Laughing City

Do you feel like you are getting (or got) your Money's Worth out of your College Experience?
Yes
27%
 27%  [ 3 ]
No
9%
 9%  [ 1 ]
In Progress: So far, so good
27%
 27%  [ 3 ]
In Progress: Not looking so good
18%
 18%  [ 2 ]
I still have dreams that I'm late for class, & there's a test I didn't know about!
18%
 18%  [ 2 ]
Total Votes : 11

Author Message
DRMS_7888
Vintage Newbie


wilsmith wrote:

Okay DRMS,

I am right with you on all your points, but are you calling the people trying to cut University funds & manipulating the tax code Idiotic, or me Confused

Maybe it comes off like that's my implicit argument, but it isn't, if that's what you thought.

As far as Liberal Arts, yes, expecting employment that is field specific and lucrative is delusional, but I'm finding that even practical fields of study are having hard times finding work. I know people with Engineering and IT degrees struggling to find work, as well as a number of people with BAs & MAs in Education (Truman has an accelerated master's program), and Counseling, that have struggled mightily to find work in those fields. One teacher could only get a ISS/ Hall Monitor job, and now works for the Social Security Dept. where he does case management, so much for teaching History in High School. Meanwhile, at my job, I work with a number of certified teachers who are working as building aids cause they can't find teaching jobs in our district which is relatively large for a suburban municipality of a midsized U. S. city.

Most of the people I know who are in higher level professional positions requiring specialized skills, are there by merit of experience, and not degrees. My former bosses at UM-St. Louis were mid and upper level management with 20+ years of experience moving up from Custodians all the way to Plant Directors, with not a Masters, and in some cases a Associates to be found. But if those positions are vacated and opened to the public, you can guarantee an MBA or the academic equivalent in a related field for any new applicant, even though that is obviously not necessary to do the job if you've had the experience.

Like I said, working in IT, they will hire you out of high school if you have the skills. It happened in my current job, and it happened 10 years ago at UM-St. Louis when one of my coworkers in the labs there was noticed for hacking the University's ghosted Image to solve some coding problems so a student's project would work. He'd been in school for 3 months out of high school and was promoted from part time student employee to System Administrator by the Fourth, and has held the job sense. I don't know if he even went back to school, given his tuition reduction would have him paying 25% of what students paid. The killer bit is this: all his coworkers who spend their shifts playing Diablo over the school's network were still taking classes, paying tuition, so they could graduate with a degree and NOT be able to get his job. Confused

That is idiotic


Yeah, I don't really disagree with you at all. Should IT really even be much of a 4-year degree type program? It changes so fast that what you learn your freshmen year will be irrelevant by the time you graduate.

My original post was quite rambly. The first half was to you, and the second half was just me venting about random things. Thankfully, the essays on my final exam were much more coherent.

_________________
EisleyForever wrote:
you're A-list in my heart!


MAKECOLDPLAYHISTORY
Joined: 20 Feb 2005 | Posts: 8868 | Location: Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website AIM Address MSN Messenger
wilsmith
Vintage Newbie


Laughing for better or worse my days of essay writing are long behind me Very Happy
Maybe that's why I have the energy for all these tl;dr posts of mine?

Now that I think about it, that may be something all of us who are out of school have in common. Sebas is still an undergrad, so that must mean Sebas is a Beast when it comes to paper writing, he's gonna slay in Grad school.

_________________
yup, that's my name.

FOR YOUR RATING PLEASURE:
4 LIKE Buttons, 1 NEUTRAL, 1 VEXED, 5 DISLIKE buttons. LC > FB

Love Very Happy Smile Cool Neutral Confused Sad Embarassed Rolling Eyes Mad Evil or Very Mad
Wink = personal fave Mr. Green = Eisley fans should dig it
Joined: 09 Apr 2008 | Posts: 9637 | Location: Greater St. Louis Area
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
DRMS_7888
Vintage Newbie


wilsmith wrote:
Laughing for better or worse my days of essay writing are long behind me Very Happy
Maybe that's why I have the energy for all these tl;dr posts of mine?

Now that I think about it, that may be something all of us who are out of school have in common. Sebas is still an undergrad, so that must mean Sebas is a Beast when it comes to paper writing, he's gonna slay in Grad school.


Yup. You, Cubs, Hannah, all way TL;DR

_________________
EisleyForever wrote:
you're A-list in my heart!


MAKECOLDPLAYHISTORY
Joined: 20 Feb 2005 | Posts: 8868 | Location: Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website AIM Address MSN Messenger
sebas
Golly, Poster


There are several things wrong with the university system. For one, I shouldn't have to buy a book for $40 at the school book store only to sell it to them for $1.50 at the end of the semester; nevermind that I barely used the damn thing for my class. Evil or Very Mad

I realized pretty early on that how well I am going to do in college is largely dependent on the professors that teach me. After my first couple semesters of mediocre/poopy grades in community college, I started using ratemyprofessors.com; this website is wonderful and I love it. I use it every semester and try to get the best professors I can, and as a result, my grades are usually high. As an example of how important this website is to me, I will be taking the second part of a Biology course at community college this summer from a professor at a campus that is about half an hour from my house. The same course is being taught at the campus 2 minutes from my house, but it is being taught by a professor with a very low rating.

_________________
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated"

-Mahatma, Gandhi
Joined: 02 Apr 2008 | Posts: 644 | Location: Austin, TX
View user's profile Send private message
wilsmith
Vintage Newbie


^ Yeah, the whole textbook/ University Bookstore distribution and resale system is one GIGANTIC hustle. Why do I know, cause I worked for the department ours was housed by, and was witness to a student insurrection that lead to the creation of a off campus bookstore called "Beat The Bookstore" at UM-St. Louis.

As far as Professors go, when I was in school we only had word of mouth tog go by because web-based Social media went as far as conventional email and something called L-Chat which was a telnet based real time, intranet command prompt tool.

And DRMS, you left out that currently M.I.A. inorbit. But maybe he isn't chiming in cause he I think works at a Uni? I know he mentioned it a while back when the subject of Campus Security came up not too too long ago. Or not, who knows?

_________________
yup, that's my name.

FOR YOUR RATING PLEASURE:
4 LIKE Buttons, 1 NEUTRAL, 1 VEXED, 5 DISLIKE buttons. LC > FB

Love Very Happy Smile Cool Neutral Confused Sad Embarassed Rolling Eyes Mad Evil or Very Mad
Wink = personal fave Mr. Green = Eisley fans should dig it
Joined: 09 Apr 2008 | Posts: 9637 | Location: Greater St. Louis Area
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
why yes i'm a depphead
Laughing Citizen


My university is dealing with a massive copyrighting lawsuit as well as a major shift in the HOPE scholarship program. Tuition and fees rise every semester, and countless friends of mine have had to drop out a year from graduation due to lack of available funds. I know that Georgia, at least, is pulling money from education at an alarming rate... no, I don't feel that this system is working for me in the slightest. I've been lucky enough to be in an undergraduate program with professors who sincerely care about what goes on in the classroom, rather than what the university system seems to focus on, so I've been incredibly lucky. At the same time, the system seems to be doing its hardest to make the whole process a hell of a lot more difficult.

That being said, my younger brother is studying at a private institution, has his four-year tuition covered by an anonymous benefactor due to our financial situation, and is having an incredible experience at a small school. I know I want to attend grad school for public health, so either I take a chance at a smaller school like his, or I'm leaving the country to pursue my education.

I have so many stories I'd like to share in this post, but, in short, I've experienced firsthand how flawed this system is, and I'm thankful to be graduating in December while I still have the financial ability. Despite having the HOPE scholarship for 4 years (I maintained a 3.5 GPA and my SAT scores were 1300 - well above the HOPE requirement), the recent law passed in Georgia states that students must have had a 3.7 in high school. Turns out this law affects even those of us who graduated four years ago, so despite keeping my GPA at a 3.5, I'm losing part of the HOPE based on something I can't possibly change now.

Really, "losing HOPE" pretty much sums up how I feel about the system in general...

_________________
- stevie
Joined: 25 Jan 2004 | Posts: 1847 | Location: by land, by sea, by dirigible
View user's profile Send private message
johnip
Vintage Newbie


I started out at a university 6.75 years ago and the entire school organization was a joke and no help at all. The folks at financial aid expected you to know everything, and were miffed if you asked them what papers to fill out or where to get them. My advisor was an English professor - I was studying mechanical engineering, so all he could do was print out flowcharts.

My 3 friends and I got "lucky" and were placed in the brand new apartment building on campus. It took 3 months to get someone to look at our front door that wouldn't lock. It never worked right in the 2 years I was there and they didn't even have to break in to steal my friends Xbox and Wii. After two semesters we were paying $2200 a month all told for a 4br apartment. In addition we had to buy the $900/semester meal plan for the first year. The cafeteria food was much worse than grade school and if you wanted a hot dinner you had to get there at 4pm; they closed the doors at 6...

It didn't help that I was depressed the whole time I was there. The weekend I moved in my friend told me that she had cancer for the third time. She passed away 6 months later. Suffice to say, it was somewhat of a relief dropping out after 2 years.


After 2 years of sitting at home and mowing grass with my dad I started at the local community technical college. I didn't bother with financial aid, so I don't know if their department was any better. I'm not really sure if it was so much better than the first school, or if it was because I didn't have to deal with nearly as much stuff, but it seemed to be much less of a hassle to figure anything out. My associate's degree cost under $4500. I spent double that at the university without having to pay tuition! Buying used books on Amazon saved a TON. No ridiculous meal plans, or inflated rent, and my advisor was my electronics professor who I had for the majority of my classes. He still had flowcharts, but at least he knew when the classes were offered.

Simply put, my first experience with the university system disgusted me, but the second time through was much better. I wonder where I'd be now if I had made it through mechanical engineering, but can't complain about how things turned out in the end. I finished school 6 months or so after my friends from university and got offered my job the day before I graduated. I get to go all over north-east Georgia, up to the mountains every once in a while, and have good pay and great benefits. 40 more years and I'll be home free!

Oh yeah, the second time was definitely worth the money. First time? Not so much.

_________________
Joined: 26 Jan 2006 | Posts: 2599 | Location: GA
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
wilsmith
Vintage Newbie


^ that really hit home. I didn't have the whits to leave school after my niece died at the onset of my sophomore year, but I should have, cause I was completely gone after that. But because I lost someone at home, going home was even harder, because it wasn't home anymore with her gone. It doesn't make the stress of late adolescence & college any easier where you have friends and acquaintances from school dying. Of the people I befriended while at college, I had a handful of friends, classmates, and acquaintances die, two in car wrecks, on from a heart defect, and another was just really really sketchy, but wasn't investigated as foul play, which is still unnerving when I think about it. The more I think about it, the more unnatural it seems for people of that age to be attending the funerals of their friends and peers.
_________________
yup, that's my name.

FOR YOUR RATING PLEASURE:
4 LIKE Buttons, 1 NEUTRAL, 1 VEXED, 5 DISLIKE buttons. LC > FB

Love Very Happy Smile Cool Neutral Confused Sad Embarassed Rolling Eyes Mad Evil or Very Mad
Wink = personal fave Mr. Green = Eisley fans should dig it
Joined: 09 Apr 2008 | Posts: 9637 | Location: Greater St. Louis Area
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
wilsmith
Vintage Newbie


Okay, who on the LC works for PBS??? http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june11/college_05-27.html
_________________
yup, that's my name.

FOR YOUR RATING PLEASURE:
4 LIKE Buttons, 1 NEUTRAL, 1 VEXED, 5 DISLIKE buttons. LC > FB

Love Very Happy Smile Cool Neutral Confused Sad Embarassed Rolling Eyes Mad Evil or Very Mad
Wink = personal fave Mr. Green = Eisley fans should dig it
Joined: 09 Apr 2008 | Posts: 9637 | Location: Greater St. Louis Area
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
Post new topic   Reply to topic

Display posts from previous:   



You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
All times are GMT - 12 Hours
Jump to:  
Powered by phpBB, coffee, and Eisley fans worldwide.
phpBB is © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group