The University of Dayton

Very young campus with an unhealthy dislike for age diversity. The number of special events and job positions tailored to undergraduates, and especially underclassmen, is truly bizarre considering the obvious focus already.

A special Art Street evening just for freshmen artists? Where?s the comparable night for any other group, eh? How do you justify thinking they?re being ignored on a campus like this? You?ve never hired a graduate student? You don?t normally hire graduate students? Why does the year I graduated high school have any bearing on this GA position or student job?

Non-inclusive social atmosphere of mostly local Ohioans strait out of high school... and foreign nationals who can apparently afford the tuition hikes. Cliquey. Insular. The stories about people inviting you inside to hang out as you walk past is either a myth or based on decades ago, as it?s definitely not the reality now.

A stifling & shocking amount of age discrimination and nepotism. If you're not a teenager or early 20-something, and/or not related to anyone who can hook you up (against the charter/bylaws, but common place), avoid going here at all costs unless you get some sweet deal in the form of a free ride, or something. It's just not worth it.

I encountered two separate departments with nepotism going on, and several others who gave preference to less qualified or less English-fluent students who were younger. Student Life GA interviews will actually look at you like a pariah if you're not either a recent undergrad or were previously employed by them. Kiss-@sses need only apply.

Graduate programs here often seem like an afterthought purely meant for revenue generation. They lack rigor, lack sufficient classroom hours per dollar, are constantly "in transition", and cater to people who like to sit through single nearly 3hr classes once a week. Your major, minor, or concentration may or may not still be available by the time you finish. Yet there seem to be no shortage of 'certificate programs' being constantly added.

I've heard multiple complaints of international grad students violating academic integrity here, sharing assignment answers, and caught plagiarizing information off the internet. No apparent recourse. Admins ignored complaints or deemed them as not significant enough infractions. UD has an epidemic of kids coming to the USA just to improve their English skills while UD is turned into a diploma mill.

UD has also gone out of its way to push many of its graduate students and their classes to off campus locations, not so much due to a lack of room, but to engender the young "non-creepy" atmosphere -- the undergrads? description, not mine. At the same time, the further off-campus your program is, the higher the fees tend to be.

Hypocrisy of claiming the school does not promote underage drinking, while at the same time calling the student neighborhood "the ghetto" and the online portal "Porches". Everyone, including the administrators, knows why this is and what it references.

The administrators pass-the-buck or simply don?t seem well-informed. Just finding out who is so-and-so?s supervisor to get some signature is a complicated process, often including relying on young undergraduate office assistants acting as gatekeepers who don?t improve this situation.

The UD health center is apparently not subsidized by general tuition like at most universities. If you're a grad student need to use it out of convenience, expect to pay like it was any doctor's office. It also is not open on weekends.

The UD RecPlex gym is also not subsidized by general tuition. Grad students have to pay extra to use it. Between the health center and the gym, this is frankly an inexcusable cost & access structure on campus. Utterly, completely stupid that further alienates the grad students, who are the ones that build a school's academic reputation.

UD has an unwieldy, complicated bureaucracy with widely-disparate departments, poor communications, poor efficiency, and an IT system that is woefully in need of streamlining. Three or four log-ins just to print something off?

Dayton is an awful surrounding city and with abysmal public transportation. UD itself is situated in probably the second-worst area in town it could be. Not in the literal ghetto, but just below what's called South Park. Not much nearby. Only one Kroger's for groceries. You couldn?t even take a bus from the airport to the school when I arrived! Muggings, car break-ins, and UD had done little to use its importance in the community to try to resolve any of this. There's not even a city bus down the length of Stewart St that the school stretches along.

Limited emergency phones around the campus. No working with the surrounding property owners, including Woodland Cemetery's sidewalks. Yes, UD is bordered by an enormous cemetery. Careful you don't get stuck in it as there are only two entrances and it's miles wide.

All I hear is a lot of excuses from the admins on these issues? all the while they dump money into endless promo campaigns to draw in more local undergrads and international grad students. They can't seem to draw students in with reputation, rigor, or the results & research produced by their neglected grad students, I guess. It stands to reason. And it's certainly not a bargain.The pattern I?ve seen here at UD is clear, and if it keeps up this school will never rise out of its justified obscurity.