What university would you NEVER attend?

Penn State

Harvard – I think they’re too full of themselves.

I never attend Oral Roberts or Bob Jones U.

@Brian1946 reminded me of another one Brigham Young.

Hogwarth’s School of Magic ( they don’t teach economics )

I second @janbb ‘s comment.

Interesting thing about Harvard: my niece was rejected by Boalt Hall at UCB, but was accepted by Harvard’s law school. :-o

Any of the goofy religious schools that forbid you from listening to rock n roll or making hot lovins with people.

Oxford.

Who needs these high-falutin’ schools anyway? I studied at Thomas Brothers uni and became a Roads Scholar! ;-p

Emory. I watched a lecture about church and state from there and the lecturer was actually promoting blurring the line and said there should be no line. I was shocked.

Any of the Evangelical religious Christian schools.

USMA
USNA
USAFA
USMMA
USCGA

There are probably a dozen states whose universities I wouldn’t attend, can’t pick one.

Yes. I do not want to attend a religious university, a campus that lacks a pride center, and need to attend a school that has a good English department (so that writes off several institutions as well.)

Why are people strongly against big-name universities like Harvard and Oxford? My professor is a Harvard alum and I am considering applying there for my PhD..

Penn State
The Ivy Leagues
Religious universities

@muppetish Because they tend to have giant egos (even more so than most), and have an atmosphere of being self-congratulatory assholes. Great education, but a lot of people find it such a hostile environment that it’s not a great enough education for them to put up with that.

@muppetish I am not against all big name schools; my son went to one and it was great. I also went to a very special college and got a great education. I do object to Harvard; I think they undervalue undergraduates and overwork science grad students; some to the point of suicide. I don’t really know anything about their graduate English department; it may be fine.

University of Phoenix. Any uni that advertises like that all over the country has to be hiding something shitty.

The University of Phoenix, any of the hundreds of UofPish schools that have popped up lately, or any of the online “universities.” My family calls them Walmart colleges. Yeah, we’re like that.

@perspicacious They’re technically called “for profit” colleges.

@Aethelflaed For profit?

@perspicacious I have to tell my mom that, she is very critical of all these colleges popping up, and the whole line we have ow that everyone needs a college education.

@JLeslie Yup. For-profit education.

@Aethelflaed I had never thought about it in terms of profit before.

@JLeslie That is the designated term for those types of institutions and they are degree-mills.

@JLeslie And it’s not just that they’re degree mills, but that there’s some really shady practices going on in a lot of them – like telling students to lie on their FAFSA (a government form) to get student aid, lying about how much the school costs and accreditation and about the transferability of credits to get students to sign up, refusing to disclose tuition costs until the student has signed a binding contract, offering commission to admissions councilors, drastically inflating how much the student is likely to earn after the degree (no, you will not make as much as a doctor by being a massage therapist…)... They are the used-car salesman of the education world. The ‘for-profit’ is kind of a bad name, because all universities and colleges are, to a certain extent, a business that intends to make money and pay the people who work there. And some state schools are diploma mills. It’s more the degree to which they are for-profit – putting that money directly into the pockets of the owners, not even thinking of investing in the school, not really trying to follow up on giving the students an education, and almost always costing more than the public (or even private) alternative – combined with fraud.

@janbb Yeah, does any employer take those degrees seriously? If they are a vocation oriented school I think it is fine, I think we should have vocational schools that teach specific skills, although then I am loath to call it a university.

Penn State

@JLeslie I don’t have the data to know but I think it must be hard to take them as seriously. I have one friend who is getting a Master’s in Family Therapy from the University of Phoenix and one who is getting an MSW from SUNY – Albany. It seems to me that the MSW from SUNY is much more rigorous a course.