Things about college (not the students) you hate/in need of reform

College Life
1

<p>For griping about things students do, there's already a thread for that. This is for other stuff. I'll start things off to illustrate. Hopefully some chancellors are reading and taking notes. Things about college I hate.....</p>

<p>--calling something a "science" (i.e. family and consumer science, library science, etc.) when it isn't remotely like a real science (i.e. biology, physics, chemistry, geology, etc.)
--over-focus on sports
--expensive, bureaucratic, ultra-PC diversity programs (since apparently people from all over the continents of Asia and Europe don't count as diversity)
--classes where your entire grade hinges on just a few exams, rather than having a better balance of exams, homework, papers, quizzes, etc.
--professors who act like the online academic environment doesn't exist (i.e. never posting grades, materials, etc.)
--professors in kahoots with textbook publishers</p>

2

<p>-dirty bathrooms in a lot of buildings (which really is the students’ faults)
-bureaucracy
-limited enrollment programs/impacted majors/whatever you call them</p>

3

<p>Clearly demarcate science from non-science. </p>

<p>Allow students 21 and over with concealed weapons licenses to carry weapons on campus to save lives. </p>

<p>“Since the fall semester of 2006, state law has allowed licensed individuals to carry concealed handguns on the campuses of the nine degree-offering public colleges (20 campuses) and one public technical college (10 campuses) in Utah. Concealed carry has been allowed at Colorado State University (Fort Collins, CO) since 2003 and at Blue Ridge Community College (Weyers Cave, VA) since 1995. After allowing concealed carry on campus for a combined total of one hundred semesters, none of these twelve schools has seen a single resulting incident of gun violence (including threats and suicides), a single gun accident, or a single gun theft. Likewise, none of the forty ‘right-to-carry’ states has seen a resulting increase in gun violence since legalizing concealed carry, despite the fact that licensed citizens in those states regularly carry concealed handguns in places like office buildings, movie theaters, grocery stores, shopping malls, restaurants, churches, banks, etc. Numerous studies*, including studies by University of Maryland senior research scientist John Lott, University of Georgia professor David Mustard, engineering statistician William Sturdevant, and various state agencies, show that concealed handgun license holders are five times less likely than non-license holders to commit violent crimes.”</p>

<p>Sources:</p>

<p>"Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns,” John Lott and David Mustard, Journal of Legal Studies (v.26, no.1, pages 1-68, January 1997);</p>

<p>“An Analysis of the Arrest Rate of Texas Concealed Handgun License Holders as Compared to the Arrest Rate of the Entire Texas Population,” William E. Sturdevant, September 1, 2000; Florida Department of Justice statistics, 1998; Florida Department of State,</p>

<p>“Concealed Weapons/Firearms License Statistical Report,” 1998; Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Census Bureau, reported in San Antonio Express-News, September 2000; Texas Department of Corrections data, 1996-2000, compiled by the Texas State Rifle Association</p>

<p>Compare the death rates by guns in Utah, to Virginia Tech, where many people were killed by a lunatic who didn’t have a concealed weapon license in the first place. What? You mean the shooter didn’t turn around and go home when he saw the “gun-free zone” signs?</p>

4

<p>@ Thereisnosecret - I always throw more fire on a fire when I want to put it out.</p>

5

<p>i’d support that if everyone had to undergo CCW training.</p>

6

<p>OP - You sound like the perfect stereotypical science nerd</p>

<p>As a white male though, I do agree with the over emphasis on diversity thing</p>

7

<p>-Bureaucracy (it shouldn’t take an hour and six people to register for a single intro-level science class)
-Focus on unimportant things, while neglecting others</p>

<p>As well as…
–expensive, bureaucratic, ultra-PC diversity programs (since apparently people from all over the continents of Asia and Europe don’t count as diversity)
–classes where your entire grade hinges on just a few exams, rather than having a better balance of exams, homework, papers, quizzes, etc.
–professors who act like the online academic environment doesn’t exist (i.e. never posting grades, materials, etc.)</p>

<p>I don’t understand why other people can join African heritage, Chinese heritage, etc groups when I can’t join/found a Scottish heritage group- apparently it’s racist or something. BS in my opinion.</p>

8

<p>

</p>

<p>Don’t make a topic on this thread about it though or everyone will yell at you</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>damn that sucks</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>in high school ya. now though, idk what you are talking about</p>

9

<p>^Clearly not at an SEC School. xD</p>

<p>I can’t stand the fact that while state funding gets cut, colleges decide to spend more money on extra programs that really aren’t that useful. There are so many BS student initiative programs that I just don’t see the use for. Instead of implementing these new programs, they should focus on the students they already have and the fact that we can’t afford tuition.</p>

<p>I don’t hate this, but I do find it interesting. USC is a “public” college, yet it receives less than 10% of its funding from the state of South Carolina. It might as well be a private college.</p>

<p>I also can’t stand the amount of general education courses that we’re required to take. Three social sciences, a philosophy, three English literatures, two lab sciences, 3 semesters worth of foreign language, three histories, three cultural courses, two maths, three humanities courses… That alone counts for about 70 hours worth of course work… General ed, in my opinion, should be only a year to a year and a half. You had to complete a general education in order to even get into college in the first place.</p>

<p>The argument is that you have general education courses to help find your interests and help you find the major for you, but at USC, you’re supposed to declare sophomore year anyways. The general ed requirements end up being taken over your entire four years here anyways, so it doesn’t really do that.</p>

10

<p>The football team at my school has the most storied history in the NCAA, so I do know about sports being a big deal at a college.</p>

<p>Still I don’t see how that can affect you in any way. Well, I mean it can, but I don’t see it affecting someone enough that they complain about it</p>

11

<p>@AUGirl</p>

<p>It’s not like those general eds popped out of nowhere and hit you in the face with all these requirements. I have yet to run across a college that wasn’t pretty open about what course requirements they have. If you didn’t want to spend that much time doing them, you should’ve picked a different college (like I did).</p>

12

<p>Advising is a major deal at my school. In my major we have “peer” advisors who haven’t been to grad school and are usually junior/senior students so they don’t really know what they’re doing. If you do by chance get to talk to someone higher up they are swamped and busy and never have time to spend with you. I get the run around from department to department to department. This semester I had some health issues and I went to talk to the office of undergrad studies. The advisors there didn’t even act like they could help me and weren’t willing to give me the correct information. I went to 3 different departments in search of what I needed. Its a tiring, long process and I just wish I could get some advice when I need it whether it be about grad school, courses, academic policies, etc. My school is too big for the advising departments to handle.</p>

13

<p>There are five buildings in my housing community. Student housing arbitrarily chose three of them to have access to an amazing lounge. Student housing also choose to give those same three wireless internet. I am not in one of those three, yet I pay the same housing prices as students who are.</p>

<p>Also, I dislike professor who will give out A’s if a student “shows improvement.” So if my midterms and final are A, B, B, I can get a lower grade than someone who has F, A, A…?</p>

14

<p>I think gen eds are more to make sure you have some knowledge outside of your major. No sense in producing drones that can balance their debits and credits but can’t talk about history.</p>

15

<p>-Professors who put up practice exams that keep up your hopes of a relatively good/easy exam, only to crush you with incredibly hard exams (not saying they can’t make hard exams, obviously, but that false sense of hope is something I hate)</p>

<p>-TAs who are either unhelpful or just plain rude</p>

<p>-Don’t mean to break the no-student thing here, but I really can’t stand inattentive or reckless bicyclists/longboarders who make it a living hell to walk to class.</p>

<p>-Classes in which too many out-of-class people are trying to run the class at the same time (instead of giving more freedom/authority to the professor or TA), so the whole class just gets screwed up because of it.</p>

<p>Also, I couldn’t agree more about the whole “few exams” thing. My history GE is like that. Of our total grade, 25% is the first midterm, 25% is the second midterm, 30% is the final exam, and 20% is discussion/participation. I already did poorly on the first midterm (not making excuses, it was my fault) but I wish there were more opportunities, especially for a FIRST SEMESTER FRESHMAN course.</p>

16

<p>It irks me that a lot of courses at my school are only offered one semester. If you come in with transfer credit you will pretty much have a super messed up schedule.</p>

17

<p>My big thing at my school is the lack of offerings of important courses required by certain majors to graduate. Since all of the NYS budget cuts started happening, they’ve basically been making bigger classes, fewer sections, and having the professors teach more, so they have less time for each students.</p>

<p>There are many students at my school who have not been able to graduate on time because of inability to get into the courses that they needed, including a friend who had to stay an extra semester because of ONE course. That being said, he maybe could have gotten into the class if he had better social skills, but the fact that it was even a problem was pretty insane.</p>

18

<p>

</p>

<p>Aw shucks I’m blushing.</p>

19

<p>At my school…fail one core Biology class and you’ll be retaking that class the next year as they are offered only once per year. Oh and all the Bio classes are pre-requisites for the next in the series :confused: It’s the same with Ochem…</p>

<p>Somehow, despite all this, the Bio department expects each student to graduate within 4 years…okay…</p>

20

<p>If you fail a core bio class, should you be pursuing a bio degree?</p>