Internet clichés do start somewhere…
Kasia July 19th, 2007
OK, at some point in your cyber life you have probably gotten forwards. If you’re like me, you’ve probably gotten a LOT of forwards, and the same ones seem to keep popping up. You know: funny typos in the church newsletter and stuff like that.
Well, a friend of mine works in the Ph.D. office of a university in the area. She sent me the e-mail below, along with the list of reasons why graduating doctoral students had chosen that particular university. I enjoyed them so much that I asked her if I could post it, and she agreed, provided I removed the name of the university.
Anyone else wonder if any of these students earned a Ph.D. in cynicism?
So i’ve been analyzing data from the phd exit survey and my eyes are now blurry. I amused myself by compiling the funniest answers to the question, “Why did you choose this university for your doctoral program?” I hope you all find them as amusing as I do. J Just goes to show you can never account for why some people attend a particular place! And now back to my pivot tables…. - Was nearby.
- I did not feel that there were any particular expectations.
- It seemed like the best fit at the time.
- Worked there.
- I am a Canadian citizen; my objective is to develop my professional career in the health-care industry in North America. (This is from an engineering student.)
- The first one to offer me assistantship.
- I got offer from my advisor. I found he was so nice that I could not betray him.
- Because I was told that my doctoral credits will get transferred. But they didn’t.
- Because my wife is here.
- It has different programs to choose.
- By mistake.
- Got enrolled by chance.
- Easy entrance and admission.
- This university is my second home.
- I had a family support unit.
- Default. There was no other viable option at the time.
- No other choice.
- Because of a man.
- Because I got the offer.
- By chance.
- Good question.
- Lack of options.
- Because I was conned to believe it was a good graduate school by the recruiter who came to my undergraduate university and pitched his lies.
- In a big city and did not charge application fees.
- No definite reason.
- It met my needs as a mature student.
- This was not my first choice. The school I wanted to go to I was not able to attend.
- I did not want to go back to Colorado.
- Funny story on that. In looking over the ratings for my program of study, this university was ranked very high. Unfortunately, this book was not consistent with any of the other ratings.
- Knowing that a Picasso is just a block away took my breath away.
- I think that the Cancer Biology program is a very good program. (student is not, and has never been in the Cancer Biology program)
- Easily accessible for transportation by local freeways.
Bear-i-tone works at one the univerisity’s bookstores for one of the universities in Toronto.
One Summer, this bookstore had to close down for minor renovations. The bookstore put a huge make that humungous sign over the entrance, telling all and sundry that the store would be closed for two weeks, but will reopen the last week of August.
Then they asked my husband to stand outside and field questions
examples
1. Man, is the bookstore closed? (uh, yeah)
2. What are the hours of the bookstore?
3. Could you let me in anyway, I’ll just be a minute?
4. You will be open when school starts so I can buy my books, right?
You can’t fix stupid.
Puff,
The best way I’ve heard it phrased is one of my sweetheart’s favorite sentences: There is no patch for stupidity. But yes, you’re quite right.
I think what alarms me the most is that all of these people earned a Ph.D. from the university. I don’t doubt that most or all of them are quite bright, but there seems to be a disturbing trend of poor judgment…
I’m guessing it’s Wayne State, where I got my teaching certificate. It was the only one that allowed me to finish a 2-year program over the course of 4 years and only asked for 1/2 year of student teaching. I couldn’t afford a full-year leave-of-absence from my job, and I didn’t have parents or a husband to support me so that I could take classes full-time and take a year and a half of unpaid in-class work.
Personally, I found only a few answers stupid; most were just honest. Most self-supporting adults attend a university that is nearby, offers assistance, or in some other way fits into their lives. My grandfather attended Michigan Tech because it was within walking distance and he could get an engineering degree to help him advance in the mine. My mother attended Thomas Aquinas in Grand Rapids because it offered her best option (free tuition in return for 3 years of low-paying teaching positions at a rural Catholic school). She probably could have been a great chemist or mathematician, but there weren’t a lot of choices for a 14-year-old valedictorian from an impoverished rural backwater.
MissJean,
No, I do understand that. Let’s presume, for argument’s sake, that WSU is the university in question. I’m actually a big fan of Wayne State, being an alumna myself, and I totally understand the dilemma of being a self-supporting adult and trying to get a higher education.
I don’t think I really explained what bothered me so much about so many of them. The ones that jumped out at me were:
- I got offer from my advisor. I found he was so nice that I could not betray him.
OK, probably a cultural thing…I’ll let it go…
- I did not feel that there were any particular expectations.
- Easy entrance and admission.
Apart from the fact that I find these more than a little insulting (remember I’m an alumna), why on earth would you want to earn a Ph.D. from a school that you think will let pretty much anyone get one? We’re not talking about a 14-year-old valedictorian trying to get a degree so she can get a job here. A Ph.D. is only worth more than the paper it’s printed on if the people who will evaluate your CV down the road think that a Ph.D. from that university is worth having. Sounds like these students (the first one in particular) don’t think so, so why should anyone else?
- Because I was conned to believe it was a good graduate school by the recruiter who came to my undergraduate university and pitched his lies.
Much like the previous ones, but s/he didn’t actually know going in that it was a bad program (which I assume it was based on the comment). But once you figure it out, I have to pose the same question: why stay and earn a doctorate that you think will be worthless? Possible s/he found out too late in the program and figured it was a sunk cost, I’ll grant.
- It has different programs to choose.
- I think that the Cancer Biology program is a very good program. (student is not, and has never been in the Cancer Biology program)
Um. Very few universities that offer doctoral degrees do not offer different programs. But I’ll assume that was just poor phrasing…
The Cancer Biology program answer speaks for itself.
- By mistake.
- Got enrolled by chance.
- By chance.
- Good question.
- No definite reason.
Huh?! x 5
- Knowing that a Picasso is just a block away took my breath away.
Umm…ok…glad to hear it…?…
- Easily accessible for transportation by local freeways.
I guess this falls in with your grandfather’s having chosen Michigan Tech because he could walk there; one of the WSU Board of Governors members often tells the story of how his father told him he could go to college anywhere he wanted, as long as he could get there on the Dexter bus. Accessibility matters. But I do have two small issues with this one.
First, there are quite a few universities in southeastern Michigan that are “easily accessible…by local freeways.” Offhand the only one that seems inconveniently placed is Marygrove. Oakland, UM-D, UDM, WSU, EMU…ok, EMU is a fur piece unless you live and work on the far west side already.
But second, and more importantly, I have to say again that we’re talking about your doctorate here. I will be the first to say – enthusiastically – that education, especially higher education, is primarily what you make of it. I could learn more as a determined student at WSU (or Aquinas College) than as a lackadaisical Ivy Leaguer. But when you’re talking about your Ph.D., you do not want to spend several years and thousands of dollars striving for a degree that prospective employers are going to laugh at. And from some of these comments, it almost sounds like the Ph.D.s themselves expect that.
(Facetious throwaway here: I seriously doubt that the search committee at a university or the HR person at GM is going to say, “Now, was your doctoral institution easily accessible by local freeways?”)
I love WSU. One of the things I love the most about it is that it offers a chance at higher education to people who would otherwise be hard-pressed to have it. It gives second, third, fourth chances where a lot of more prestigious universities would not. And while it’s true that a lot of students there are just trying to “get the piece of paper,” there are a lot of dedicated students there. And there are a lot of dedicated, talented faculty there. If you want to get a lot out of your time at WSU, then you absolutely can, and some of their graduate programs are nothing short of stellar.
But I have to confess that I get really irritated with the WSU-bashing cynicism that, particularly, the traditional students seem to have. I had it too, which is probably one reason it bugs me so much now that I’ve seen the other side. If they think the university is so crappy, I say they should go somewhere they’ll be happier.
When I worked at WSU, I was walking through the staff parking structure and saw a maize-and-blue bumper sticker that read “I’d rather be in Ann Arbor.” Completely involuntarily, I said out loud, “Then go and get a job at U of M!!!”
(hops off of soapbox)
Thanks for the comment!
Sorry. I wasn’t bashing WSU. I was actually thinking of it because of the Picasso comment. Several family members did post-graduate work at WSU, including two PhDs, and they recommended it to me. (Not to mention it’s one of the few Schools of Ed that has instructors who are actually working as secondary teachers.)
Thinking about WSU made me take the comments at face value (except the foolish or facetious ones that seem to come from “perpetual students” who take classes because they’re there). I took the “easy entrance and admission” to mean that the particular university had a more streamlined process than other universities. (WSU was certainly better than U-M or Saginaw Valley.) And the “Easily accessible for transportation by local freeways” made me think of the number of students who commute from the Bluewater area to WSU because they can actually get there – unlike M-59 or M-69.
OK, my face is red here…mea maxima culpa – I’m a little defensive about WSU. Probably comes of the fact that I was accepted to both MSU and WSU and chose WSU because MSU would’ve cost my parents so much more. Please forgive me my WSU rant. I actually thought you thought I was bashing WSU a bit, so I guess I was reacting to that. Again, please forgive me.
Your points are good. I actually left my job at WSU a few months ago because I want to earn my teaching certificate, and their School of Ed required “recent, paid group work experience with children” before I could even be admitted. Since most paid group work with children takes place during the day, and my WSU job that was going to provide tuition for my classes was during the day, and they explicitly said on the web site that volunteer work was not acceptable to meet that requirement…yeah. But considering that U of M Dearborn has already “not received” one application and has lost my Basic Skills test scores (which I *know* they received because I asked about them when I requested the application), maybe WSU’s application process IS easier than some…