The University of Illinois Urbana - Champaign

Date: Dec 31 1969
Major: Music - Composition/Theory (This Major's Salary over time)
First of all, my field is ethnomusicology, which is part of the musicology dept, along with historical musicology—not comp/theory, which was the closest menu option. As such, it is structured much more like the anthropology PhD. Individual faculty in my dept are very strong and very accessible. Certain other individuals are not. At the moment, there is very litte dept. cohesion, but these things cycle.

As for the university, and the School of Music in particular, I have been continually shocked at the archaic use of technology in use here (esp. considering we're the home of NCSA!). There is little understanding of how to efficiently use the internet or email or other forms of networking to make student lives easier instead of more complex; we each have 1/2 a dozen passwords to access all the different systems; email and online storage space is pathetically small. And this is a music student here—my needs are basic!

The bureaucracy is byzantine, totally uncentralized, encouraging people to hole up in their depts and ignore the rest of the university as much as possible. The situation for TAs, etc., is not great, but improving, as we finally have a union (the GEO) protecting our interests—the U. has been consistently uncooperative and obstructive in our pursuit of fair contracts. Culturally, Champaign-Urbana is pretty bland for a university town. There's enough going on to keep you busy for a few years, but it's socially apathetic and everythings stays pretty middle-of-the road (art, music, politics). That said, UIUC is no slouch intellectually—there are great minds here, strong courses, an absurdly huge library, and it is better funded overall than many state schools.