U.S. College education questions

[basilandthyme]

I was reading that US style colleges here in Australia may help bridge the gap in further education between the different socio economic groups. So, I was wondering how your colleges work. I remember YC having a rant about how only rich kids could go to university and that any idiot could graduate college. Now, I know to take his rants with a grain of salt, but does this mean that College is affordable? In essence, what is the difference between College and University in the US?

Down here, we have a choice of University - which has prohibitively high costs for many - or T.A.F.E which is essentially a trade school and is affordable. Is college some type of inbetween?

[smackie9]

College is cheaper in Canada too. Most courses in college are short and to the point to get people into a job faster. Uni there is a lot of fluff courses they make you take as well as the serious shit to get credits. Some people don't even know what they want to major in so college being cheaper is a better option before investing into 50,000 plus tuition at an Uni. We have some of the cheapest tuition fees for university than anywhere else....that's why we have an influx of rich Chinese coming here in BC.

[dickriculous]

I've always assumed that "university" just meant the same thing in some countries as "college" means here.

Not true that only rich kids can go to college. It is true that it's a total rip-off if you pay for it yourself (cost has increased at triple the rate of inflation for decades now) but there are loans and grants that will enable just about anyone to go, albiet the loans tend to produce large amounts of debt.

I joined the military primarily to help pay for college and with the help of their tuition assistance program I am paying very little for college, some military members pay nothing. There are also additional benefits for after I separate that I can either use to pursue another degree or pass on to a family member.

Perhaps "university" overseas is like a private college or ivy league college here? Or grad school? I'm not quite sure.

Here we have trade schools which are pretty expensive for what you get but more affordable than a 4 year university since you're not paying for 4 years.

Other than that it gets somewhat complicated.

There's community colleges which provide you with two year degrees and as long as they have regional accreditation they can transfer to a 4 year college to advance your degree if you want. Community colleges tend to be relatively inexpensive and the community college to 4-year university route is what a lot of people choose in order to save money. Though many people, particularly those who earn scholarships or attain grants, will bypass community college and go straight into a 4 year university without worrying about the extra cost.

There are also 2 major types of accreditation - national and regional. Contrary to the way they sound, regional accreditation is the standard and many nationally accredited colleges are not taken seriously in the academic world. Some nationally accredited colleges are little more than degree mills.

As far as "any idiot can graduate college"....yes and no. There are many degrees out there that are quite easy to attain, but many of those are useless. Any idiot won't be able to get a regionally accredited electrical engineering degree, for example. In YC's case he probably just means "idiot" to mean "someone who disagrees with him a lot".


It takes a lot of research not to get ripped off by the education system here. I remember at basic training we had a guy that had 2 master's degrees and everyone was wondering wtf he was doing enlisting in the military? Turns out both of his degrees were worthless subjects and he had joined out of desperation to try and cover the mountain of debt that he's now in.

[Rowen]

I'm not necessarily sure on the whole "college vs. university" debate in my country, but I think /some/ universities generally require higher grades/marks in order to be accepted. This is mainly due to the fact that my Art professor last semester went on a rant one night about our test scores. She basically implied that since we're students of a University (I go to Rowan University www.rowan.edu ), our grades to get in should have reflected that we would do better in her course.

However, here, we usually have trade schools like what you described in high school (seeing as we have our primary, then our secondary/high school with maybe a middle school in between those two and then eventually the college/university after high school). And if you'd want to save money or get what's called an Associates Degree (It's basically a certification which is a little more generalized than a Bachelors Degree). It's also called a 2 year degree. But, mainly, if you do this, and you apply for a job where another person who has a Bachelors, most often, the company will choose the person with the Bachelors. This kind of leaves the job market a little more closed for the people with Associates Degrees.

Meanwhile, the 4 year colleges (In other words, any college that is not a Community College), offer the Bachelors Degrees (or the 4 year degrees, as they're also called). People with these tend to have a bit more of an open job field, but basically, our country runs that the more schooling you have, the more competitive the job market and the better off you'll be over someone who has less schooling. At the same time, these tend to cost more, especially if they're private schools and/or located out of the state you're living in. For example, Rowan (my college) is located about 3 hours from my house across the Pennsylvania border in New Jersey. As a result, I have to pay seven thousand dollars more than the average student just because I'm a Pennsylvania resident and not a New Jersey resident.

However, you can save money by doing two years of the Community college to jump start your Bachelors Degree and then take the last two years at a regular college.

There are also scholarships which can be awarded to you if you apply for them, and that makes paying for a regular college easier. At the same time, there are also subsidized loans (money given out by the government if you apply for it) which you don't have to pay back once you're out of college and unsubsidized loans (money given out the same way except that you have to pay it back).

In all honesty, the best way is to probably go through the Community College for two years and then go on to the normal college because the first two years of your schooling is pretty much the same thing either way. The price tag is the only thing that's different. And while Community College may be looked down upon by some, they do offer a good education. The program I was in my senior year/last year of high school allowed me to take college courses in addition to my high school (This was called duel enrollment, and it pretty much just tries to accelerate your college process), and our Community College was voted best in the Valley in my home state, beating out some of the nearby colleges.

It's all just matter of opinion, really, and the system is very confusing. Hope I made it easy for you to understand. :S

[vashti]

Colleges only offer and focus on undergraduate programs. They may be smaller than universities because they only offer undergraduate degrees.

Universities usually offer both undergraduate and graduate degrees.

[KingZ]

It's becoming more and more standard these days for students to complete general education requirements at a two-year college. It's much cheaper and the credits transfer over very easily.

[basilandthyme]

Thanks all. It seems that shorter courses and more affordable courses are the main difference. I reckon it could work well here...

[HeartIsAching]

Rowen and Dickrickulous -

In the U.S. we tend to not differentiate in speech between a college and a university, and as a result a lot of people don't know the difference. - the definition is simple though. A university is a collection of colleges, and as such can require a broad enough education base to grant a Bachelor's (4 year) degree. A college has one purpose in it's education (Business, Education, Engineering, Agriculture, English, etc.) and cannot provide enough breadth to grant more than an Associate of Arts degree (2 year).

basilnthyme - I'm not sure what the differences would be between your system and ours, but I'm guessing that maybe they're talking about Province-Funded schools? Here there are definite strata in the system... just about anybody can get into a State funded university which is subsidized, and much cheaper so that student loans will provide enough to pay for school and live on (barely), but if you don't get a scholarship to one of the better-regarded universities, you'd better be rich.

[Rowen]

Rowen and Dickrickulous -

In the U.S. we tend to not differentiate in speech between a college and a university, and as a result a lot of people don't know the difference. - the definition is simple though. A university is a collection of colleges, and as such can require a broad enough education base to grant a Bachelor's (4 year) degree. A college has one purpose in it's education (Business, Education, Engineering, Agriculture, English, etc.) and cannot provide enough breadth to grant more than an Associate of Arts degree (2 year).

Thank you for that; it actually makes a lot of sense. I was never good at figuring out the whole college-university system.

[vashti]

A college has one purpose in it's education (Business, Education, Engineering, Agriculture, English, etc.) and cannot provide enough breadth to grant more than an Associate of Arts degree (2 year).

Not exactly true; UC Berkeley (university) contains MANY different colleges, each offering Bachelors degrees (College of Chemistry, College of Engineering, College of Letters and Science, etc.).

Junior colleges (aka Community College) offer AA degrees, but even this is changing. It is possible to earn a bachelors degree (In certain subjects) at this campus through a program called "distance learning".

[HeartIsAching]

Yes, U.C. Berkeley offers many different degrees from their many colleges, but you can't go there and take every single class from say the School of Business and get a Bachelor's. They require you to have some classes from outside of the college of your chosen major. Which is the point of collecting them all together.

[dem862]

My son goes to a private "college" which offers a 4-year bachelors degree in dozens of different programs (Philosophy, English, Accounting, Art, Biology, Business, Chemistry, Computing Technology & Information Systems, Economics, etc). I went to a "community" college which only offered a 2-year associate degree. I transferred to a University to get my undergrad and graduate degrees. The private college my son attends costs more than many state universities per credit hour.

I think when people say college here now they are referring to the relatively recent (1960's) phenomenon of "community" colleges, which were started by the government as a cheap way to bring higher education to the masses. However, many private, upper education institutions that were called colleges 100 years ago or more, are in fact more like universities today. It is important to distinguish between a "private" college and a "community" college, because they are two very different things.

[BackUpOrGetStng]

Thanks all. It seems that shorter courses and more affordable courses are the main difference. I reckon it could work well here...

US college education is trash. Education here is the same quality as pretty much everything else we produce. I went to a top University and it wasn't much harder than high school, just a bit heavier workload. YC was also right, in that any idiot can graduate. Hence the overwhelming amount of restaurant servers with Bachelor's and even grad degrees.

More people can get degrees in US style schools, because it's about making money, not providing the greatest quality. Classes vary by teacher, but this is a rule as an institution.

[vashti]

Yes, U.C. Berkeley offers many different degrees from their many colleges, but you can't go there and take every single class from say the School of Business and get a Bachelor's.

True, but I don't think they offer associate degrees.

[HeartIsAching]

True, but I don't think they offer associate degrees.

No... but if any of those colleges were stand-alone colleges they'd have no choice but to.