<p>Nice to see UMass stepping up to the plate to improve the Honors College:</p>
<p>UMass</a> to build $182m honors complex - The Boston Globe</p>
<p>I agrere but these funds come at the expense of educational opportunities for everybody else, a “walled community”, if you may. It would be nice if they make at least some of these facilities accessible to other tuition-paying students.</p>
<p>UMass Amherst just finished the $109 million integrated science building, the $53 million student recreation center; is building a $100 million laboratory science building, the $5.7 million Minuteman Marching Band Building, they just announced a new $85 million academic classroom building “to provide the campus with 1,800 new state-of-the-art classroom seats and academic space for programs including communications, journalism and linguistics”. There are tons of other smaller scale renovation projects going on as well.</p>
<p>And I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the new $12 million police station is much more in response to the regular student body than the nerds in the Honors College. 
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<p>So I think the rest of the students are being taken care of.</p>
<p>I have no problem with the best and brightest students being given extras or other incentives to get them to attend UMass. IMO, they don’t do enough, especially compared to some of the southern schools. And really, the barrier to get into the Commonwealth College is not that high, pretty much anyone who is willing to work for it can get in.</p>
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<p>Certainly sounds like a very statement though I don’t completely disagree with it. The police station is to help ensure everybody’s safety and it benefits honors students as much as it benefits everybody else. And the majority of regular students do not engage in criminal activity either.</p>
<p>I personally feel the mission of an honors college should be to supplement the education of better students. With just nine extra classrooms (at a huge cost), I don’t know how good a job it does. </p>
<p>Certainly attracting better students is a useful goal and this may contribute towards that end by associating exclusivity to the Honors program. But it would also alienate other students who are paying tuition money towards a facility that is not open to them. Also, it reduces social and academic interaction between honors and non-honors students, which does harm to both groups.</p>
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<p>I agree that the bar isn’t too high. But I think bigger scholarships, study-abroad programs, and funding for undergrad research would be a better incentive, especially in this economy. Being admitted to Commonwealth College did not play a major role in my college choice. A scholarship, on the other hand, would have probably made me decide to attend UMass and would cost less money to fund as well. Improving academics and renovating buildings that everybody uses would be in my opinion a superior way to spend the money.</p>
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OK, That was a joke, that’s why I put a smiley next to it.</p>
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Most of the cost of the building is new dorm space for 1500 students.</p>
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I doubt students care, they are focused on their own business. Their tuition goes to many things which don’t directly benefit them - for example, sports. And anyway, ComCol students now pay a $300/year extra fee to support the ComCol programs.</p>
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This makes no sense to me at all, people interact with who they want to.</p>
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Maybe if there were dedicated ComCol facilities or some other more tangible benefits to being in ComCol, you’d have made a different decision.</p>
<p>UConn spent $100 million on a football stadium that’s not even on campus. Would you have decided to attend UMass if they had a better football team and a fancy stadium?</p>
<p>IndianPwnerDude</p>
<p>“a walled community”… My S who is the Comm Coll had the same reaction when I told him of the new plans. He very much is in favor of an open campus community and thought this new plan would just further seperate the students from the rest of the community.</p>
<p>There are quite a few state universities at which the Honors college has dedicated housing (optional) for honors students. Penn State’s Schreyer Honors College is one example. It is a draw for students who might otherwise be considering more competitive schools, admissions-wise. It serves to make a big, sometimes impersonal school smaller for the more academically ambitious, and (in the case of PSU) provides a less rowdy living/learning environment for those students who want it. I’ve never heard anyone say that it causes a harmful separation b/t students, and I think it might motivate some OOS students, in particular, to give UMass a closer look.</p>
<p>Does anyone know about the music department at UMass, Amherst? Graduate school in addition to undergraduate and composition and voice in particular?</p>