The University of Memphis

This has been the WORST experience of my life. Staff are very unprofessional & could care less about the students & their future. The staff are well self absorbed point blank period. Don't waste your money.

1st Year Female -- Class 2013

This review is for all of the parents out there in cyberspace who might be doing google searches on different Universities for their children.

I make this review out of peace and common decency.
For the love of all that is sacred and holy on the planet do not send a child to this University.
Please.
This is one o the lowest ranked Universities going. It is a fourth tier school.
This University costs more to attend than any other University within the Tennessee Board of Regents.

The lady who is the president of his University is much more so for sports than she is academics. She basically speaks of that in the local paper and everything. The local paper is called the Commercial Appeal and it has an online version.

I have taken classes at this University which were nothing more than slide shows shown on a power point and nothing more.

I have taken classes at this University which have been taught by folks who can barely speak English. I have googled these folks and found that they did all of their coursework in their native tongue and not English. Had I more life experience or travel under my belt I maybe could understand them, I guess. I feel bad stating this part, but it is really hard to understand a total ESL worthy University instructor and all. Sorry.

This University is just far too close for comfort to one of the more dangerous neighborhoods of the city of Memphis. And, please keep in mind that the city of Memphis is one of the more dangerous cities in the nation for most everything.

For some reason the athletes of this school are catered to at all costs. One of the more recent ones (and this was in the local paper) did not academically qualify to even enroll here but someone pulled something with the NAACP and he was let in for free to play sports! Holy cow.

If you have a learning disability or ADD or even ADHD or Aspergers, then good luck. The lady who runs the Student Disability Services has a BA in Drama and a MS in Children's Counseling but if you look her up you will see that the University she claims to have graduated from does not offer a MS in Children's Counseling. So good luck there. I have dyslexia and am not really proud of it. But one meeting with Susan C Tepaske made me just up and decide to have nothing to do with her and her offices at all and so I now do a mix of on line and campus based courses. Weirdest experience I have ever had was dealing with this lady and she was also under the influence when I spoke with her which made it all the more scary. I also just loved being told that in her opinion, I hadn't dyslexia at all and that she was not sure if that even existed. That was funny to me what with most everyone knowing what dyslexia is for goodness sakes. So, if you are a parent with a LD child or what have you, then leave this school be.

Please parents of the mid south, send your children to any other one of the Tennessee Board of Regents Schools. You will be better for it and your children will be too. Just because you live here does not mean that you have to send your child here. My parents said I can transfer and I am working even extra hard to make that happen because this school is just crap. Take it from me. I have a 3.5 gpa from nothing to speak of at all, I just have really learned next to nothing on the state's dime because I did well on the ACT and all of that crap. Whay should I bother going here if I have and can honestly say that I have learned next to nothing? MTSU here I come mo fo's!

1st Year Male -- Class 2012

Education Quality: C, Faculty Accessibility: F

The University of Memphis is a very bad University which just did not grown with the times. There was a prostitution ring being run out of the University Center for over 13 years before anyone stopped it, and I learned that from the University paper-you can look it up on the Daily Helmsman online if you do not believe me. The crime is scary because there is a ton of crime all throughout the University and its surrounding areas. Memphis has one of the highest murder rates in the nation, one of the highest rates of crimes against women in the nation, and the second worse unemployment rate in the nation-so really think of this if you want to come here.

A very fair amount of the faculty and staff do not have the kind of educational backgrounds one would expect at all. The lady who runs the Student Disability Services has a BA in DRAMA! And good luck obtaining any kind of help from her. And I know of at least one Literature professor who has absolutely no educational background at all in Literature.

Because there is, sadly and downright sinfully, a lot of self imposed institutionalised racism in Memphis- you will not really learn a lot as an undergrad if you have a humanities based major. I had countless Instructors tell the class that they are going to explain "X" concept as though the class was comprised of third graders. And, I have had countless Instructors read from the teachers manual of the textbook and dictate what will be on a test by reading from the test itself. The Instructors do this because there is a very low rate of literacy in Memphis and most of the Memphis High School grads have the equivalent of an eighth grade education.

There has been a lot of cheating going on in the public schools here, which has been reported by the local paper, where teachers have tried to cover up poor "No Student Left Behind" test scores in order to force students out of high schools with very bad academic skills.

This is a city which is collapsing in on itself because it is bankrupt and I really do not recommend coming here at all. You will learn things most folks learn at high school and be prepared to sit in classrooms made for thirty people which have up to forty five or fifty people crammed in them. The University of Memphis used to be called Memphis State and please do not let the name change fool you, it is still a PUBLIC university.

For financial reasons, the President of this University is obsessed with sports at the full expense of academics and everyone is paying a price for that. There is a Fed Ex Institute of Technology building which is a white elephant which cost all of us students a great deal because a lot of academic programs were cut so this building could exist for no real gainful reason. I think that this University needs a total overhaul from the President on down because it is apparently just a University for sports players to go to for free and for people who can barely read.

If you are a parent, please do not send your child here. It is too dangerous and you will be very behind when you go to grad school, trust me on this. Also prepared to have really weird charges pop up towards the end of the school year with no explanation. This school is too far gone and please go to CBU, Rhodes, or anywhere else but here please.

2nd Year Female -- Class 2010

Scholastic Success: A+, Education Quality: F