The University of Central Florida

Date: Jun 01 2005
Major: Other (This Major's Salary over time)
For a FOURTH TIER school, UCF sure has gotten selective in it's admission process. That is, if your application is even processed. This school has absolutely the most incompetent bureaucracy in the entire state of Florida, be prepared! My application and transcripts were sent in October and were never acknowledged until months later, after my haranguing.

Like much of the Central Florida area, UCF's primary focus is on getting more butts in the seats, more numbers in the system, growth growth growth. Actually accomodating this growth, well that's another story. One would think a COMMUTER SCHOOL like UCF (where the majority of students drive to class) would have adequate parking. Well, as of late the brilliant UCF administration has actually REMOVED parking spaces. Be prepared to spend ages finding a parking spot, and walking far to reach your class. This is not gonna be fun after you just spent an hour driving to class because of UCF's stupid East Orlando location (this was a result of the economic clout of the Space Coast in the 50's/1960's when this school was planned).

This school takes in the most AA transfers of any college in Florida, which isn't a bad thing, it just shows that they're content piggy-backing off the two large community colleges in the Orlando area, and most of its students are from Central Florida living off of mommy and daddy.

Tuition keeps going up, services gets worse and worse, and now the latest priority is building a stadium for their infamous zero-win football team. Teams from UCF will never be mentioned in the same breath as those from Miami, UF and FSU, that's just a fact. Rather than building a second-class pre-fab stadium (which they're planning to do), UCF should focus on retaining quality professors. The school has a cycle of discarding Professors after they've served as adjuncts, then they bring in the next batch and do it again.

University President/Good 'ol Boy John Hitt has been there since 1992 and he needs to go- most university presidents have a shorter tenure. I guess Hitt doesn't wanna give up his cushy job with all expenses paid, a staff, a mansion, and 311k in annual salary. I wouldn't want to either. But if Hitt can't leave UCF for greener pastures in the real world, will you be able to?

In short, UCF has delusions of grandeur. Unless you're majoring in Engineering or Computer Science, your degree won't be worth much outside of Central Florida. If it weren't for its Orlando location, this school wouldn't have much going for it.