Unfortunately there are a lot of places in the states where that&#x27;s not practical. Many, many students from my high school tried this route. The local CC has an arrangement with UCLA, so if the student gets good grades in a specific curriculum, they are guaranteed admission to UCLA for their final two years of college.<p>In theory, that&#x27;s great, but in practice the CC is underfunded and there aren&#x27;t enough classes offered, so it takes 3, or even 4 years, to get into all the classes required for the transfer. Upon getting into UCLA they find their department won&#x27;t accept some of their CC classes for credit because they weren&#x27;t rigorous enough, or that they need some prereqs that weren&#x27;t offered at the CC, and it will actually take 3 years at the UC campus to graduate. They enter the workforce 2 years after their peers who went straight to 4 year universities and the 3 years of CC is easily more expensive than the 1 year of UC tuition saved, especially considering they fed and housed themselves for 2 extra years. Their lifetime earnings drop or they have to retire later.<p>None of this is their fault, either: The CC eagerly offers the few students who successfully (and luckily) navigated the class scheduling and credit transferring bureaucracy as the mode, and a 17 year old kid -- likely the first in their family to attend college -- isn&#x27;t equipped to evaluate those claims. After all, why would they distrust the CC? They&#x27;re told they&#x27;ll save money and graduate at the same time, with the same degree, as their friends who went straight to UCLA and there&#x27;s no reason for them to doubt that.<p>While I&#x27;m sure many CCs are perfectly good places to spend the first 2 years of college, there are at least some tar pits out there. It&#x27;s a real shame, too.