Hey, I don't know a thing about you, but I'm going to take your post on face value, which makes it _sound_ like you got half a clue, and some ambition, and a year of dev work experience.

Let's talk about money.

Algonquin's tuition is what, $1,212.20 per 13-week semester? I'm hoping that's for 15+ hours per week of classroom time (a.k.a 5 3-credit courses), counting only time with a faculty member, not TAs. Plus some bonus lab/TA time, maybe, depending. Based on a little website, let's look at a few Real Schools (a few in your city, a few in mine). UOttawa says they charge $2,710.65 for Fall 2011 (again, presumably for 15 hours of classroom time a week, plus labs). Carleton astonished me at $6k+, that's freaky high (PS you US people, I'm not talking about the U.S.). At my end of the country, SFU charges $163.80 per credit (i.e. multiply by 15 for a full load, getting $2500). UBC is marginally cheaper. None of those places is MIT or Waterloo, but at least UBC and SFU are _fine_ schools.

Last year, you were working as a junior dev with no edumacation, presumably no serious prior experience, but you know enough to ask "what distribution", so probably you're useful. Making what, gotta be more than $10k a semester pre-tax ($30k a year)? Gotta be at least that much, although I dunno what Ottawa rates are like. Can you do that job while going to school? Do you want to? Your real cost of going to school is that you lost access to that $10k-$15k for the semester. The difference between $1k tuition and $3k tuition just became kinda dinky, eh?

The point is, the difference in tuition between Algonquin and UOttawa should be ignorable. You've already forfeited $10k+ in salary, and $1k in tuition, PER SEMESTER, so $1k extra is kinda icing on the cake. Optimize correctly! Don't waste your life at the wrong school over such a small difference! (I admit Carleton's apparently $6k makes me hesitate a little).

Now, teaching quality.

Teaching quality MIGHT be great at a college, I can't say. I went to Capilano College (now University) for 2 years, and I got some really really great instructors. But if that's not what you're getting, why are you wasting money, and more importantly time? Bad GPA you need to fix?

And listen, if the program has great teaching (not that you'd know at two weeks in), then it'll be a viable foundation to build on at a bigger/better school. But if you're getting half-assed teaching, then you're wasting time, not getting something under your belt. (If they teach badly but you already know it, you're wasting time. If you don't know it now and they don't teach it, wasting time!)

And now to your original point about peers. Yeah, a community college is gonna attract a lot of marginal students. I met a few awesome and very smart people at Capilano College (smarter than me), but I gotta admit, they were a lot fewer and farther between than what I got to meet at SFU. Partly that's just the size of the pool of potential peers, partly it's that larger schools have better structures in place to help you FIND those peers (more societies, etc).

Half the point of going to school is to meet awesome peers who mutually inspire you, who you can have great experiences with, etc.

I guess what I'm saying is, if the kids are driving you batshit, you should see how fast you can get your ass into a better group of kids. Of course, the problem could just be you. ;)