Do T14's look down on community colleges? Forum

[quiver]

I find it funny that people are complaining about CC grade inflation when the trends I've noticed have more people hurting their grades with CC classes than helping them. I took a number of CC classes over the summer and most of them were taught by faculty from the University of Minnesota and they were explicit in telling the class that the only difference between our class and the one at the U was the quality of the facilities. The average grade in my biology class was a D. The only "easy" thing about CC is that most of the classes tend to be lower level survey courses.

This was not at all my experience from taking CC classes over the summer. I think it is really CC dependent.

[slacker]

My CC courses during fall and spring were usually filled with highly motivated people who were a bit older than the straight out of high school kids. The smaller classes and people who had actual real life experience to bring into discussions made for a much better learning environment. On average, professors were also far better. And I've heard this from nearly everyone I've ever spoken to who spent time at a CC before going to a 4 year university.

For some contrast and maybe explains what some people experienced during summers, I took a couple summer courses at a CC and found it was mostly kids who were trying to get an easy A in a class they thought would be harder at their institution. They never seemed like the brightest or hardest working individuals despite being the students who were taking classes during their summer time.

[ThomasMN]

I find it funny that people are complaining about CC grade inflation when the trends I've noticed have more people hurting their grades with CC classes than helping them. I took a number of CC classes over the summer and most of them were taught by faculty from the University of Minnesota and they were explicit in telling the class that the only difference between our class and the one at the U was the quality of the facilities. The average grade in my biology class was a D. The only "easy" thing about CC is that most of the classes tend to be lower level survey courses.

This was not at all my experience from taking CC classes over the summer. I think it is really CC dependent.

I think that is something true of any institution. However, I really do believe there is this unwarranted opinion amongst a number of students that they can just show up to a CC course over the summer and get a good grade just because it is CC. To put it into contrast, my CC science course was mostly short answer while many of my science classes at my 4 year university were multiple choice, which I am sure has something to do with class size and the practicality of hand grading 100+ exams in a week.