The University of Hawaii Manoa

Date: Feb 01 2004
Major: History/Histories (art history/etc.) (This Major's Salary over time)
To students from the Mainland be forewarned that:

You'll find yourself in the minority at UH-Manoa and in Hawaii in general. The population is largely Asian and Polynesian (well, duh!!). Some mainlanders can't handle this and choose to isolate themselves with others like themselves. It will take some time to get in with the locals (of course there are jerks in every group), but if you open yourself to being sincerely interested in the local island culture and the people you'll get ahead. Mainlanders who come across as arrogant, snotty, and superior with receive a negative response from the locals. I attended college on the mainland for two years early in my life and found the same "issues" between out of state students and local students from in-state.

There is little going on on campus at UHM because the majority of the students live off-campus and about 70% work. Needless to say, students are quite busy and many have little time to socialize.

A lot of the students hang out with their buds from high school. However, I also found this to be the case when I attended college on the mainland. What are you going to do?

UHM has the problem of dealing with cutbacks from the State Legislature, now complicated by the fact that the current UH president made the ultimate bonehead mistake of publically endorsing the democratic candidate for governor in the last election. Problem was that the republican candidate won. You can imagine what the new governor has in store for UHM.

In spite of the problem of low teaching salaries and retention of teaching staff, UHM does have some pretty good departments in Business, Architecture, Law, Medicine, Oceanography/Marine Science, Asian Studies, East Asian Languages.

Bottom line, for students from Hawaii, this is the only option for them as attending college on the mainland is prohibitively expensive for most local kids. I think that for someone from the mainland, attending UHM can be a most rewarding experience if he/she comes with an open mind and is tolerant of people of different racial and cultural backgrounds.

Mahalo