so years of college.

Which are the years you don't really learn much. My final few classes including capstone had under ten people in them. The more concentrated your major gets, the more hands on professors are.

Yeah, the classes I've had the past couple of years have been pretty small, at least those in my major since they were the harder classes (as opposed to GE requirements and such). I think 15 was the peak?
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I've been to both, and depending on the subject, the classes could be really big in CC.

luckily, we have three community colleges in my city (compared to the one university), so might luck out somewhere else
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Depends on your major.

I went to uni my first two years then transferred to a community college. Learned a lot more in my classes at cc than i did at uni. And i was taking some 2000/3000 lv classes my 2nd year which had under 20 students.
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I took a remedial math class at a community college. I did 100% of the work online, but I was still required to go twice a week for two hours at a time, and it was a combination of materials from Pearson, Khan Academy and Youtube. The professor spent half his time BSing with certain students and half the time "explaining" materials to other students (his idea of "explaining" content was literally to just tell them "Do THIS" a dozen times followed by "I don't know why you're doing THAT, just follow my directions".).
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^that's where http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ is useful
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Hexenherz posted...

I took a remedial math class at a community college

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I took classes at both with cc taking mostly my basic classes I needed and the cc here in Indiana is pretty bad. Professors taught the same as uni professors, basically teach ypurself, but refused to help after hours since 90% were adjuncts.

I took one class from my major at cc too and it was just as bad, materials and processes I think? The labs didnt teach anything since they were all demonstrations and the professor could not answer a question that did not already have the answer on it from a slide.

The only good thing about the cc experience was it basically cost nothing.
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I actually agree. I loved my community college. I felt like I knew absolutely everyone. In my state university, I feel alone and lost half the time.
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I think it depends on your major as well. Universities often times have better facilities and more established faculty, especially if youre in your last year or two and are really honing in on your specialty.
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Damn_Underscore posted...

The classes in community college are like regular classes... 20 or so people in a room being taught by a teacher.

In large universities classes are often hundreds of people and the teacher is often a graduate student.

This is at least true for the first two or so years of college.

I've had almost entirely professors (ie chairs of research groups) for lectures. The exceptions were post-doctoral researchers

For problem sets/tutorials I had (graduate) students. Now, in fact, I hold one myself lol.
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Ambience posted...

Damn_Underscore posted...

This is at least true for the first two or so years of college.

Which are the years you don't really learn much. My final few classes including capstone had under ten people in them. The more concentrated your major gets, the more hands on professors are.

This.

Damn_Underscore posted...

RedWhiteBlue posted...

Eh, if you actually put effort in you can visit the Uni professor's office hours or their aids and get personal help, which is always more effective than class and lecture hall teaching as it caters to you.

You can also do this at community college. You can also talk to the teacher fairly extensively after class, which becomes less feasible the bigger a class gets.

Why would you stick around after class for 30+ minutes? Its one thing to ask for more clarification and another to actually go to office hours where they get to know you and can describe a topic in great detail and essentially give you the answers to an exam coming up.

The biggest classes are always freshman and sophomore level classes that have 150-200 people in them. They arent very advanced and basically skim over things. Theyre entry level stuff, if you like it theres higher level classes that get much more specific. Example psychology, a freshman class will go over a few schools of thought and notable achievements from guys like Freud, BF Skinner, and how things like phrenology have been long done with. The higher level classes deal with brain chemistry, personality disorders, and more. As in one junior/senior level class deals exclusively with neurotransmitters and brain chemistry. Much more in depth than the week you learned about it in freshman level psych.

If youre smart enough to apply to college, you dont need to stick around after a 200 person lecture hall to ask a question when the professor has hardly scratched the surface of the topic and things havent gotten complicated.
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they're great for lower level undergrad courses, just make sure they're transferable.
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The majority of my tuition at state university went to our shitty football program lmao
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Damn_Underscore posted...

^that's where http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ is useful

in my experience, ratemyprofessors almost never gives an accurate idea of how good the profs actually are
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averagejoel posted...

Damn_Underscore posted...

^that's where http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ is useful

in my experience, ratemyprofessors almost never gives an accurate idea of how good the profs actually are

It works for me. All my 4+ professors have been great. All the ones that were 3 and less were awful. It usually gives you guidance of who is capable of actually helping students who need it and who is not.
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