The Worst Colleges in America

http://www.radaronline.com/from-the-magazine/2008/08/worst_colleges_in_america_2008_part_1_01.php

by ksvs • 18 years ago

33 30 18 years ago

radaronline.com

fallentimes• 18 years ago

Not very empirical but immensely entertaining. The piece on Trump University alone is worth the read.

noelchurchill• 18 years ago

I'm from San Diego, and somehow I knew I'd find SDSU in this list!

etal• 18 years ago

With half of College Avenue getting rich off cocaine, yeah, they had this coming. The 17% four-year graduation rate is impressive, too.

I also remember Chico getting epic on Halloween, until the police cracked down on it a few years ago.

byrneseyeview4• 18 years ago

The quality of the quotes goes way up for Drexel and Harvey Mudd -- I wonder if some alumni on the Radar staff couldn't resist a little articulate bashing of their alma mater.

noahlt• 18 years ago

I'm not sure Harvey Mudd really deserves to be on that list, though.

cowmoo• 18 years ago

No, Harvey Mudd (or Harvard Med if you say it really fast and jumble it) is not bad at all. It has in fact, one point, the highest national merit scholar semi-finalists by class percentage in the country. It's basically the school for Caltech rejects (which I guess, from one perspective, does make it a pretty sobering place, no pun intended).

byrneseyeview4• 18 years ago

It wouldn't show up on a list of worst schools by multiple criteria, but I think that section of the article is just about the appearance of the campus.

dangrossman• 18 years ago

Drexel doesn't belong on here either. They've obviously never actually visited these places, and just copied them from old issues of Princeton Review.

That photo isn't Drexel's campus, the smoke stack isn't even near campus and is just part of an old incinerator in Philadelphia. You can't see it from campus unless you're on a high floor of a high rise dorm/building.

There are hundreds of trees and grassy areas, and the "rape garden" is not even the only garden on campus.

Drexel blends right in with its Ivy League neighbor, University of Pennsylvania; there's no distinction between their campuses, they just run right into eachother.

Drexel is ranked among the top 100 national universities by US News & World, and in the top 10 of their most innovative list. I'm an alumni, who still lives within walking distance of campus, and this just makes me angry.

krschultz• 18 years ago

I see your point, IT schools aren't for everyone. I visited the campus when I was looking for schools and didn't much like it, but it is a great school for engineering. My brother went to NJIT and it also is in a horrible area, but picking a college isn't about how good the gardener is.

irinotecan• 18 years ago

I heard from a non-Mormon who went to BYU and said the intolerance there was so awful, that students would walk up to you and ask, "Are you a Mormon?" and if you said no, they would just walk away like you didn't even exist.

indiejade• 18 years ago

-1

This is like saying: "I heard from somebody who has never been to Tonga that Tongans are dumb."

Second-hand tales ala "I heard from . . ." rarely relay facts.

(creative downmodding from someone who doesn't post enough to have a downmodding arrow)

p.s. how many points is it these days?

byrneseyeview4• 18 years ago

For what it's worth, I've heard the same thing from a Mormon who went there and didn't like how some of the other Mormons behaved.

sofal3• 18 years ago

Disclaimer: I don't speak for BYU.

I went to BYU. I'm sorry to hear that your friend had that kind of experience. I believe that everyone I went to school with would have considered that very intolerant and rude indeed. I hope that's far from the experience of all students there who aren't LDS.

Some of the points in the blurb about BYU are accurate, but some are misleading and false. BYU is a private religious institution, and it therefore has stricter rules about conduct, appearance, and behavior. These rules, together called the "Honor Code", are accepted by every student before he/she attends. These standards are a big part of the reason for the students' desire to attend BYU. Abstaining from tea, coffee, tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs is already part of the LDS belief system. The idea that students are required to abstain from flirting is ludicrous, and reveals that the author(s) must either be ignorant or must have misinterpreted their information. There is no end to flirting at BYU, unless you define flirting to include crudity and lewdness. "Sexual comments" was an interesting addition to the list. As a student at BYU, you are expected to use clean language and adhere to high moral standards, and so I suppose if by "sexual comments" they mean "vulgar or crass sexual comments" then this is true. These are all things that may perhaps be labeled as "intolerant" by some, but which I agree with.

The facial hair rule I think is old-fashioned and unnecessary. I and a lot of others think that blocking YouTube on the campus network is disgusting and verging on communism (I can't stand forced web filtering of any kind). Tunneling worked though, and the CS network didn't block YouTube, so that was nice.

KirinDave2• 18 years ago

A cousin of mine explained the dietary restrictions to me. For the full effect, please indulge me as I enter a brief bit of real dialogue with the names stripped:

Me: "So how is BYU, _____? Enjoying your first semester away from home?"

Her: "It's great, I'm having a lot of fun. But I don't think you'd like it very much."

Me: "Why not? I went to college too, you know. Is it because I'm not mormon?"

Her: "There's that." pauses to open a can of Coke "But you're also required to abstain from things like tea and coffee. You'd have to give up caffeine, and I know you'd hate that."

Me: looking pointedly at her can of coke "You have to give up drinks with caffeine in it?"

Her: pausing again to drink her soda "Yes. The Honor Code says we can't drink tea, coffee or anything with alcohol in it."

Me: "But soda is okay?"

Her: "Yeah, unless it has, like, drugs in it or something."

I checked the BYU website. Coffee and tea are verboten, Soda is not. I even found pictures of people drinking coke on campus. Way to go, BYU. Your dietary restrictions are super-good.

blasdel• 18 years ago

blocking YouTube on the campus network is disgusting and verging on communism

Blocking access to information is counter-revolutionary.

I think the word you are looking for is totalitarianism.

Alex3917• 18 years ago

I don't see what the author has against the book Jews Without Money. It's one of the most important pieces of American literature.

Prrometheus• 18 years ago

My state of California, doing America proud.

gaius• 18 years ago

I'm not sure that's a fair criticism of Hamburger U. Isn't it really just a training facility for McDonald's managers? As far as I know a) it has no pretensions of being a real college and b) McDonald's is a wildly successful global corporation, they must be doing something right.

mroman• 18 years ago

Has anyone heard anything positive or negative about Penn Foster College?

The Worst Colleges in America

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