The University of Hawaii Manoa

Date: Apr 05 2008
Major: Education (This Major's Salary over time)
The main campus of the University of Hawaii is situated in lovely Manoa Valley where rainbows are as common as the mist passing over the mountain range to the north from Kaneohe. The campus itself is filled with a broad diversity of flora from the tropics and subtropics and includes a traditional Japanese garden, a replica of a Chosun era Korean building, a colonial-era administration building and a long banyan tree-lined path bisecting campus. It also has too many dilapidated buildings and the undergraduate library is an embarrassment. I was a graduate student and so spent most of my time in Hamilton, the renovated graduate library, which houses excellent East Asian, Southeast Asian, and Hawaiian collections (among the best in the nation). If you're a graduate student interested in Asia-Pacific issues, UHM is a viable option, as it also has the famed East-West Center, launched in 1960 and federally funded. The linguistics, area language and international law programs are also excellent; the second language studies department is arguably the finest in the world with some of the most published faculty in their field. As has been mentioned, oceanography, volcanology, ethnomusicology, and tropical agriculture are also first-rate, as you would expect given its location. But many departments are abysmal: journalism is in danger of losing its accreditation and publishes Ka Leo, a daily newspaper that is easily eclipsed by many high school publications on the mainland. The political science, ethnic studies, Hawaiian Studies, and history departments are filled with dropout far left faculty from the mainland who parrot the Party Line. Some of them confuse teaching with indoctrination. Others are just not that engaging although recently an influx of younger faculty has improved matters. The English Department puts critical pedagogy in a privileged position much as it does elsewhere but here the caliber of instruction is lacking in other respects as well. The American Studies Department has some bright lights and is less politicized. The School of Education has two or three deadweights in its Ed Foundations Department; few have much, if any, teaching experience in public schools. Three of its stars have now retired and in its place have been hired those with less commitment to and knowledge of Asian education, which is most unfortunate. The Institute for Teacher Education is a mixed bag: the elementary and middle school faculty component is generally if not uniformly solid but the high school component is lacking. The school has split faculty between those willing to supervise in the field and those who are contemptuous of doing so. This elitism does not serve the best interests of the college as a whole.

All in all, academics is a mixed bag at UHM. Some professors are here to ease into retirement after lengthy service on the mainland, and it shows. Some even gloat about it. The undergraduate body is below average with some notable exceptions; creativity and open-mindedness aren't encouraged. The buzz word of diversity has no substance behind it; cliques abound. The staff and mid-level administration is predominantly local Japanese American and can be highly obstructive to anyone who isn't local regardless of one's sensitivity. The campus is lined by streets without any social scene whatsoever. It is largely a commuter campus and things go dead after 4 pm. on most days and especially weekends. Office campus apartment rent is high in the area for what you get. Turnover among higher administration, including the chancellor, is unusually high.

So if you're very academically inclined and not majoring in one of the aforementioned programs, you would do well to look elsewhere, which means to the West Coast.