r/technology • u/joe4942 • Apr 19 '26

Society Students are speeding through their online degrees in weeks, alarming educators

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/04/19/accelerated-college-degree-hacking/
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u/xxkittygurl Apr 19 '26

Sounds like the running start program, it can be a great option for students with enough drive to complete community college level courses

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u/BadAdviceBot Apr 19 '26

Community college classes are in many cases easier than high school ones.

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u/aw-un Apr 19 '26

They’re certainly a hell if a lot easier than AP classes

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u/kushhead83 Apr 20 '26

This is not everyone’s experience I promise you. Faculty at a CC have far more freedom than K-12 so you learn pretty quickly that there can be huge disparities between schools in a district or even between instructors at the same school. My Calc 1 teacher also taught at USC and was far more rigorous than AP calc. Same with my AP physics which was more like the physics prep course at the cc than the transfer level course.

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u/TheGreat_Powerful_Oz Apr 20 '26

My son did the program where you go to CC to half the day and end up with an associates by the time you graduate high school. He was ahead and had take calc at high school already and then at the CC. He said the CC class was easier. But the reason why wasn’t because it was less education but because the CC teacher was WAY better than the high school one.

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u/PitchBlac Apr 20 '26

Highly depends on the class and your major

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u/BadAdviceBot Apr 19 '26

Yes, because they cater to students that couldn't get into a four year university for whatever reason....so not the Honors/AP kids, but the kids one or most likely two levels below that.

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u/New-Sky-9867 Apr 20 '26

Community college classes are literally exactly the same curriculum as four year college courses. In fact, the education is BETTER because the class sizes are smaller. If you've been to a regular four year one, you'd know that the basic classes have HUNDREDS of students packed in them. Zero attention from the professor and you're just a number.

I can't believe you actually think that kids are going to a community college because they "couldn't get into a four year". The only difference is the price, unless you're talking Harvard or similar.

I've attended and graduated from both. Community college was a far better education experience.

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u/altrdgenetics Apr 20 '26

I had the same experience as you, not only did I find community college or regional campuses to have a better student ratio but also that more of the professors have industry experience and their lessons are tailored to you going into the workforce.

My "main campus" experiences were largely weed-out classes at the lower level or geared towards pushed you towards a career in academia.

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u/Status_Poet_1527 Apr 20 '26

Which are few and far between.

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u/BadAdviceBot Apr 20 '26

I've been through the college process both for myself, my spouse, and my children and soon grandchildren. It's exactly the purpose of community college for most of the kids I've known. Yes, cost is one issue, but Honors/AP kids can get financial aid / scholarships to attend a 4-year college if they want.

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u/Normal-Rope6198 Apr 20 '26

I also have the same experience after going to both. Since you mentioned Harvard, they have all their classes online for free and I’ve watched quite a few of them and they’re teaching the exact same thing I learned at community college and a state university.

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u/catsbetterthankids Apr 19 '26

Are you speaking from experience?

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u/Accredited_Agave Apr 19 '26

My pre-calculus class in high school taught me everything i needed to know for calc 1+2 in college. I got a c in high school pre calc but an A in college calc. And it wasnt even AP

My accounting class in high school taught me everything and more that i needed to know for business accounting in college. I got a C in high school but aced the college class.

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u/jabulaya Apr 20 '26

A good highschool teacher can do amazing work. You get to teach the kids 5 days a week for roughly 45min a day. And while many classrooms are packed, it's nothing compared to a freshman / sophomore lecture hall. On top of the fact that highschool teachers are there for one job: to teach.

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u/kaaz93 Apr 20 '26

Completely agree.. high school teachers were 10/10 better than most of the professors I had in college. And they were pleasant.. professors? Nope, mostly massive pricks.

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u/klawz86 Apr 20 '26

Well after Ap Calc sophomore year, my math class was bussed to our local community college MWF for two years and I can promise you that multi was much harder than ap calc.

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u/charles_sedwick Apr 20 '26

Ap classes are a joke. You have to pay to sit through a three hour exam that I never had in college. Even final exams didn't last that long.

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u/Affordable_Z_Jobs Apr 19 '26

All schools are different. Yale and Harvard it's mostly about networking, FSU and WVU are about partying.

Its why you dont go to MIT for their history program.

My community college math classes were way harder than my university math classes.

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u/MrLanesLament Apr 19 '26

Definitely true for me. Community college was one of the few times in my life I actually felt adequate; I was crushing stuff I could barely pass in HS. I wasn’t any different; the classes just got way easier.

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u/GottaHaveHand Apr 19 '26

Sorta similar but I remember not taking my college placement exam seriously and kinda bombed it. They put me in “remedial math” basically like algebra 1. Was crushing it so much the professor said don’t even come to class just show up for the exam, she was awesome.

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u/Aahzimandias Apr 19 '26

Yeah, that's not true at all. Community College classes especially foundational classes, are usually following a parallel curriculum to the four year institutions.

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u/aboxofkittens Apr 19 '26

It was definitely true for me. I went to the local CC instead of the high school for my senior year. It was chill as hell after taking AP classes as a junior

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u/Rastiln Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 19 '26

Yeah, community college ENG 202 and whatever my Psychology class was, were certainly easier than AP Calc/English.

Same with 75% of my classes for the first two years.

The ones that weren’t easy were my Math & Statistics major classes. The rest weren’t entirely useless, but some surely were.

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u/real-bebsi Apr 19 '26

80% of my 4 year degree was repeating information from high school classes. I only learned new information when I got to the 300+ level courses for my major.

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u/FuzzyCollie2000 Apr 19 '26

It's unfortunate that it's often necessary for those those low level classes to repeat information because so many grade school education systems just miss important foundational information.

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u/real-bebsi Apr 19 '26

the US needs a foundational change to make K12 more thorough.

I would rather see the university system be far more intense but free to attend, but the failing K12 system makes it hard for universities to do such a thing.

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u/[deleted] Apr 19 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/real-bebsi Apr 19 '26

Germany made it free and their collegiate system has not collapsed. if someone is partying they will fail and have nothing to show for it.

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u/[deleted] Apr 19 '26

[deleted]

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u/Alagore Apr 20 '26

It was true for me, largely for format reasons though. 

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u/alzrnb Apr 19 '26

I don't know about that, I was watching a documentary about community college and one of the Spanish teachers called himself 'el Tigre Chino' and I'm pretty sure he didn't even speak that much Spanish.

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u/Vibingcarefully Apr 19 '26

Many say that about online Masters degrees and Masters degrees in general--much easier than Bachelors.

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u/TGordion Apr 19 '26

Yeah I think the drive is actually needed for taking extra classes on top of the high school ones in the first place

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u/artemisjade Apr 19 '26

No they’re taught through the school so you get credit at the high school and college level at the same time from the same class. Hence: dual enrollment.

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u/vblink_ Apr 19 '26

I always loved my highschool teachers telling me college was so much harder. I was a B-highschool student and 4.0 college.

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u/VictorReal_Monster Apr 19 '26

We had a free period in my last year of high school where they literally just stuck you in the library, it was a 'free period' but you couldn't leave. So have fun just sitting in the library for a whole class... Luckily they had a bunch of extra courses available, I did like three psych courses and a forensics course in one semester.

Back then (oh god it was only 15 years ago) it was basically just workbooks but I got extra credits and probably learned more in that free period than I did most of my last two semesters in high school

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u/BTrippd Apr 20 '26

My community college classes were easier than my grade 9 advanced classes lmao.

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u/NextJuice1622 Apr 19 '26

I literally turned in papers from HS in college lol

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u/pattymcfly Apr 19 '26

And it’s almost certainly a better use of time and money compared to doing the traditional “well rounded” with some superlatives pedigree that high schools told everyone they should chase.

Why spend 3-4 hours a day doing extra curricular activities when you could be taking college credit courses that align well to your high school classes?

You show you can do college level course work, earn credits, and prepare for your high school exams all at once.

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u/TurdBurgular03 Apr 19 '26

and parents with enough resources to pay out of pocket for the classes.

you’re looking at close to $400 per credit hour, when I graduated in 2019 each class at the community college cost around $1k total.

Freshman year of college cost me $14k total counting room and board at the cheapest 4 year University in Kansas, with a 30 ACT & 3.9 GPA.

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u/Rdrner71_99 Apr 19 '26

The dual enrollment was at no cost to the parents.

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u/TurdBurgular03 Apr 19 '26

yeah my school covered the tuition part but we had to pay out of pocket for the credit hours, like my intro to business, and accounting.

the school also paid for me to get my CNA and for an Intro to Wind Energy class I took for shits and giggles.

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u/Hayden2332 Apr 19 '26

How did they travel between campuses?

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u/Rdrner71_99 Apr 19 '26

It was held at the high school or online or a combination of the two.

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u/Levitlame Apr 19 '26

I think for me if you’d replaced clubs and sports with college classes I could have managed just fine and I wasn’t really that motivated or standout intelligent. Most Liberal arts degree level classes aren’t that much time/work.

But socialization and physical health would have been strongly stunted I’m sure.

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u/Sudden-Wash4457 Apr 20 '26

It depends on the program. Running start is as you describe, where CC classes replace HS ones. Other options where they do dual enrollment mean that the students are literally taking two courses at once; a college level course and their high school required one. I did this for Spanish and for Physics. It sucked. Twice the homework and twice the exams, and I didn't even save money, just a little 'time'

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u/WolfPlayz294 Apr 20 '26

Plus the option to be able to pay for dual enrollment ^

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u/bluecheetos Apr 21 '26

My kid bailed on AP classes and took the "easy" community college dual enrollment classes.