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My major is really cool, but because it's technically a concentration under the Business school and not actually it's own entity, we have a small teaching staff to teach the core classes. That'd be fine, but the profs only come in two flavors: really knowledgeable and helpful, or useless. Like, my Intro to Visual Basic professor was so bad that by the end of the class, the only people who knew how to do anything in VB were the ones who came into the class with that knowledge already. So what did he do? He gave you 5 points extra credit for raising your hand once per class (Note: the FINAL EXAM was only 50 points) and took the coding section off the final, so it was just multiple choice questions on syntax.  Then we get to Applied Programming which was really cool and was taught by an outstanding professor, but the class was always about two weeks behind because he had to double back and teach everybody what they were supposed to learn in the prerequisite class.  Databases was the same way. He assigned no practical homework at all, and just spent every class reading paragraphs he'd copy/pasted from our text book onto power point slides. Then he's shocked because he has to curve the final like crazy because the average score was like a 45%. And my Capstone professor has to pay the price because before he can give anybody a project (we get put in teams and farmed out to put together some kind of IT system or application for a local business) he has to teach everybody how MySQL and database theory because we're in the real world now and you kind of have to know that stuff! The databases guy was so bad I actually filed a complaint with the department head, but all I got was "Well he's been here for years and you're only like the third complaint we've gotten on him, so it's probably nothing worth looking into." 
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Feb 22, 2014 02:19
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I've got kind of the reverse problem with my History capstone class. The first month was spent on how to research and write a thesis prospectus, which is fine, except we already did that in the Historian's Craft class, which is a requirement to take this one. The professor is new and apparently not totally up to speed on how the History program is supposed to work, since he's offering alternatives to writing an undergraduate thesis* in a class dedicated specifically to doing that.  *To be totally fair, we are one of only a handful of majors here that require one.
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Feb 22, 2014 02:29
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SarutosZero posted:I did 2 years CC and transferred to a University for the last 2 years. I would have much rather spent the whole 4 years at a CC if they had bachelors programs. My CC had way better teachers who were generally more interested in helping you learn. There were tons of slots for every class and the administration was very understanding of any issues. It was also cheap as hell in comparison. I think an entire semesters of classes + books at CC cost less than one class at my university. University profs, on the other hand, haven't spent a day in the private sector and are really full of themselves for reasons that are just beyond me. The classes are also massive (I had a class that had 1500 students. Convocation Hall for any Toronto forumgoers). If I could do it over again, I would've went with CC and avoided Uni for 4 years. Most of the CCs in my area are now offering Bachelors degrees, and for those that don't you can easily transfer your credits to a University and get the same degree faster and cheaper. melon cat has a new favorite as of 03:08 on Feb 22, 2014 |
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Feb 22, 2014 03:05
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I know for a fact my community college math classes are more rigorous than the local fairly prominent University. Chemistry is way easier, though.
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Feb 22, 2014 03:51
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melon cat posted:I had a class that had 1500 students.  I can't even imagine. I thought my psychology lecture of ~90 people was huge.
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Feb 22, 2014 05:06
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A friend of mine goes to a different school than me and she's had several lectures where there's three times the students than seats in the lecture hall. They're expected to watch the lectures online if they can't get seats, the videos of which play at about 6 fps.
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Feb 22, 2014 05:17
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ILL ON PZONES posted:I know for a fact my community college math classes are more rigorous than the local fairly prominent University. Chemistry is way easier, though. Yeah, for my last two years of HS I was doing a sort of HS/CC hybrid thing, and it seemed like the courses I was taking at the College were actually more rigorous and the professors held to a higher standard then at my actual University. At least in terms of GE classes. The one IT class I took at CC was supposed to be a once a week, 4 hours long lab. What actually happened was the professor would come in an hour late, drop a piece of equipment (usually a printer or old Dell tower) in front of each table, and once we'd fixed the issue with our particular item (20 minutes on a bad day) we got an 'A' for the day and were free to go. 
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Feb 22, 2014 06:00
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At my CC, for all the other issues with it, I really liked and I could at least get some sort of help from administration like advisors and counselors when I needed it, which wasn't too often. Usually it was stuff like, "I need to change a class on my schedule" or "I need a class that's not offered/full/cancelled." With University, it was a FAR different experience. It got to a point that any time I tried to talk with anyone like that with a University I actually felt physically ill.
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Feb 22, 2014 06:22
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Grape Juice Vampire posted:
Sydin posted:Yeah, for my last two years of HS I was doing a sort of HS/CC hybrid thing, and it seemed like the courses I was taking at the College were actually more rigorous and the professors held to a higher standard then at my actual University. JediTalentAgent posted:With University, it was a FAR different experience. It got to a point that any time I tried to talk with anyone like that with a University I actually felt physically ill. melon cat has a new favorite as of 22:45 on Feb 22, 2014 |
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Feb 22, 2014 22:40
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It can really vary from place to place. My local CC's teachers were either young adjuncts at nearby universities teaching classes on the side at a CC and were awesome, or crazy fuckheads that somehow had advanced degrees but couldn't teach anywhere else. The Biology teacher was a creationist that didn't believe in evolution or germ theory. My US History to 1877 teacher spent at least 10 minutes of every lecture ranting that African-Americans were better off as chattel and that they should be grateful to white people for taking them out of Africa, and would outright deny that there was any evidence of slaves being mistreated or abused in any way. On the flip side, almost all of my university professors have been outstanding. About half of them went into academia after working in different careers, and even those that have been in academia their entire adult lives are generally from blue-collar backgrounds and are a lot more grounded than the stereotypical academic. They all grade your writing to excellent standards. You'll lose a point or two per formatting mistake, but it's not going to make a big difference in your grade unless you were just too lazy to proofread and consult your style manual. You will be heavily penalized for padding out papers though; my profs would rather you write a paper that is below their word/page requirements if your paper simply doesn't need to be that long. It both wastes their time and insults their intelligence to assume that they cannot see when someone is restating the same idea or bringing in irrelevant data to pad out a paper. Nthing the awful university administration though. No one ever seems to know what the hell is going on; you'll be bounced around from office to office just to get anything done or have simple questions answered. My university is also having the same ballooning administration and shrinking faculty problem that most American universities are experiencing, so tuition rates are rising every semester despite us having fewer professors and fewer classes.
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Feb 23, 2014 00:15
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melon cat posted:Yeah, you feel like cattle walking into that place. One of my friends at that time almost had a panic attack when we had our first class in that massive lecture hall. In his words: "I just found out that Con Hall seats Over a thousand students! I'm from Tweed. Our population's about 6000." Whatup U of T buddy, I took BIO 150 in Con Hall. More kids in that one room than in my entire high school. Making friends in classes is a breeze, right? That said, I think that I actually got a great education for the year or so I was there, and it is so unbelievably, unbelievably cheap to go to school in Canada compared to the US that I can't complain. Coming from the states (but being a Canadian citizen), it was insane. At one point the kids around me were like "hey we're going to march through Sid Smith for lower tuition rates, do you want to come?" and I just couldn't, in good faith, go march. Like, tuition for my whole year was something like $4000 or something. For one of the top 40 schools in the world. I see it's gone up since then, but even still -- at my middling State University (for which I pay resident tuition), I pay more than twice that.
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Feb 23, 2014 00:15
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Preem Palver posted:Nthing the awful university administration though. No one ever seems to know what the hell is going on; you'll be bounced around from office to office just to get anything done or have simple questions answered. My university is also having the same ballooning administration and shrinking faculty problem that most American universities are experiencing, so tuition rates are rising every semester despite us having fewer professors and fewer classes. I hear that. Our University got a new president about two years back, and ever since then tuition's gone up, the number of classes has halved and the number of administrator positions has tripled. It's so bad our Academic Senate passed what amounts to a Vote of No Confidence on him and his Finance officers, and went over his head to bring in an independent accounting firm to audit our budget. Also he's a big STEM + Business guy - which is fine in theory - but if you're not in one of those majors than you're getting your classes and faculty budget slashed. Just for sake of comparison, the Business school's advising center essentially has a whole floor to itself, with 10 dedicated advisers and a full time receptionist to coordinate it all. I can book individual sections online with any adviser I want. Compare this to two of my roommates who are animation majors. They have 2 advisers for a program of 500ish students. Also they're not even full time advisers: both teach a full load of classes and one of them is also the head of their entire department. They're so swamped they don't even offer individual advisement: they apparently just have a meeting at the beginning and end of each semester where they field advising questions from everybody who shows up. Oh, and they get three classrooms to work with total. Each room holds maybe 40 people each, if you're lucky. For a program of 500. Sydin has a new favorite as of 00:48 on Feb 23, 2014 |
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Feb 23, 2014 00:41
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Out of interest, for the students with massive groups - how do your professors/lecturers/whatever handle the marking of essays? I had a total group of maybe 70 at most in my Psychology strand in third year, and my two lecturers both went completely nuts marking essays and dissertations over the year. They do maybe 4 essays per student per year plus the dissertations between the two of them. Three years of classes at a time. What happens with the massive classes of 100, 500, even 1000+?
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Feb 23, 2014 00:42
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eating only apples posted:Out of interest, for the students with massive groups - how do your professors/lecturers/whatever handle the marking of essays? TA's do the grading in big rear end classes like that, and if it's a low level survey course, they won't do written assignments that much.
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Feb 23, 2014 00:56
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Sydin posted:I hear that. Our University got a new president about two years back, and ever since then tuition's gone up, the number of classes has halved and the number of administrator positions has tripled. It's so bad our Academic Senate passed what amounts to a Vote of No Confidence on him and his Finance officers, and went over his head to bring in an independent accounting firm to audit our budget. This seems to be an epidemic among universities in general. My college recently just flat out obliterated its music department, which led to literally every professor in it filing huge grievances through their union. Not sure about the details but I can tell you that this led to massive protests throughout the community and there's some nasty backlash. They've been systematically gutting the art department's budget for a decade and constantly talk about things like "fiscal responsibility" which, of course, code for "more administrators, do as much work as we can with minimum wage work study as possible, and by the way gently caress art." Tuition is spiking like mad and there are always construction projects going on in and around campus but good luck getting a slot in required classes if they're anything that isn't math or business. Meanwhile, when one of the art professors retired recently they just eliminated her position completely and axed the entire type of art she taught. Even though there were several art majors that were focusing on it and needed more classes in it to finish their degrees properly. Nope, gently caress you. Hell, even our STEM-related things are having issues. Classes are ballooning, scholarships cover gently caress all, and it doesn't matter how brilliant you are you WILL NOT EVER get a full ride scholarship, or even close to it, if you aren't an athlete. While the administration just spent millions on a new sports...thing...whatever you want to call it...with a gigantic pool it took YEARS to get the few thousand dollars to replace the hobo fort built around our wood kiln with something that wasn't at risk of falling over if it rained too hard.
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Feb 23, 2014 01:12
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Tuition is spiking like mad and there are always construction projects going on in and around campus but good luck getting a slot in required classes if they're anything that isn't math or business. Ugh, you too? My campus has no less than three major construction projects going on right now, and five more down the pipeline that will start up as soon as one of the current ones finish. Oh, and we also spent millions upon millions last year to turn every classroom on campus into a "Smart Classroom". Translation: an integrated projector/television box that sits on the wall and is never used because professors can't be bothered to read the wall of text posted on it explaining how it works, and were never trained in how to use them (their union was apparently up in arms over this, but it seemingly went nowhere.) Of course, then the President comes out and says "sorry, not enough money for classes this semester."
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Feb 23, 2014 01:50
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eating only apples posted:Out of interest, for the students with massive groups - how do your professors/lecturers/whatever handle the marking of essays? In my school, the huge classes (400-500 people) are generally first year courses that nearly everyone needs to take that just don't have an essay component and instead just do multiple choice scantron exams. Low level Psych classes are the main offender here. I also had a Philosophy class with around 200 people, but that class had a large group of TAs who handled around 20 or so students each.
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Feb 23, 2014 03:10
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I'm thankfully out as of this prior December, but the cutting of classes and tuition spikes are some real bullshit. When I was still in we had at least one language cut (German, maybe others), the Classics department gutted to a single professor which also happened to be the only source of Latin or Greek for people that had to have it to graduate, and parking was an eternal issue because we were a commuter heavy campus. It might be more prevalent than I'm assuming, but we also had classes in our catalog that hadn't been offered since I had started going and were never available the entire 4 1/2 years I was there. The real cherry on that poo poo sundae was that the president of our college had been recorded as saying that she was basically here for the money and not the students. Then about 6 months later the Vice President says that a lot of the school should quit their useless majors and go into hospitality instead. Yes, as in hotel work. In her vague defense, I live in a tourist heavy state. I'd still argue that you don't just poo poo on someone's goal like that in a position that ostensibly is trying to retain and entice students.I'm really looking forward to walking in May, let me tell ya. I honestly feel pretty bad for the friends I still have going there, but they'll be out soon enough. We also had the smart boards that most of the professors never touched to my knowledge, but they weren't as prolific as to be in every classroom. The biggest class I ever had there was something like 40 students, but the pure science classes were known to have as many as 150 in the intro level courses.
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Feb 23, 2014 03:11
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Preem Palver posted:It can really vary from place to place. My local CC's teachers were either young adjuncts at nearby universities teaching classes on the side at a CC and were awesome, or crazy fuckheads that somehow had advanced degrees but couldn't teach anywhere else. The Biology teacher was a creationist that didn't believe in evolution or germ theory. My US History to 1877 teacher spent at least 10 minutes of every lecture ranting that African-Americans were better off as chattel and that they should be grateful to white people for taking them out of Africa, and would outright deny that there was any evidence of slaves being mistreated or abused in any way. Hahaha, I also had a CC teacher who taught Microbiology and Gen Bio II while being a creationist. At least she was a professional microbiologist and understood germ theory, and while she didn't agree with evolution she just sort of skimmed the top of the basics within 30 seconds and didn't test on it. She did once have to give a student a point back on their test when they answered "Name a species of marsupial" with "Tazmanian devil" and she honestly didn't know that Taz from Looney Tunes was based on a real thing. My history teacher, on the other hand, was the total opposite of yours. The answer to everything was basically "white people are awful and we should all feel ashamed of ourselves for persecuting everything no matter how long ago it happened or what our own beliefs actually are." We spent 3 classes watching Amistad to somehow reinforce that point...?
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Feb 23, 2014 07:35
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Christ, you guys are making me love my school now. I guess I'm lucky to finally live in a city with a bunch of different colleges so they can't be completely loving awful. I've even only had pleasant encounters with our campus PD. edit - that's not really fitting into the tone of this thread and is dumb. Ariza has a new favorite as of 13:11 on Feb 23, 2014 |
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Feb 23, 2014 10:35
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Ariza posted:Christ, you guys are making me love my school now. I guess I'm lucky to finally live in a city with a bunch of different colleges so they can't be completely loving awful. I've even only had pleasant encounters with our campus PD. My worst professor was at a university and I mostly hated him because he was loving my girlfriend while his wife was 8 months pregnant with his 2nd kid. Wait, what the gently caress man
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Feb 23, 2014 10:38
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So apparently there's 830$ on my account that I have to settle? What the gently caress? Where did this come from? I payed everything up front, or at least, I thought I did. What the actual gently caress University. What the actual gently caress.
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Feb 23, 2014 11:30
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InEscape posted:Whatup U of T buddy, I took BIO 150 in Con Hall. More kids in that one room than in my entire high school. Making friends in classes is a breeze, right? It's true that Canadian University tuition is inexpensive compared to the U.S. However, it has been on rapid increase. And if you're a Commerce or Engineering student you pay significantly more. Austrian mook posted:So apparently there's 830$ on my account that I have to settle? What the gently caress? Where did this come from? I payed everything up front, or at least, I thought I did. What the actual gently caress University. What the actual gently caress. melon cat has a new favorite as of 16:29 on Feb 23, 2014 |
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Feb 23, 2014 16:27
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melon cat posted:My wife went to Guelph, and one of the fees students their have to pay is an "Aboriginal fee". Nobody could figure out what that fee was for. Did anybody ask the administration? I wouldn't be surprised if it was a fee to offset a super low tuition rate for Native American students.
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Feb 24, 2014 23:46
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Not long ago, after our province promised additional funding of 2%, they backtracked and took away 8% instead. I remember my university claimed there would be NO tuition hike, but then they implemented a brand new fee shortly afterwards. It's called the Student Services fee, an additional $120 per semester. Tuition still went up anyway. That still wasn't enough to balance the budget either, they had to let some staff go, cut seats available across the board, and cancelled a couple of programs. It's been fun times around here. 
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Feb 26, 2014 02:05
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melon cat posted:Ha. That's probably one of the many "surprise" fees they tack onto your bill. Student Union fee, the Fee for the Gym you'll never use, the Alumni fee, etc.. If you look at the breakdown (which is rarely made publicly-available), it's insane how many 'incidental' fees students pay for on top of their tuition. My wife went to Guelph, and one of the fees students their have to pay is an "Aboriginal fee". Nobody could figure out what that fee was for. I pay at least $500 in fees for things I'll never use every semester. It's not much, but I see this as a justification to bring all my recycling to school and dump it in their bins so I don't have to pay for the service at home. (Chicago hates the environment.)
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Feb 26, 2014 02:35
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Over here the fees were technically optional, but they were opt-out, and you had to specifically go to each place and ask for a refund. I think one of the fees was a two dollar childcare fee for the childcare center on campus. Makes me wonder if anyone ever went there to ask for their two dollars back.
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Feb 26, 2014 04:15
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eating only apples posted:Out of interest, for the students with massive groups - how do your professors/lecturers/whatever handle the marking of essays? I'm taking IT101 as a pre-requisite for the college of business, so it has at least several hundred people in it. What we do is take the test online in a computer lab on a separate day so that people with all sorts of schedules have time to take the test in an organized fashion without cheating, I suppose. That said, online tests at home are too easy. I just blow through all the things I know, and what few points I didn't quite remember I look up in the book before time is up. Actually something I don't complain about in college often!
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Feb 26, 2014 06:16
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Just got out of a senior level engineering exam. While I used my relatively pedestrian TI-89 (and stupidly didn't type notes into it) a lot of students used those TI-Nspire CX calculators that let you save images on them. I guess I was the only one stupid enough to not scan our entire problem sets and notes into my calculator for easy reference exam time (closed book closed notes). That cost me a good 20 points. Goodbye curve
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Feb 26, 2014 06:27
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Along the lines of fees and tuition, I was looking into an online program from a public university and started to crunch the numbers and it was more expensive to take the online program vs. the on-campus program. That was also figuring in the on-campus FEES that gave you: On-campus activities, health center, HEALTH INSURANCE, city mass transit pass, etc.
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Feb 26, 2014 08:59
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devinhead posted:Just got out of a senior level engineering exam. While I used my relatively pedestrian TI-89 (and stupidly didn't type notes into it) a lot of students used those TI-Nspire CX calculators that let you save images on them. I guess I was the only one stupid enough to not scan our entire problem sets and notes into my calculator for easy reference exam time (closed book closed notes). That cost me a good 20 points. Goodbye curve Best thing that ever happened to me as an engineer was when my calculator broke in junior year and I was too cheap to buy a new one. I was amazed at how much of a crutch it was.
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Feb 26, 2014 14:15
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karl fungus posted:Over here the fees were technically optional, but they were opt-out, and you had to specifically go to each place and ask for a refund. I think one of the fees was a two dollar childcare fee for the childcare center on campus. Makes me wonder if anyone ever went there to ask for their two dollars back. Considering when I worked the government helpline, and you had to put a checkmark in to donate a dollar to the blind when you renew your driver's license that I got a caller demanding his dollar back. I would say yes, probably.
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Feb 26, 2014 14:37
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Super Waffle posted:Best thing that ever happened to me as an engineer was when my calculator broke in junior year and I was too cheap to buy a new one. I was amazed at how much of a crutch it was. I had a working but obsolete calculator during my starting years of university, and compared to my fellow students I appeared to be a god of simple maths.
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Feb 26, 2014 14:41
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karl fungus posted:Over here the fees were technically optional, but they were opt-out, and you had to specifically go to each place and ask for a refund. I think one of the fees was a two dollar childcare fee for the childcare center on campus. Makes me wonder if anyone ever went there to ask for their two dollars back. I would
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Feb 27, 2014 14:30
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My university tried to force me to buy a semester meal plan even though I was a commuter, didn't live on/near campus, didn't eat our terrible food, and had already been going there for a year at that point. It was like a thousand dollars. I told them to gently caress off and just had one of my professors remove the block on my account. If you wanted a parking permit it was 600 dollars a semester. That in no way guaranteed you a spot either. If you tried to park on campus at anywhere near a regular time of the day there was no way you were getting a spot. Over half the parking spots on campus were metered spots that you couldn't use even if you had a permit. And they sure as hell had security patrolling the campus constantly checking to see if your car was paid up. If your meter ticket expired by even a minute you were probably going to get hit with a 75$ ticket. And then they would charge you a 'filing fee' when you went to pay it. It was such a loving scam but professors didn't give one poo poo if you were late because you couldn't find any parking. I ended up just parking 2 miles away in a neighborhood and walking every day because it was faster than fighting for campus spots. I'm really glad I got my degree and I got a pretty decent education because the professors in my major really cared but gently caress my university forever. It makes me laugh a little every time they send me an email or postage mail about joining the alumni society by paying them a bunch of money. I would get amazing benefits like a reduced rate on memberships to the tiny campus gym with outdated equipment!
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Feb 27, 2014 15:06
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Meal Plans can go gently caress off right to hell. No actually I don't want to pay 10$ for a tiny loving plastic bowl of pasta that's really lovely when there's a Subway like 2 minutes from campus and a grocery store 5 minutes away.
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Feb 27, 2014 15:08
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When I was a freshman and had to have a meal plan, I made it a point to steal produce (that was sitting around as decorations) every time I went in the meal hall. Once I managed to get an entire pineapple. gently caress meal plans forever, and gently caress Aramark.
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Feb 27, 2014 16:57
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I would always walk out with pockets filled with apples, oranges, and bananas. Anything else really wouldn't work. One time I tried doing it with M&Ms and they partially melted and left me with rainbow pockets. 
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Feb 27, 2014 17:09
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I steal food, go to meetings for clubs I'm not in for free food and frequent the campus food bank. I'm the pinnacle of a cheap piece of poo poo.
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Feb 27, 2014 17:11
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karl fungus posted:I would always walk out with pockets filled with apples, oranges, and bananas. Anything else really wouldn't work. One time I tried doing it with M&Ms and they partially melted and left me with rainbow pockets. Basically this, yeah. 99% of the food you could get with the meal plan was trash, so I'd just grab fruit and veggies and bring them back to my dorm. Freshman year they refused to give us a stove ( ) but I had a rice cooker with a steamer catch, so I'd just throw veggies in there and still eat better than most of my room mates.Mealplans are such a loving scam, anyway. The idea is that freshman will be too stupid to fend for themselves and without easy access to pre-prepared food they'll die in the streets. But hey university, you know what would really help out in combating that? Giving freshman dorms stoves!
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Feb 27, 2014 17:27
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