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by shagie·10y ago·view on hn ↗
Pulling up the community college for a midwestern state capital and a neighboring large city is fairly high up on the income disparity and segregation scales, I found that while the capital's community college had a fairly large selection of programming classes with focuses in multiple language tracts, the large city's community college had CNC technician, telecoms installation and computer electronics technology that could be considered in the technical realm.

That said the "computer electronics technology" appears to be computer repair (installation and hardware) rather than a programming. The computer programming class (just one class) is there to get an idea of what can be done. The job prospects include "computer electronics technician, computer network technician, computer systems technician, network specialist, pc specialist."

The thing that I took away from this is that if one goes anywhere where the "in the desk tech jobs" are not common (and with openings), you will find few if any programming focused certificates at community colleges. This is despite the nature of computer programming jobs often being the easiest to facilitate remote work.

I wonder how much of the lack of courses is also related to the "if you are a competent programmer and are capable of teaching others, can you find better paying jobs than working as a community college instructor on the low income side of the city?"

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I also have a fair bit of skepticism about how well this will work based on decision fatigue (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue / https://effectivesoftwaredesign.com/2011/08/23/how-decision-...) that is often common in lower income households.

1 comments
> I wonder how much of the lack of courses is also related to the "if you are a competent programmer and are capable of teaching others, can you find better paying jobs than working as a community college instructor on the low income side of the city?"

This is actually a problem for all STEM and vocational programs a community college offers. It is also a problem for specialized certificate training (e.g. Commercial Drivers License, Cisco). It is not cheap to hire competent instructors. The only advantage the short term training in these circumstances has that you are more likely to be able to get an instructor for a short run or hire an outside contracting company to provide an instructor. Semester length or multi-Semester classes basically require the hiring of a faculty member.

Frankly, a lot of the vocation jobs have better pay and career advancement these days with all the infrastructure fixes, new construction, and lack of competition.

A lot of college stem students have a hard time finding even a minimum wage job. I bet they'd be a great as basic programming class instructors.
So you want the tier of graduates not good enough to get a real job to teach the next wave of students? That sounds like a downward spiral.
I didn't say graduates, I said students. Students often have trouble getting jobs because they need part time jobs, and industry wants full time. Teaching a class at CC would be part time.
Considering where I was in college and my skills at teaching then (and even now to an extent - mentoring is another matter), I would be very concerned about me, or my peers back when I was in college to be responsible for teaching a class on programming. And that was when things were simple (you used vi and make).

While I am sure that there are many individuals who now come in with more code experience than the typical college student in the early 90s, there is a significant aspect of "are you mature enough to teach?" and "do you have enough experience to help students that need help?"

Assisting teaching a class, maybe. But looking at the quality of the code I wrote and the advice I would give based on that code that I wrote, I would be very concerned for the future prospects of anyone who I taught when I was 21 and looking for a summer job.

College students often provide paid tutoring of students a year or two behind them on an ad-hoc basis, should that be prevented?

The choice for CCs isn't between student teachers and experienced degree'd teachers. It's between student teachers and no teachers or teachers who know nothing about programming.

> College students often provide paid tutoring of students a year or two behind them on an ad-hoc basis, should that be prevented?

The skills needed to run a classroom and the skills needed to tutor are quite different. I am unaware of any current rules about the education-level of tutors, and I doubt there are or will be any.

> The choice for CCs isn't between student teachers and experienced degree'd teachers. It's between student teachers and no teachers or teachers who know nothing about programming.

Student teachers (unless part of a TA situation and supervised) probably aren't a solution either unless we're talking certificates and not college credits.

Determining Qualified Faculty Through HLC’s Criteria for Accreditation and Assumed Practices: http://download.hlcommission.org/FacultyGuidelines_2016_OPB....

A lot of CCs having the problem are rather a long commute from an university. We're over 100 miles from the closest 4 year.
On the other hand, a lot of CCs are close by major universities. It doesn't have to work for all CCs in order to be very practical for many of them.

Also, college students often go home for the summer, where they have a hard time finding summer jobs. A local CC offering to hire them to teach a summer class in programming would be a win-win for everyone concerned.

You'll find a lot of summer attendance in CCs is a lot lower due to summer jobs students take (many low experience jobs are available in summer unlike other seasons). To the point, a lot of 9 month contracts are happening much like regular schools.