Stephen F Austin State University

SFA does not care about its students, they only care about the money. Look up the graduation rate. $19 billion in donations in one year and the university is still worthless.

1st Year Female -- Class 2013

There's a writer from the region named Joe Lansdale who sums up Nacogdoches and East Texas rather nicely; "Confederate Texas". The University is no better.

There's nothing great that can be said about SFASU. 'Diploma Mill' sums it up nicely. The University is one in name only; the administration utterly dependent upon recruiting middle class students from DFW and Houston because their the only ones with the grades and financial backing to support the school. It's a kind of pay-to-play system in that you won't learn much, you'll simply pay to reinforce what you think you already know.

The school was initially created to serve the local region. But the East Texas locals are genuine Southern white trash. As far as they're concerned, they "don't need nobody with no degrees tellin' us what to do". Their mentality has repercussions reaching far beyond their general animosity towards higher education. If you want to be spend your time in college with a high risk of being arrested and harassed by small town cops, with minimal opportunity for employment or recreation, then SFASU just might be the perfect school for you.

To be fair, most if not all of the problems that SFA faces are a result of its location in Deep East Texas. Were SFA located in a more urban environment or closer to larger hubs of civilization, then the it would more readily capitalize on its various strengths.

Unfortunately, its current location renders certain opportunity moot. The local economy cannot support internships they way Dallas Ft. Worth, Houston, Austin, or San Antonio can. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find an internship outside of a teaching internship anywhere in the region. Nacogdoches only hosts 30,000 or so people. Of that, nearly 13,000 are students who are counted as de facto residents of the region via census protocol. Of course, as far as the locals are concerned, those students are just visiting. Despite being so small, Nacogdoches boasts a police force and criminal justice that rivals those or moderately sized cities in the DFW or Houston areas, such as Grand Prairie or Baytown. With such a large and naive student population to prey on, the city is able to generate fairly substantial sums of money.

You're better off starting off at a community college and acquiring your Associates degree before transferring to a University in a metropolitan area that can support the kinds of business's that contribute to internship opportunities. If you're from Dallas, there's not point in going to SFA when you have schools like UTA, UTD, UNT, SMU, TCU, and two community college systems readily available.

Alumnus Male -- Class 2000

My problems is really with any teachers or the education part of this school It is with the people who run it and work with billing. I do not know how many times I have had random charges put onto my ebill that when I called and asked for an explanation they couldn't explain it to me. I have had transcript holds put on my account on accident. Recently I had another late charge for some service I don't even use and no one had enformed me of this problem until I got an email from my new school saying they had not received my transcript. After talking with the business department I was told I had a charge for my p.o. box and as long as I paid it online today and called back they would remove my hold. When I called back they decided to change their story. They proceeded to tell me I had more money I owed and they were waiting for it to clear the bank. (which again I was not aware of any of it) When I spoke to the man in charge he would not help me in any way. Ive never missed or paid a bill late. I even paid extra money for my transcript and for it to be sent first class mail which a week later they still havent mailed. These are just some of the small problems I have encountered. I've had more along with some of the people I've met across campus. The education may be great but the rest of the school makes it not worth attending.

2nd Year Female -- Class 2013

Campus Aesthetics: A, Individual Value: F