East Carolina University

Date: Jan 17 2016
Major: School of Information (This Major's Salary over time)
ECU is the cheapest of the of the UNC systems. Sadly they have a degree in Computer Networking that few other universities have. I transferred in from a community college and first thing I am hit with is senior students telling me how hellacious the program is. Obviously in a technology program you would expect instructors who help to guide you along your studies.

You will really not find that here. One instructor would spend the first 10 minutes of class calling roll, 10 minutes bringing up his lecture slides and then the remaining 30 minutes of class either trying to be a stand up comedian or talking about ECU football.

I have had to deal with professors who will verbally bash a student for not having their laptop up to spec for a given task and then themselves have the exact same issue. This is also an instructor that required weekly submissions of reports but wouldn't even grade them. Case in point a classmate forgot to do his, at last minute he resubmitted his assignment from last week thinking

if he catches me I will claim I submitted the wrong one

Nope, Guy got 100 even though he didn't even change the date. Fast forward 10 more weekly assignments and he just kept submitting weeks 2's assignment getting 100's. Writing intensive class my ass.

Then as a technology student the university requires us to complete homework in their environment. This broke ass place is unable to even have a working lab environment thus making you spend more time waiting to get your work done than actually working on homework. To make matters worse a lot of these guys will not accept late work no matter what. When ECU's environment goes down, as it often does, tough luck. If an assignment is due Monday at 8am and the environment goes down Wed night, tough shit. take your 0 and stop bitching because you could have done that same assignment day 1 of the class…

Overall ECU is a cheap school with cheap instructors. In Industry these guys should be getting 100k/yr or better. ECU pays them $60-75k/yr and it is easy to see why they are disengaged, hard to work with and overall a pain. I proudly have a made only A's and A-'s in these classes but it is only through doing all extra credit and often times having a semesters worth of work done before midterm simply so I don't have to deal with the environment going down.

This is getting long but I will also throw out that the advisor is garbage as well. You get kurt emails from them but if you email them and don't praise their very existence you get a lengthy email regarding etiquette. Damn, I am technology student who has gotten $30/hr jobs via email, I know how to send a email. How about when I ask for a registration pin and update excel sheet for my classes you deliver. I shouldn't have to go around my elbow just to get information that I am paying you to give me anyway.

Obviously I tried speaking to the department head about the numerous issues I was running into and surprisingly he pulled the

you are the only one to raise these issues, nothing to be done, instructors are trying their hardest, i need more proof, etc.

Sorry, you know your environment for doing homework is busted, fix it. I also enjoyed how he told me be careful of bridges that I may be burning by raising these concerns to him… Am I supposed to take that as a threat?

Overall I can't recommend this college or program to anyone. It is a technology program and you can easily self study and get the certifications yourself or pay for Computer Based Training and get the same, if not better, instruction. Sadly this school has one of the few IT programs around and many students are graduating with Associates in IT just go to ECU for their Bachelors.