The University of Massachusetts - Boston

Date: Jan 10 2008
Major: Business - Management and Administration (This Major's Salary over time)
I started by doing a year at Umass Dartmouth, then transferred and took some local classes followed by transferring to Umass Boston to work on finishing my undergrad. The Campus Administration is nothing short of awful.

Since I started going parking has gone from bad to worse. They've literally just closed a couple of parking garages just giving up on repairs stating they were too costly to do. Instead they've jacked up parking rates, closed down other parking and made you park further away. Faculty tends to be snobby and annoyed by questions though not all of them. I'd have to be particular about them, but it's quite hit or miss. I've had very good professors and some of the worst in my entire academic pursuits here. Many of them just walk in with a laptop and powerpoint you to death, asking redundant questions just to feebly attempt to keep you awake, most of the time getting futile results. Typically professors tend to be alright to approach with questions and help, it's more the administrators who are awful.

God help you if you want to get into a course and you don't have some unrelated yet required prerequisite. It's almost as if the order of courses is chosen at random since nothing is all that sequential except for math courses. Nothing about the curriculum ties into the next. The campus itself is hideous. Crumbling cracked concrete everywhere. The new Campus Center is nice, and the catwalks between buildings are appreciated since the wind coming in off of the ocean during colder months will cut right through you regardless of how bundled you are. It's a good thing they have these catwalks too since the maintenance crew does some of the worst sanding and snow removal jobs I've seen. If they were property maintenance for a living area they'd be sued in a heartbeat.

Administors working on setting up schedules are callous and either meet you with disgruntled attitudes, as if they're too busy for you, even if you are a paying customer…or…they look at you like a deer in headlights and pass the buck onto someone else…be careful to differentiate between administrators and the advisors. My class advisors have been particularly helpful..especially John Applebee who seems to be the only person on the entire campus who isn't an absolute dunce when it comes to accomplishing real work. It's sort of the attitude of "just pass him along until he gives up" type deal. Transferring in of credits was mediocre…some did, some didn't…no out of average dealing there. I've never been much for college sports, which is good since Umass Boston doesn't really make any headlines for any of their sports programs…it's a commuter school..so I expected this. Most of the students are your typical "bleeding heart" liberal types who want to save the world and let all illegal aliens come in and live here for free on our money, so if you're of the conservative nature…you're in for a battle. The population of the campus is decidedly majority minority, but there is no single group that seems to dominate or make things uncomfortable.