Super-spoiler: This is absolutely, completely incorrect.
1) Teaching quality doesn't correlate much with quality (if anything, the inverse), so an Ivy is likely to have similar or worse teaching than a community college.
2) There is a HUGE difference in a community college bachelor degree and a proper university. Look at the curriculum. Much of what's covered in community college, Ivy students will have done in high school, and a community college will have (quite literally) NO advanced courses, equivalent to what university juniors and seniors might take.
If you want identical, you can compare elite schools to large state universities (University of Texas, University of California, ASU, etc.). At that point, classes are more-or-less identical to elite schools. Major remaining difference is brand stamp and network (which, coming from an elite school, I can say matter a lot).
However, community colleges serve a different purpose, and do not try to accomplish the same thing. They give a leg up into basic professional work. If you work at McD's or the local supermarket, and want a living income as a nurse, IT technician, AV work, or similar, community colleges will do a very good job for not a lot of money and with experience about being practical for people with the kinds of real-world constraints that come with e.g. minimum wage labor.
You will NOT be on a path to a job as a doctor, engineer, or similar. However, a community college education can allow you the basic standard of living to provide that kind of socioeconomic mobility to your kids.
Coursework at community colleges often transfers to the basic classes at a state university at a fraction of the cost. A 12-hour undergrad semester at the state school near me is ~$8,200 in tuition alone not including a few hundred dollars in fees and a few hundred dollars in books. 12 hours at the community college nearby is $744 including books, tuition, and fees. The majority of the first three semesters in an engineering degree from the state school will be mostly transferrable classes available at the community college, the fourth semester will be pretty mixed between major related classes that can't be transferred and transferrable classes.
Starting classes at community college and transferring to the state university later is a good strategy but is often ignored.
It's a fine strategy, but the critical words there are "transferring to the state university later."
Critically, a community college will NOT cover beyond the first 2-4 semesters of a university BS degree.
This is also not a sustainable strategy. At an engineering school, 100% of freshman will take calculus, and a 300:1 lecturer to student ratio is super-profitable (even factoring in recitation instructors and TAs). The cost is in the more specialized courses, which have at least as much planning, drafting of homework assignments, etc., and where those go obsolete much more quickly.
If everyone did this, price structures would need to adapt. Universities generally use large freshman classes as moneymakers to support smaller, more expensive, more specialized junior, senior, and graduate courses.
As a footnote, things like AP exams and online courses can do similar, also at low cost.
The better community colleges have honors programs that routinely graduate and then transfer their graduates into the best schools. Makes for quite the tuition optimization.
You can get out your first two years in community college...maybe, it really depends on what you are studying. But surely first year math, physics, chemistry, etc...should be possible. It won't be enriched, and if you are looking for extra credit (or a relationship helping your intro class professor do some research) you are likely not going to find that there. Facilities at a CC are also more geared to commuters, while your big campus will have a real campus experience.
I'll make this very concrete. I mentioned MIT. The largest community college in Massachusetts, Bunker Hill, has the following math courses:
• MAT-093 Foundations of Mathematics
• MAT-097 Foundations of Algebra
• MAT-098 Pre-Statistics
• MAT-099 Intermediate Algebra
• MAT-100 Topics in Career Math
• MAT-133 Introduction to Metric System
• MAT-171 Finite Mathematics
• MAT-172 Contemporary Math I
• MAT-174 Quantitative Reasoning
• MAT-181 Statistics I
• MAT-193 Topics in Algebra/Trigonometry
• MAT-194 College Algebra for STEM
• MAT-197 Precalculus
• MAT-231 Calculus for Management Science
• MAT-281 Calculus I
• MAT-282 Calculus II
• MAT-283 Calculus III
• MAT-285 Ordinary Differential Equations
• MAT-291 Linear Algebra
Of these:
1) I knew all of this except ODEs coming out of high school
2) Most elite university freshman would know all of these except upper level calculus, ODEs, Linear Algebra, and perhaps statistics coming out of high school. A community college can bridge these.
3) However, a typical MIT student will have finished all of these by the end of their freshman year. These won't even bridge into sophomore year.
4) Even a typical high school student will have finished a handful of these in high school
You'll see many levels up, first with intro courses like abstract algebra, real analysis, topology, etc., then upper level courses like algebraic topology, and then a variety of grad-level topics which build on those.
Neither is better nor worse. There is a need for both. Community colleges form a pathway from unskilled labor to professional work, and that's very, very important.
My local community college has no gaps in facilities as relevant to the education they provide. They're cheaper facilities than MIT, but they do fine. Unlike MIT, they don't have a yacht, landscaping, a getaway mention in Dedham, or buildings designed by Frank Gehry and IM Pei. Without those facilities, MIT couldn't bring in families of the social class aspires to compete for, but for most students community colleges aim to serve, there are much better ways to spend tuition dollars.
Personally, I think the right point to aim for is the UMass system. Education is better than MIT, in terms of teaching quality, and the course selection is adequate:
You can't judge course content by their titles. BUT if your kid can get into MIT, they really should go to MIT, not UMass, not Boston Community College, ... Also, MIT isn't Harvard, it is very utilitarian, and ya, some buildings are designed by famous architects, but it isn't a luxurious campus by any means. Like Caltech, it is a complete meritocracy.
CCs serve a role for many people, but if you are (smart, work hard, lucky) you can skip them.
> Personally, I think the right point to aim for is the UMass system. Education is better than MIT, in terms of teaching quality, and the course selection is adequate
I don't know many people who would claim that with a straight face. But it is your right to have that opinion.
> I don't know many people who would claim that with a straight face. But it is your right to have that opinion.
I think you're taking the opinion out-of-context. The question was: "What are good places to get cheap college credit with a quality education?" The question was not: "Where should I send my kid to college?"
The context of the discussion was about finding ways to not pay $60k for freshman year, but to come in with credit.
The answer I'd give to that question is UMass. The tuition is $15k. The educational quality is very high. If MIT allowed it, the best-case option would be to _defer_ MIT admissions, do two years there, and then switch back to MIT. Sadly, MIT wants those dollars, and if you defer, you can't collect credits while deferred:
And no, MIT is not a meritocracy. Look at the new learning initiatives it launched, and look at the qualifications of anyone involved in senior positions. Or the heads of many labs, for that matter. It's 100% about connections at the top.
Admissions is _somewhat_ more meritocratic than Harvard, where >40% of the white students are admitted are ALDC admissions (athletics, donor, legacy, and children of faculty), but the days when MIT was a meritocracy faded in the days of yesteryear. I miss that MIT, but it's dead.
1) Teaching quality doesn't correlate much with quality (if anything, the inverse), so an Ivy is likely to have similar or worse teaching than a community college.
2) There is a HUGE difference in a community college bachelor degree and a proper university. Look at the curriculum. Much of what's covered in community college, Ivy students will have done in high school, and a community college will have (quite literally) NO advanced courses, equivalent to what university juniors and seniors might take.
If you want identical, you can compare elite schools to large state universities (University of Texas, University of California, ASU, etc.). At that point, classes are more-or-less identical to elite schools. Major remaining difference is brand stamp and network (which, coming from an elite school, I can say matter a lot).
However, community colleges serve a different purpose, and do not try to accomplish the same thing. They give a leg up into basic professional work. If you work at McD's or the local supermarket, and want a living income as a nurse, IT technician, AV work, or similar, community colleges will do a very good job for not a lot of money and with experience about being practical for people with the kinds of real-world constraints that come with e.g. minimum wage labor.
You will NOT be on a path to a job as a doctor, engineer, or similar. However, a community college education can allow you the basic standard of living to provide that kind of socioeconomic mobility to your kids.