Elmhurst College

Date: Jul 02 2006
Major: Communications (This Major's Salary over time)
This particular department at Elmhurst College runs some professionally-focused majors in business communications designed to teach students how to better manage and interact with others via the use of general, professional, and organizational communications skills.

Here's what's so unbelievable, though. In one particular program, they had instructors come into classes where the instructors were apparently reading an internet message forum on the website of a bar that is now closed where a lot of nationally and locally prominent musicians had performed. The forum was cheekily titled the "Bathroom Wall" in reference to the type of gossip and banter you'd expect in a music club.

The instructors were actually BORROWING MATERIAL from the "Bathroom Wall" message forum! Yes, I'm not kidding. Students were talking about it, and when you went to the website yourself to see for yourself, you could see the opinions posted by posters at the forum, and then it was obvious that these instructors were using ideas, sometimes even verbatim (but without crediting the source), IN the classroom! I was totally taking notes to prove what was said in class, and then I printed out a screen print of the particular post at the message forum where the instructor significantly borrowed stuff from the post and brought up a topic in class, sometimes quoting absolutely verbatim.

Now, I'm not an expert on this stuff, but if an instructor is in an educational environment, aren't they supposed to mention all of their sources when they borrow from others? And secondly, why the hell were these people reading a message board for a bar that closed down and which someone still runs a website for (nostalgic reasons, probably), complete with a message board they cheekily named the "Bathroom Wall"? Is that scholarly and professional behavior?

People were taking notes so they could prove it if they told others, because they figured it would be hard to believe that professionals would behave so ridiculously. One student thought they were "trying to be hip and cool" by trying to find websites where some students yip-yapped while off campus. It was mentioned that perhaps some people who attended the college mentioned the website while posting stuff on Facebook, and so since the college did have Facebook access, perhaps they were reading the stuff the students were posting, finding other websites they went to mentioned, and so they were trying to see how they could bring "hip and cool" material into class to keep it interesting. Even if that were the case, how unprofessional, unscholarly, and utterly embarrassing is it to be attending a college where the instructors are borrowing some of their classroom material from a forum called the "Bathroom Wall"? Even worse, there were many many times when the material they borrowed was totally off topic and had no relevance to the text that was used. They were into some weird stuff here while trying to be "hip and cool," that's for sure.

I was so shocked that I did some web research to learn more about this school, and I found that they are affiliated with The United Church of Christ! A school with church affiliation has instructors reading a website for an old bar that closed down and that has a message forum titled "Bathroom Wall"??? I just can't believe this.

Run for your life from this institution. I knew before coming here that modern academia suffers from rampant grade inflation, lowered academic standards, and excesses of the Political Correctness culture, but I had NO idea whatsoever that if you wanted to come to this school to learn about professional communications, they would be bringing topics and snippets of posts from a "Bathroom Wall" message forum into what is supposed to be a serious, scholarly and professional classroom. I'm just absolutely shocked. I am going to contact American Council of Trustees and Alumni to tell them just how low what passes for so-called academic discourse has sunk in America, because this was just absolutely unbelievable.