Stacie Clark has a Smith College degree. Nowhere on her diploma does it say half the credits are from a community college hundreds of miles from the prestigious women's campus in Massachusetts.

	Matt Freed, Post-Gazette Christian Stein sits among his penny arcade machines that he's collected. Stein, of Mt. Lebanon, received about a third of his degree from the University Penn Wharton School from CCAC. Click photo for larger image.

Yet that's exactly how the Shaler native did it, saving $58,000 in two years by staying close to home. It's given her a degree with more cachet than those held by many of her peers, who went deeper into debt by spending all four years at lesser-known universities.

Clark said she got a lot out of her classes at the Community College of Allegheny County and was surprised how many credits -- about 70 -- transferred. She's happy to talk about the education she got there, but if others prefer not to advertise that their four-year degree is partly from a community college, that's fine, too.

"It's like this little secret you have," said Clark, 27, who works in the accounting office of a South Side wholesaler, Galaxy Music Distributors. "No one needs to know."

Not everyone jumps from a two-year college to an elite campus, but it's not as unheard of as some might think.

Increasingly, bargain-conscious students are using community college credits to aim as high as the Ivy League and other top-tier campuses. Some of those schools, in turn, are showing more interest in recruiting from community colleges that have diverse student bodies and learners who sometimes prove highly motivated.

Christian Stein, 31, of Mt. Lebanon, has a business degree from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, nearly a third of which was earned at CCAC. Allison Dressler, 28, who lived briefly in Pittsburgh and now works on Wall Street, can thank CCAC for roughly the same share of her political science degree from Columbia University.

And William McLafferty, 19, is now a sophomore computer science major at UCLA, in part because a dual enrollment program let him earn community college credit while still enrolled at Penn Hills High School.

Over the years, many have come to think of community colleges as worker training grounds and places that give disadvantaged students a shot at a college degree, often close to home.

But there is another side that the schools have struggled to portray -- that of a springboard for just about anyone shrewd enough to know that some courses can be transferred practically anywhere.

"We're a brand-name society, and community colleges are generic," said Norma Kent, a spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C.-based American Association of Community Colleges. "There are these stories that don't get told often enough. That's why these stereotypes exist."

But lately, the message is indeed getting through, at least to some students fed up with escalating prices at four-year schools.

Nationwide, tuition and fees at public two-year campuses average $1,905 a year, according to the College Board. That compares to $4,694 at public four-year campuses and $19,710 at private schools, not counting room and board.

In just the last three years at CCAC, the number of students transferring their credits to four-year schools has increased by nearly 11 percent. Some are so savvy they arrive at community college with a shopping list of courses they know will yield a desired degree at a pricier school, said Jim Holmberg, vice president for academic and student affairs.

When you think about it, said McLafferty, the UCLA student, price-shopping for an education makes sense. Sure, you get a mix of top-tier faculty at more expensive schools, but "you really don't need somebody at the top of their field to teach introduction to calculus," he said.

Freshmen courses at community colleges are more likely to be taught by a professor than a teaching assistant, and in a setting more individualized than often is available at many large universities, said Rod Risley, executive director of Phi Theta Kappa, an international honor society for two-year college students. It's another reason some students are giving these two-year schools a closer look, he said.

"In a community college, a freshmen survey class may have 30 students, whereas if you go to a large public university, it may be 350 students for things like History 101," Risley said.

A slew of honors programs and scholarships based on academics are encouraging students -- some still in high school -- to get an early start on their college degrees by taking courses that yield community college credit. Many of those campuses are fanning interest by rolling out niche courses in a range of fields such as health care.

And governments, meanwhile, are serving up inducements for high-achieving students to consider these two-year schools.

In New Jersey, Gov. James E. McGreevey last month proposed that the state pay 100 percent of the community college tuition and fees for high school students who place in the top 20 percent of their graduating class. Legislators in Pennsylvania encouraged state-owned universities to sign agreements with community colleges, making it easier for students to transfer general courses, from English to theater.

Still, life on a commuter campus is far different from living in a residential setting. And some say students are missing out by concluding that short of the prestige that comes with an education at a Princeton or a Swarthmore, a four-year campus isn't worth the price.

After all, say some who help prepare families for college, many campuses offer large amounts of financial aid that can make what seems like an insurmountable tuition bill reasonably affordable.

"It troubles me if it devalues colleges that are kind of in the middle," said Mark Sklarow, executive director of the Fairfax, Va.-based Independent Educational Consultants Association, whose members advise students and their parents about choosing colleges.

"My own daughter had a friend who, when she didn't get into a top choice, her parents said to her, 'That's it. You're going to community college," he said.

But many community college students say they are stimulated by the eclectic mix of classmates, from single parents with GEDs to professionals holding undergraduate degrees who are seeking another credential.

Stein, who works in real estate and owns the Pit Stop Express gas, car wash and convenience store chain, said he thrived in such a setting. It helped him get to Penn, he said, along with 10 or so mostly liberal arts courses that transferred with him.

"There were people in my aviation management program who had their own business," he said. "You get to talk to people who have done very interesting things."

Adjusting to the Ivy League workload "was a bit of an awakening," said Stein, though he managed a 3.1 grade point average at Penn. He's now working on a master's degree there and has a 3.6 gradepoint average

Such successes may be why a limited but growing share of four-year campuses now target scholarships to community college honors students. Risley said about 550 campuses provide $35 million, more than double what it was a decade ago.

"Four years ago we would not have had an Ivy League school listed," he said. "Today we have half of them -- Harvard, Cornell, Columbia and Penn."

Some CCAC credits transfer thousands of miles away, but the vast majority stay in Western Pennsylvania. Between spring and fall of last year, 460 students transferred credits to the University of Pittsburgh; 177 transferred to California University of Pennsylvania; 163 to Indiana University of Pennsylvania; and 114 to Duquesne University.

Carnegie Mellon University accepted 11 students transferring with CCAC credits during the period. The school has approached CCAC about recruiting students as part of an effort to diversify its elite private campus, Holmberg said.

Dressler, the Columbia graduate, said she wanted to live in New York City and study at a school with a strong political science program. Doing part of her degree at CCAC helped Dressler avoid thousands of dollars in tuition bills at Columbia.

"Plus," she said. "The cost of living in Pittsburgh was cheaper."'