Northern Illinois University

Date: Jan 23 2013
Major: Computer Science (This Major's Salary over time)
NIU made me realize that 4-year universities are a scam. Before attending NIU, I was doing me Gen Eds at a local community college.

When a scouter for the university came to the school, I was told the tuition for one year was exactly $4,500. No more, no less. When I was actually attending the university, however, I ended up with a bill of $6,300. $1,000 of that bill was made up of completely ridiculous things that a commuter would never use.

I am a computer science major. I came into one of my classes completely lost. See, they expected me to know Linux, but did not have Linux as a prerequisite. It was not because they wanted to expand our knowledge, because there is a class on Linux that covers the subject just fine and dandy. It's that they want to save as much money as physically possible:

My community college, which charged $1300 per semester, had a deal with Microsoft and we received pretty much every feasible version of Microsoft Visual Studios completely free of charge, among at least $50,000 worth of other programs from Microsoft. On the other hand, at NIU where they were charging me five times the tuition, we were using ancient freeware technology. Yep, they didn't want to drop a single dime in getting more modern compilers and tools for their students on account of spending too much money.

So, for the first semester after transferring there, I was completely lost. I had to learn the basics of Linux on top of what was supposedly the second hardest course in the school. Not a single thing was explained; they did not even explain the FTP technology we used to actually log into the system, they just threw everyone at the wolves assuming we all started at NIU.