Kean University

Date: Oct 20 2008
Major: English (This Major's Salary over time)
Kean has easily been the worst schooling experience I have had. My years at my community college were great, because the professors taught well, parking was reasonable, and there was no ridiculously strict rules that make no sense to have in place. Amongst other issues, but those come to mind immediately.

I'll start with the classes. They feel unrewarding, and most of my professors are completely incapable of drawing the class's attention as a whole into the subject. I often find that most students end up doing their own thing in class. I've endured some ridiculous professors thus far. If you commute, that and parking are pretty much the only things you'd have to worry about. Homework feels bland, and I believe that most professors have a pretty bad habit of giving too much or too little. Out of the five professors I have this semester, I would say only two of them do a good enough job to keep class interest.

Next up is dorming. They're pretty run down and dead most of the time. On top of the fact that 10% of Kean's entire student population uses the dorms, the general area is lackluster, and the aesthetics of the rooms leave something to be desired. The single upside to this is that you don't have to worry too much about other residents blasting their music.

Adding to this list of faults is their whole meal plan deal. Ideally, you would think that for every meal you get at the cafeteria, it would deduct a meal from your overall amount, which you had paid for when selecting a meal plan. However, they cleverly left out the fact that you can only get free meals at certain times of the day. Mondays thru Thursdays, the free meals start at 8:30 PM. Very intelligent move Kean, I imagine the lines are full at nighttime. /sarcasm On Fridays, they start at 7:30 and end at 9, when they close. The convenient store, if you could use the word convenient, is a joke. Everything is way overpriced—I could buy goods at a 7-11 store for almost half of what I'd paid for in the University Center's Market Place.

The strict rules doesn't apply to what you may think. Sure, you'll get kicked out if you're caught with alcoholic beverages—but the worst part of it all is how horrible their ethernet network is. On top of that, it's managed by novices who have no concept of how to handle anything. I'm an avid player of MMORPGs, and that is one of the things that Kean decided to block. I called the center to ask for help because I originally thought something was wrong with the network and upon explaining the situation, the guy says, "Oh, we have to block stuff like that. For security reasons." I asked, "Why? The server IP addresses change, but there's very little harm that could come from the servers." What was his response? "Oh, it's all for security reasons." Complete with an unsure, doubtful tone. Anybody with decent computer knowledge can negate the abysmal, neigh-non existing threats from MMOs. Even Youtube gets blocked on occasion. Funny how the Computer Service "specialists" said that they're trying to keep things secure, when they allow X-rated sites. I know because I've done trial-and-error. See the flaw there? All but one of those "specialists" have no idea what they're doing. A poorly organized staff just ruins it for everybody else. I feel bad for the single person who has a pretty decent array of computer knowledge.

My final words of wisdom? Stay away from Kean.