The University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Date: Dec 31 1969
Major: Natural Resources (This Major's Salary over time)
The University of Michigan acts as a large corporation so unfortunately, students are treated as numbers. The difficulty with this, of course, is that it's hard to get your voice heard when you do have a problem and it's really easy to fall through the cracks since your safety net (a.k.a. advisor) is often too busy to help you. Plus, the university essentially is out there to protect themselves, so problems with the faculty or with certain university policy usually have a clear winner (the university).

While my advisor, and some other faculty in my department were helpful in my research and toward my time to completion, I found that faculty were generally difficult to access. Many would never return emails and would try not to interact with students unless they absolutely had to do so. My other problem with my specific department, and to a lesser extent the university administration, were regarding ethics and some acts that I have found to be unsettling for an academic institution where learning is touted to be the primary objective. I have witnessed a situation where students were theatened in order to keep them quiet about problems within the school. Although I understand that the school is concerned about their reputation, it was obvious that the school was not concerned about the students' well-being. Their first concern was making sure that the students did not speak about the department's problems. Specific problems that I have had, such as abusive professors, were dismissed, even though several students had made formal complaints about this individual. I understand that the school does not the costly option of looking for a new professor, but lack of protection for students in the presence of this person showed that the school was once again not concerned about the well-being of it's students. Of course, this all becomes political and makes things very uncomfortable for everyone involved, especially since everyone realizes that there is a problem that has non yet been dealt with. This is not what I expected of a liberal institution, and certainly not what I expected out of my academic career.

I feel that my education here was not of the highest quality because professors did not have time to meet with me, much less plan classes that were organized and thoughtful. I feel the push to finish a degree program without the proper classes and advisorship has caused research quality to decline. Funding problems have also caused the research quality to decline as most people cannot compose projects without the proper equipment.