College Matters

Calling all English majors out there! What have you done, or what do you plan to do, with your degree? A student is considering the option and requests advice.

It’s springtime, and scholarship deadlines are in the air, which means that resentment and despair prosper as much as hope and idealism. Everyone’s a victim, and everyone thinks they’re more deserving of scholarship money than the next guy. Many students who fill out scholarship applications do so with a misplaced sense of entitlement. They forget that scholarship awards are gifts, and the giver and/or his or her chosen committee have the right to determine the characteristics of the recipient.

A student complained that the scholarship opportunities for minorities, in their abundance, constitute racism against white Americans. There aren’t any scholarships allocated for only white American students, and some white Americans express outrage at this discrepancy. This outrage is at best misguided and at worst willful ignorance.

Consider some statistics in regard to race and poverty in this country. Only 8% of whites live at or below the poverty level. Over 20% of African-Americans live in poverty, with approximately the same percentage of Hispanics. Look at the Native American community and the percentage surpasses 25%.

But, you say, since there is poverty in every ethnic group, shouldn’t scholarships evaluate candidates upon individual circumstances (along with GPA and other criteria)? Poverty, in numbers, can be easily manufactured on federal financial aid forms, especially by the educated. The truly impoverished in this country often lack the education necessary for such manipulation. Public schools in lower-income neighborhoods are underfunded and the teachers are overworked. Children grow up in fatherless homes. These children did not ask to be born into these circumstances and deserve a level playing field. Most of them are American minorities. Minority-specific scholarships offer the steps for gaining access to that playing field.

Okay, so this blog is not really about the drama of junior high and high school, so it’s misleading to use the title of a creepy song about high school by the Police as the entry’s title…but it’s related. While everyone in college is, for the most part, of legal age, romance between professors and students remains a gray area. Some universities actually have enacted policies against such relationships entirely, while others merely disapprove on an unofficial basis. I keep thinking of the line, “Loose talk in the classroom…”

Dark humor and 80’s music aside, this is a very real issue. Most people meet their romantic partners in either the workplace or at school. Student-professor relationships begin with a combination of the two! And is that really any worse than meeting some stranger in a bar?

Well, perhaps not, if the professor does not happen to be in charge of the particular student’s grades. Frankly, if professor and student met in a coffee shop or at a seminar but have absolutely no official academic contact, there’s absolutely no reason why they shouldn’t pursue whatever feels right, at least in my mind.

However, this isn’t usually the case. The connection often begins in the classroom, and herein lies the problem. It is nearly impossible to be completely fair when grading an individual with whom you share a personal connection– whether friend, relative, or worst of all, romantic interest. And even some sort of anomalous saint who does have that capability risks appearances to the contrary. It’s ammunition that can be used to bolster any other student’s claim of unfairness in grading.

Plus, what if the relationship ends on a sour note? Let’s face it, most do, and relationships that are “uneven” like a professor-student liaison are even more likely to end badly. So what happens then? The professor runs the risk of the student complaining to his or her parents as well as the administration, and thus the professor may risk losing his or her tenure (or opportunity to receive tenure).

This is why, when a student with a crush on her professor wrote to me, I told her that if I was advising the professor on the same situation, I would tell him to run, far, far away, as fast as he could go. My advice to her, in a nutshell, was to tread carefully. Check it out and let me know what you think.

College is expensive. It’s rate of price increase exceeds general inflation so exponentially it’s disgusting. While colleges across the nation tout their devotion to diversity and education, it seems that instead their focus lies in profit. That’s fine, I’m a capitalist, but I am continually disturbed by this effort of higher education to perpetuate an image of lofty idealism. It’s tantamount to that used car salesman telling you he wants to sell you the old beater because he has your best interests in mind…which is to say, it’s absolutely ridiculous.

So, costs continue to rise, and the latest suggestion by some lovely university admin was to lessen the course hours required by a degree to “combat costs”. I’ve mentioned before that I’m appalled by this notion; it further reduces the value of the actual learning that you’re supposed to gain in college. How about they stop paying university administration triple digit salaries? Maybe cut down on the modern art fund - or at least limit the budget to attractive pieces of work rather than spending gazillions on deep and meaningful eyesores?

Regardless, funding is a problem, and I’m receiving indications that it is in some ways the worst for middle-class America’s students. Many of these students have grown up sheltered from financial woes, and thus, it doesn’t occur to some that they may be responsible for seeking their own funding for college, until it’s pretty late in the game, as with the student that just wrote to me. Perhaps her parents wanted to shield her from financial realities? Or perhaps they didn’t know how much college costs have escalated in the past 15 years. It makes the fluctuations in gas prices look microscopic. I referred her to both FAFSA and a new site I’ve discovered, Funding-College, a fantastic resource.

As cold-hearted and uncultured as it may sound, I’ve often wondered why most universities offer fine arts degrees at all. I’m willing to accept the validity of fine arts degrees from specialty schools like Julliard, but what, realistically, is someone going to do with a fine arts degree from your run-of-the-mill state funded university? And yet, even smaller public universities, like the commuter school I went to, offer fine arts degrees. Generally, it’s an easier degree to get than either a B.A. or a B.S. - because you don’t have to take a certain number of language hours or hard science and math hours. Employers know this, and when they look for general, non-major specific employees (for intern jobs in general retail management positions, etc.), they’re going to gravitate to pretty much everyone else before the B.F.A.s.

And in the world of the fine arts, a degree means squat next to experience, skills, and talent. A formal college degree is completely unnecessary. So why have fine arts degrees at all? I have two theories: one, it’s a way to employ more people with Master’s degrees in the fine arts, with faculty positions in academia, and two, it helps those people feel justified in their choice of degree. I sound asinine, but I’ve noticed that fine arts majors are often the most arrogant - they feel like they have something to prove.

This particular fine arts student, though, is very nice and self-effacing; the student just wants to work in theatre, loves lighting design, and is about to finish a B.F.A. I think I gave out fairly decent advice; please read it and tell me what you think!

Interesting issue: is it beneficial to allow students to bring pets into the dorms? With all of the new trends in pet therapy, isn’t it obvious that pets provide comfort, especially in stress-filled situations?

My answer to the second question would be, “Yes, of course,” but the first - hmm. I’d have to say it depends. While yes, pets are an essential part of many people’s lives (myself included, that’s my buddy Merlin in the picture at the top of this post) and bring great joy to their human companions, in the wrong hands they can be a great big hassle, too. It’s obvious that a specific building would have to be set up for students with pets, so that those with pet-allergies could avoid pet dander. The potential problems extend far beyond that, though.

I have this image of college students coming in from the bar and not letting the dog out or changing the litter box or whatever. Then, when they do walk the dog or other outside-trained animal, I can see many students conveniently “forgetting” to pick up the waste - and then suddenly, you’ve got an entire campus covered with poo (or a campus that has to hire an extra-expensive gardening team!). There are certainly ways to combat this, with written policy, but actually enforcing such policy would be costly and time-consuming.

Even worse, I read an article that quoted one female student as saying pets in dorms would be a problem because “We’d all abandon them.” Excuse me? So much for “comfort.” There are universities across the country that are trying to ignore irresponsible examples like that one and offer pet-friendly dorms, as in this, a different article; I’m looking forward to seeing the results.

My advice to the student who wrote to me involved deferred admission and a year at community college; see what you think here.

I feel very lucky to have connected with a fantastic organization, Al-Jamiat, that assists international students with a desire to come to college in the U.S. Al-Jamiat’s specific focus is upon students from the mid-east, but they are happy to assist any international student. I received an email several days ago from a biotechnology student in Sri Lanka interested in coming over here, and I referred him to Al-Jamiat - and he told me they’ve been very helpful - he’s specifically receiving assistance and support from Ms. Wassan Humadi, the managing editor of Al-Jamiat’s bi-annual magazine as well as their website. I’m so excited - Ms. Humadi is actually giving me the opportunity to contribute to the magazine and potentially assist with some Q&A at the site! The picture above is from this year’s university fair, at their stop in Manama, Bahrain.

It’s really interesting - and eye-opening - to listen to Ms. Humadi’s experiences. She came over here to college from Saudi Arabia, and apparently people wouldn’t stop bombarding her with questions about what they assumed was her barbarian background…asking her how she possibly could have purchased something as modern as denim jeans, for example. It made me think of my own experiences (albeit to a much lesser degree) with my relatives in New York who assumed that because I was from Texas I must have ridden a horse to school. I told Ms. Humadi about that - and the same relatives probably would have asked if she had ridden a camel to school. It’s so wonderful that we have organizations like this to prove that we really have much more in common than we may initially think.

I just posted an interesting quandary that some of us might find enviable - a minority high school student has been recruited to play football (on scholarship) at one of the “Big 12″ teams (see the advice column for an explanation in case you’re unfamiliar) and has also received an offer for a scholarship to an Ivy League school.

What’s especially fascinating about this question is the degree to which it polarizes everyone I speak with. Inevitably, if the person is a football fanatic, he or she quickly says “Big 12, obviously.” If, on the other hand, the person is an academic or simply uninterested in football, he or she is equally convinced that the answer is “obviously” the Ivy League school.

I don’t think it’s so obvious. I tried to give the student some helpful advice that may help him make this extraordinarily personal - and life changing - decision. See what you think, and please feel free to criticize. The only reason I have comments on this site on “moderate first” is so that I don’t have a bunch of unrelated spam auto-posting - so I promise, I post everything legitimate, including criticism!

I received a letter from a student about university library fines. Initially, perhaps this seems like a relatively trivial issue; however, when a student has lost books, fines multiply rapidly. It’s not unusual for a university library to charge upwards of $200 for a lost book. On first glance, that seems excessive. Appearances are deceiving.

My job at the library introduced me to the joys of acquisitions. That’s only slightly sarcastic, because it was actually exciting to get to decide which items to purchase. Plus, a large part of my experience at the library involved film acquisition, and I’m a film buff (though definitely not a film expert). What I found interesting was the policy of publishers concerning cost of materials and university libraries. Publishing companies are, by nature, capitalistic. They are corporations seeking to maximize profit. They recognize that when they sell a book to a university library, they are sacrificing multiple potential sales. With that in mind, they charge libraries much more than individuals for any given item.

So when a book is lost, the library is not looking at the base cost of a book on Amazon. Library employees have to put time and effort into acquiring another copy directly from the publisher at a marked up price. However, when a book is donated to a university, the library circumvents this problem. Most university libraries will lessen fines or eradicate them altogether if a student replaces a lost book by purchasing a copy. It has to be in decent condition, but it doesn’t matter what the student pays for it.

What can you do when your roommate is your polar opposite? And is it better to room with a dear friend who you know is your opposite, or should you instead rely on random chance to hook you up with someone random who may be nearer to your personality and style?

While I’d opt for the former, which influenced how I advised this high school senior, I think there should be a third option. Someone should set up an “eHarmony” for college students seeking roommates. At my college, we were randomly thrown together, although generally within a class. Freshmen were paired with freshmen, sophomores paired with sophomores, etc. This randomness does serve a purpose, too, other than making things easier for the university: it does offer incoming students a chance to get to know someone outside of their own little world. However, there are personality characteristics that transcend culture and ethnicity – for example, as with the scenario I just advised, one person is obsessively organized and the other is excessively scatterbrained.

I know there’s a “roommates.com” – I’ve used it. But it doesn’t offer nearly the comprehensive personality evaluation as sites like eHarmony. I understand the thought process; visitors to eHarmony are searching for a lifetime romantic partner, so personality combinations are even more important, as this is a search for permanency. But I’d like to see universities set up some sort of personality quiz, even a brief, abbreviated version, and then match up roommates utilizing that. Better yet, some entrepreneur should come up with a site like that and then hawk it to the universities. Any other ideas?