Brigham Young University Hawaii

Date: Jan 14 2006
Major: Education (This Major's Salary over time)
My experience at BYU - Hawaii was very mixed. Although the school takes pride in being diverse in culture, they did not seem to encourage being diverse in thought. Granted, I realize this is an LDS school, and I myself am devout LDS, but I too often heard a lot of "canned responses" in the classroom. Living off-campus I found more of the kind of diversity I was looking for while not in class, and this turned out to be a great experience.

There was also a lot of preaching about the absolute necessity of being culturally sensitive, but my friends who were haoles (caucasians), people from the Mainland, and more especially people from Utah were basically told they had no culture, and what little they had was trite and stupid. Any mention of Utah in the classroom would nearly always be followed by snickering, often on the part of the professor as well as the students in attendance. Along with all this there seemed to be very much an elitist attitude about being BYU-Hawaii students, and that we were somehow more righteous, spiritual, and deserving.

I also observed a lot of problems with the general administration of the school. This comment does not apply to the faculty and admin of my TESOL major, however, since everyone I dealt with there was top-knotch. Nevertheless, other university leadership was often unprofessional and belittled individual and collective members of the student body, and extremely unhelpful when help was needed.

Fortunately, I was able to surround myself with BYUH students who were more open-minded and truly culturally sensitive than the seeming majority. Many of those people are still close friends.

The degree I received from BYUH gets me jobs, and that's all I expected.