Florida State University

Date: Dec 31 1969
Major: Business - Management and Administration (This Major's Salary over time)
Most of the doctoral faculty is approachable and willing to involve you in research projects. You can always find research to work on. Most of the faculty encourage a nuturing environment and are invested in your success. If you complete the program, you WILL be very competitive on the market AND you will be prepared to be successful in your field. There are some political factions in the faculty. With some savvy, you can navigate around most of the minefields without getting blown up. The best approach is not to get involved in the politics (it will put you in a lose/lose situation). Ultimately, however, your selection of a dissertation chair will cast you (unwilling or not) into one of the "sides" of the political factions. Again, this is probably true at most similar institutions.

Most of the students are collegial, but a handful are arrogant and competitive (probably true everywhere). In some cases students will try to use the existing political factions to their advantage and to the competitive disadvantage of other students. As long as you are aware of this, you can survive. At some point, you'll have to make a decision to fly under the radar or choose a political path … choose wisely. Remember, aside from your department chair and dissertation chair … trust no-one.

Surprisingly, for a flagship university in a well funded state, the doctoral programs are grossly underfunded. The stipends available for the doctoral students are ridiculously low meaning that you will have to go into major student loan debt unless you or a benefactor have a deep stash of cash to get you through. Sometimes you can teach extra classes for extra cash, but the end result is that you lose valuable research time.

Many little tangential issues can tend to drive you nuts. Parking is attrocious. The campus has three parking garages, all of them too small and most are occupied full time by kids living on campus or in dorms. The parking police are diligent and the surrounding neighborhoods are shady. Parking for College of Business is insulting. You might find a space if you arrive at the crack of dawn. Most likely, you will have to pay for it (in addition to campus parking fees) or park in a shady (dangerous) area. They sold half of the business school parking to the local Catholic church (who now charges ridiculous prices to park) and decided to build a luxury apartment complex for students over the remaining biz school parking lots. The result is that there is literally no parking unless you want to arrive an hour early to campus and park at the football stadium (where you get to either ride a bus, or walk a mile to class). That brings me to my next point … all of the administrative buildings that you have to frequent are built around the football stadium. That means for every little thing you have to do with financial aid, test scanning, registrar, bursar, parking, forms, etc. all occur at the complete opposite side of campus. These two inconveniences seem minor at first, but they slowly eat away tons of your valuable time.

My final complaint is with regard to the undergrads. If you need to relive your partying undergrad days, you will love them. This bunch parties morning, noon and night on every day of the week. However, as students of classes that you will teach, they are a royal headache. They hate coming to class, hate doing any assignments, they hate studying and they hate working. They will NOT come prepared for class. They will spend enormous amounts of effort to try and cheat rather than just do the work. They will try to negotiate for grades rather than earn them. They will beg for extra credit and curves. They will beg for the answers to every test before the test. They expect you to be available to them at all hours of the day, every day. They believe that you do nothing but teach their specific class. They demand that you serve them NOW. They are lazy. They are disrespectful. They will roll their eyes at you and bring newspapers, IPods, mp3 players, cell phones and food to your class. They wonder why there degrees are worth little but don't want to work for anything. Maybe this is a generational thing. Maybe this is life at a party school. Maybe this is the college scene at a public university. I just don't know. I do know that I would never work here as a Professor because of the quality of the undergrad student.