Southern Illinois University - Carbondale

Date: Mar 07 2008
Major: Electrical Engineering (This Major's Salary over time)
I transfered to SIU my Junior year to Major in Electrical Engineering. When I attended SIU in the early 1980s the school had a party school reputation, but that wasn't one of reasons that I chose SIU. I can say that I had spent weekends at other Illinois colleges (i.e Northern, ISU, U of I) including my Freshman and Sophomore years at ISU, and SIU was no bigger of a party school than any of the others. Looking back on my years at SIU, most of my classes were Engineering classes, so my perspective of the classes is somewhat biased. But I felt that although I had some pretty good professors, many of the instructors were totally inadequate and unqualified. My class for Engineering Economics was taught by some guy that had worked for a company that made buoys for the Navy. He never opened the expensive text book required for the class and spent most of the time talking about making buoys. I also had some TAs teaching classes that were terrible and spoke poor English. Hopefully, SIU has gotten better professors since my time there. I recently attended an Open House at SIU with my son who is considering SIU for college. The program that he is considering is actually very competitive, which I believe is a good sign that SIU is providing a better education today. This was the first time that I had returned to SIU since graduating. After almost 30 years, the campus does not look much different, except that it appears to be run down. There is apparently a $200 million dollar renovation planned, and I think the campus could use it. I believe that my degree from SIU has gotten me a decent job, but I also believe that the low rated Engineering program at SIU has also been somewhat of a detriment. Like many others have stated, College is what you make of it, so go for the best you can afford.