The University of Houston

Date: Jul 18 2003
Major: History/Histories (art history/etc.) (This Major's Salary over time)
The academic side of U of H is filled with quite competent, and sometimes wonderful, instructors (from my experience). I speak specifically of the English and History departments.

Outside of English and History, the instructors have been of varying quality but never completely unacceptable.

The real problem at U of H is the administration - from the low-level bureaucrats to the upper-tier bass-ackwards businessmen. The Financial Aid department, for example, is VERY likely to make serious mistakes with your information - my scholarship check was lost on my first semester attending. Not a very promising start. There were plenty of problems afterward as well. So: MAKE SURE YOU DOUBLE-CHECK EVERYTHING that passes through the financial aid department.

Parking at the University of Houston is next to impossible. There are too few parking spaces for the number of students enrolled, too few by a wide margin. Get used to long walks and long waits. Also; I experimented last year - it's cheaper (in total) to buy an economy rate parking permit and then park wherever you want (and pay the necessary tickets) than it is to buy an annual permit. It was for me anyway - YMMV.

The administration, and now I speak of the big bosses, are basically businessmen with no real sense of the beauties of scholarship and intellectual exploration. They want to make University of Houston into a Tier 1 (or is it "Tier A?") school, and accordingly add greater fees and tuition with each passing semester, then use the increased income to put up fancy lamp posts (tearing up valuable parking spaces to make room) and other fancy-schmancy junk that doesn't actually educate anyone. They're hob-knobbing, social-climbing, money-grubbing - in other words, typical - business people. Don't expect them to behave in your best interest.

Like most universities, the administration makes far more money than the professors. The administration reduces the number of available classes, gets as many grad students to teach as they legally can (robbing real Professors of work in the process), and generally treat the life-blood of the university, the scholars, like janitors.

This, again, applies mainly to the History and Literature departments.

So, if you're going to go to University of Houston - you'd better get there before the administration destroys its best qualities. You probably have a few years.