I went to Harvard, and I've taken classes at community college. You're either vastly overestimating Harvard or vastly underestimating community college.

I went to Princeton, and after graduating I spent 2 years in community college studying accounting (night school).

The coursework was rigorous and excellent.

Yes - there's unfortunately some notion that as you move lower down the "prestige ladder", the easier / less rigorous the academic content becomes.

I've studied at both good and "poor" schools, and my experience has been that both have their strengths and weaknesses. I've taken classes that were extremely rigorous and in-depth at the low-prestige (or rather, no-prestige) school, pretty much identical to the same classes offered at the big-name school. Only difference was that the first school had a 50% failure rate, whereas the latter school had much better pass-rate, along with grade distribution that was shifted more towards the A.

This is probably due to the caliber of students, the work was the same.

Were these computer science classes? My experience is that the difference between top and “poor” schools is much wider in CS (likely because the academic job market in the humanities and sciences is so tough that you get highly qualified teachers even at “poor” schools).

Electrical Engineering

But with that said, there's a ton of variance within school themselves. Courses can be different from year to year, depending on who's in charge.

One thing I noticed was that the lifers - that is, the older professors, usually had very predictable classes. They'd use the same lecture notes, hand-ins, etc. year after year, often running on decades. They knew their audience, so to speak, and had extremely structured classes. These classes tended to be quite comfortable to take...no surprises, to put it that way.

Then you had the freshly minted professors, that would have a class here and there, usually new classes every other semester. These guys tended to be much more rigorous, and assuming on the level of competence (of their audience) - at least in grad school.

During highschool, you mean.

I took classes at community college both during high school and after I graduated from college. You can learn a lot of practical skills at community college that higher education looks down on. I learned to weld at Harvard through the physics lab and didn't realize how much I sucked at it until relearning it from a community college instructor. The person who taught me at community college was far more qualified.

Coincidentally, I first learned TIG welding at Williams via the physics machine shop. One of the memorable pieces of advice from my earnest instructor (the Buildings and Grounds guy who did the necessary welding) was something like "Only weld galvanized at the end of the day because you'll feel like shit afterwards. It helps if you go home and drink lots of milk."

The wisdom of his health advice aside, he was a decent welder taught me useful techniques. But when I later took a community college TIG course from a former nuclear welder, I was astonished by the precision the instructor demonstrated. I got a lot better, not exactly because of the quality of instruction, but just from having seen what excellence looked like.

I took networking courses at a community college. The professor was fantastic, a former IBM employee who'd been doing network stuff at AT&T for 20 years. He wasn't a professor, but this guy knew his stuff. It was the perfect way to get some "hands-on" experience with routing and switching.

Community colleges don't do everything well, but when it comes to building hard skills, it's hard to think of a better bang for your buck. (Particularly if you live in NY like me, it's free!)

While in I high school, I always held the impression that college would be full of immensely enriching educational experiences. Courses, primarily those by world renown universities, would be so transformative that they would compensate for the substandard education system of the United States. However, after living with students at various universities and eventually attending an Ivy League University, I found that many of the courses were quite comparable to any simple online course I found on the topic, no matter if it was being taught by another top 50 university, top 100, or random high school teacher. Many Ivy League students worked incredibly hard to attend their respective universities, however, like any other school, there are many that exist far from that stereotypical characterization. Likewise, I know many brilliant people who attended lesser known universities of far less prestige. Harvard students are probably better than average students but definitely not special enough to think they have nothing more to learn, no one is. I would highly encourage everyone to keep an open mind and look for what others can teach you.

It's not a waste of time to get done with some general classes that you don't care about at all yet need to graduate. In fact you will be saving money. Do I need the harvard version of Calc I when they teach the same exact rehashed AP calculus stuff at the community college and the credit counts the same as taking Calc I Harvard?

Saving money? You know Harvard doesn’t charge by the number of credits you take, right?

Also, community college credits are generally not counted towards graduation. Why do you think they do that?

Most universities accept transfer credits from other colleges, even community colleges.

What classes would be a joke?

All courses offered at community colleges

I guess you're just woefully uninformed then. There are community college classes that could help with that.

Sorry, I've got better things to do.

What a sad, arrogant little individual you are.

Seeing as they still count for course credit, I don't think Harvard considers them to be jokes. I will take the highly paid accreditors at Harvard's opinion over yours, sorry mate.

You have no clue what you’re talking about. Research more before claiming that they count for course credit

I've taken classes at community colleges and I have a degree from an Ivy League school. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the community college classes, and I learned a great deal from them. I don't know where you got the chip on your shoulder, but I hope no one reads your words and gets the mistaken impression that community college is somehow lesser.