The University of Houston

Date: Sep 17 2005
Major: Mechanical Engineering (This Major's Salary over time)
I am a V.P. at Fluor. I would like to clear-up any misunderstandings from other reviews to prospective students interested in applying to UH. First of all, to be candid, at Fluor, an education from UH is considered parallel to schools like Lamar and Southwest Texas State. It is definitely far away from being in the same caliber with UT-Austin, Rice, or Texas A&M. From my experiences with graduates from UH, I found them to be incompetent in engineering, even though they graduated with a GPA of 3.5 or greater. They didn't know the basic concepts of engineering to do projects at Fluor. For example, UH graduates didn't know what Newton's Law of Cooling is, which is a fundamental law to do heat transfer problems at Fluor. As a result, I had to either fire or lay-off many UH engineers. I don't understand how UH graduates can receive a 3.5 GPA, but not understand the basic concepts. I felt a 3.5 GPA at UH is equivalent to a 2.0 GPA at UT-Austin or Texas A&M. After talking with a UH graduate, he told me that a student can graduate from UH by cheating and it was an acceptable practice at the institution. He said major societies like ASME cheat on homework and tests. Professors at UH accepted this practice and is indifferent to students' learning. In addition, female students sleep with their professors to get "A's". I was astonished after hearing this story from a UH alumni. My impression of UH has really gone down the hill and I hesitate to hire another UH graduate to Fluor. My opinion is that UH needs to clean up their acts; otherwise, Fluor Corporation will no longer hire UH graduates.