'Waste of time': Community college transfers derail students

America's high school graduates are often encouraged to start at a community college before getting a bachelor's degree, but the money-saving move rarely works as planned

First came the good news. After taking classes at a community college, Ricki Korba was admitted to California State University, Bakersfield, as a transfer student. But when she logged on to her student account, she got a gut punch: Most of her previous classes wouldn’t count.

The university rejected most of her science classes, she was told, because they were deemed less rigorous than those at Bakersfield — even though some used the same textbooks. Several other courses were rejected because Korba exceeded a cap on how many credits can be transferred.

Now Korba, a chemistry and music major, is retaking classes she already passed once. It will add a year to her studies, plus at least $20,000 in tuition and fees.

“It just feels like a waste of time,” said Korba, 23, of Sonora, California. “I thought I was supposed to be going to a CSU and starting hard classes and doing a bunch of cool labs.”..

'Waste of time': Community college transfers derail students - ABC News (go.com)

The Universities at Shady Grove has only 2,000 Undergraduate Students

https://shadygrove.umd.edu/sites/default/files/u80/USG%20At%20A%20Glance%20-%20Executive%20Flyer.pdf

A Very Unique Entity

This week’s Washington Business Journal has an interesting interview with Stew Edelstein, the Executive Director of the Universities of Shady Grove. Mr. Edelstein is a member of our ‘Montgomery County Business Roundtable for Education (MCBRE),' as well as co-chair of the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce Education and Work Force Committee. And here’s what he had to say about our schools, below, in an interesting interview by Sarah Krouse.  Thanks Sarah! I have read discussions of universities contemplating privatization. Is this what is being discussed here in MoCo too?

"USG is expanding. Can you grow on-site?  We now have 3,600 students. Next year we will have 4,000, and we will ultimately reach our capacity of 5,000, so we are starting to look into the next building. We actually have the ability to build four more buildings and a couple of additional parking garages on our site. Our next building will have an anchor tenant that is a dentistry program. We are talking about three engineering disciplines: mechanical, electrical and bioengineering. We will probably have a biomedical specialization in the bioengineering program. We are also looking into health informatics and — working with the University of Maryland, College Park — starting a degree in public health. The last part of our short-term vision is education.

What do you have planned for that? We are looking at a very unique entity: a public high school focused on STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics]. We have suggested a curricular focus in biomedical sciences and are looking at a concept called middle college."