The professors all have masters or PhDs and have the same qualifications as teaching at universities.
This is very much not the case. I work really well with my cc colleagues, but there are significant differences in qualifications since CC’s teach lower division courses only.
The colleagues I have in analogous cc departments nearby? They don’t even have appropriate credentials in the right discipline. Some of them will have a computer science undergraduate degree and then a business master’s. Some will have two business degrees in marginally related fields. Most don’t have Ph.D.s at all, so that is largely irrelevant.
The way they keep up with the field? Remarkably different. We do research which advanced the state of our field. Ideally the boundaries we push allow us to craft new and important experiences for our students, not just the same things you could look up in a government catalog.
You wouldn’t have noticed because the instructors you had at the CC were only teaching first and second year courses. The bar is actually pretty low there, even in many universities. As a grad student I taught introductory sections possessing only a bachelor’s in the subject. The truth is many cc instructors may not even know the materials at the upper division you may see at a 4 year.
I appreciate your lived experiences, but they are in the end of the consumer, where everything is tidied up (as well as it can be) on the other side for you. The actual reality is far different.
BTW, big leftist dude here. I want the cost to go down and the real solution? Go back to pre-1980s funding models prior to Reagan being governor of CA. He defunded education on a large scale, shifting the burden of education costs from state taxes to the individual 18 year old with no actual money.
Things got worse after that, as defunding became more advanced and more prolific. We can’t further devalue degrees, nor can we afford to further defund 4+ year degrees because competition will collapse.
Wrong. University vs. college is not what you think it is. Universities offer masters and beyond. Colleges offer 4 year or below. Universities and colleges can and do overlap at the 4 year level, and that is a normal part of the dynamic.
At just about any 4 year institution a significant portion of the workload (could be as much as half of your job) is research. At a CC the job is 0 research and usually an unfortunately oppressive teaching workload.
The expectations of work done and credentials offered are significantly different. Is the research more at most universities? Yes. Was my job ever different at a college or university? No. I’ve only taught undergrads.
I could get a job at a ton of CC’s. One offered me a position in my last search. For many CC instructor the reverse is impossible.
Here we used to have a University of California (UC) system that let people earn PhDs, which was separate from California State University (CSU) system. Up until a couple years ago, if you wanted a PhD, you had to go to UC. The CSUs were more vocational. Instead of building up the infrastructure, the powers that be decided CSU could start offering PhDs. The result, from my vantage point, has been a flood of dumb ass PhDs appearing. I guess the same will happen with Bachelors with CCs offering Bachelors.
This is very much not the case. I work really well with my cc colleagues, but there are significant differences in qualifications since CC’s teach lower division courses only.
The colleagues I have in analogous cc departments nearby? They don’t even have appropriate credentials in the right discipline. Some of them will have a computer science undergraduate degree and then a business master’s. Some will have two business degrees in marginally related fields. Most don’t have Ph.D.s at all, so that is largely irrelevant.
The way they keep up with the field? Remarkably different. We do research which advanced the state of our field. Ideally the boundaries we push allow us to craft new and important experiences for our students, not just the same things you could look up in a government catalog.
You wouldn’t have noticed because the instructors you had at the CC were only teaching first and second year courses. The bar is actually pretty low there, even in many universities. As a grad student I taught introductory sections possessing only a bachelor’s in the subject. The truth is many cc instructors may not even know the materials at the upper division you may see at a 4 year.
I appreciate your lived experiences, but they are in the end of the consumer, where everything is tidied up (as well as it can be) on the other side for you. The actual reality is far different.
BTW, big leftist dude here. I want the cost to go down and the real solution? Go back to pre-1980s funding models prior to Reagan being governor of CA. He defunded education on a large scale, shifting the burden of education costs from state taxes to the individual 18 year old with no actual money.
Things got worse after that, as defunding became more advanced and more prolific. We can’t further devalue degrees, nor can we afford to further defund 4+ year degrees because competition will collapse.
…universities are for research; colleges are for teaching…
Wrong. University vs. college is not what you think it is. Universities offer masters and beyond. Colleges offer 4 year or below. Universities and colleges can and do overlap at the 4 year level, and that is a normal part of the dynamic.
At just about any 4 year institution a significant portion of the workload (could be as much as half of your job) is research. At a CC the job is 0 research and usually an unfortunately oppressive teaching workload.
The expectations of work done and credentials offered are significantly different. Is the research more at most universities? Yes. Was my job ever different at a college or university? No. I’ve only taught undergrads.
I could get a job at a ton of CC’s. One offered me a position in my last search. For many CC instructor the reverse is impossible.
Here we used to have a University of California (UC) system that let people earn PhDs, which was separate from California State University (CSU) system. Up until a couple years ago, if you wanted a PhD, you had to go to UC. The CSUs were more vocational. Instead of building up the infrastructure, the powers that be decided CSU could start offering PhDs. The result, from my vantage point, has been a flood of dumb ass PhDs appearing. I guess the same will happen with Bachelors with CCs offering Bachelors.
Yes, this is the sort of duplication that I’m talking about.
And flooding markets with PhDs that can’t support them as another major problem in academia.