The worst colleges in America?

August 23, 2008 11:53 PM

Radar Magazine Online's Worst Colleges in America including honors for The Most Degenerate Student Body, the Biggest Rip-off, and Most Intolerant.
posted by longsleeves (91 comments total)

The weird thing about Drexel is that it's right by Penn, whose campus is beautiful (in comparison). Go figure.
posted by SansPoint at 1:04 AM on August 24, 2008 [2 favorites]

Oh, and I graduated from Temple, whose campus is smack dab in the middle of North Philadelphia's ghetto. Gentrification has not even begun to rear its head around there.
posted by SansPoint at 1:11 AM on August 24, 2008

When I was in high school (a citywide magnet school), there was this guy -- a smart but unconventional D&D type -- who insisted on going to college early; he went to that "Biggest Rip-off", Hampshire, I assumed at the time because if its lax admittance requirements.

He subsequently got his PhD at MIT, and is now a prominent professor at NYU and a Director of one of the programs there, in addition to having published several popular books.

In retrospect, not such a bad choice.
posted by orthogonality at 1:17 AM on August 24, 2008

In retrospect, not such a bad choice.

Yeah, Hampshire students I've talked to say that it can be great if you're self-motivated -- if traditional rules were just going to get in the way. But for many people the lack of discipline is just an excuse to slack off for four years, at great expense.

(Some) Hampshire students also seem to take the loosey-goosey written evaluations much more seriously than the article does. After all, a detailed "narrative" of your strengths and weaknesses could be much more revealing than a grade. I think it probably depends what they're planning to do after graduation. If you're applying to like a grad program related to your college work, well, they're going to read the evaluations in detail. If you're just skipping off into the world, then the evaluations will probably be ignored.
posted by grobstein at 1:44 AM on August 24, 2008

USC. Apatow. Figures.
posted by sourwookie at 2:05 AM on August 24, 2008 [6 favorites]

I was surprised to see my old (abandoned ante-graduation) alma mater, Westminster College, left off this list. It should have fit somewhere in between "biggest rip off" and "most intolerant."

Westminster had a decent broadcasting program - radio and TV - but it was burdened with the notion that its target audience was the top 40 radio listeners in the area plus local TV. TV was okay, being almost the only station covering the sixty miles north of Pittsburgh, PA, straight in the middle of Amish country.

I never actually made it "on air" at Westminster radio - I was somehow deemed unacceptable before making it to the booth. But I have been told that I am not alone, and that even popular bands have been held up because of Westminster - Westminster College holds the distinction of refusing to debut Trent Reznor's debut tapes of "Pretty Hate Machine," because the college's policy didn't allow them to "play local bands." To this day, I believe Westminster is playing top 40 to the Amish country north of Pittsburgh.
posted by Graygorey at 2:21 AM on August 24, 2008

Hehe pretty sure Jessamyn went to Hampshire :)
and one of my best friends went to Bennington...
posted by Joseph Gurl at 2:45 AM on August 24, 2008

They missed a leading contender for most intolerant. Perhaps it was too obvious.
posted by TedW at 3:10 AM on August 24, 2008

Making fun of USC, Miami and Ole Miss never gets old.
posted by paisley henosis at 3:32 AM on August 24, 2008 [3 favorites]

Actually I doubt it was because Bob Jones was too obvious, it's just that they just didn't put a whole lot of thought into it and 'Ole Miss' was the first school that came to mind. I mean the evidence cited against Mississippi seems pretty scant: a single racist comment on a YouTube video? Protests over changing a racist mascot? A non-PC football song? Such things happen at any and every school with a football team and a meathead fraternity culture.
I expected better from you, Radar.
posted by Flashman at 3:50 AM on August 24, 2008

If this were on Cracked.com, it would have had more than 8 schools on the list.
posted by Dave Faris at 5:45 AM on August 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

I went to a high school (for a year) that had the same system as Hampshire - no grades, self-designed courses, narrative evals. It was one of the best years of school I ever had.
posted by stbalbach at 5:52 AM on August 24, 2008

Actually, their methodology is more much convincing than Forbes.
posted by danb at 6:03 AM on August 24, 2008 [7 favorites]

Poor UB. I was born in Bridgeport and lived there for many years, the area around the school is bad, but the rest of the city's OK. My mom taught an ESL extension course there and several of her students used to call it "Reverend Moon University" in their papers. Sheesh.
posted by jonmc at 6:19 AM on August 24, 2008

I mean the evidence cited against Mississippi seems pretty scant . . .

It is. There's a very visible black student body; there's a Gay Straight Alliance -- it's not that Ole Miss deserves an award, but it doesn't deserve "Most Intolerant" when there are such things as Liberty University and Patrick Henry College.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:31 AM on August 24, 2008 [3 favorites]

a mere 47 percent of Hampshire's scholars manage to graduate in four years

Minor point, but most college students across the US don't graduate in four years:

A report published recently by the Education Trust, an independent nonprofit organization, found that only 37 percent of first-time freshmen entering four-year bachelor's-degree programs actually complete their degrees within four years.

Another 26 percent take either five or six years. And the remaining 37 percent either don't get their degrees at all or complete their coursework in more than six years.

"It's atypical to get a degree in four years," said Kevin Carey, author of the Education Trust's report, "A Matter of Degrees: Improving Graduation Rates in Four-Year Colleges and Universities."
posted by mediareport at 6:58 AM on August 24, 2008 [2 favorites]

a mere 47 percent of Hampshire's scholars manage to graduate in four years

Minor point, but most college students across the US don't graduate in four years:

It's probably a more valid comparison to look at Hampshire students as compared to students at other 4-year liberal arts colleges, not all college students across the country.

The last Hampshire alum I knew was getting a Ph.D. in sociology at Harvard. Of course, the Hampshire alum I knew before that was also an alum of The Hudson Valley Sudbury School and didn't know how to write a substantive paper.
posted by deanc at 7:11 AM on August 24, 2008

I'll blame the students, because they are the least likely to complain yet the most interested party. But really, most people just buy that all universities are, after all, the same at producing a title. The bitter surprise comes when the validity of the title is not questioned, but the effective preparation is assessed, or the student simply slams into difficulties that could have been addressed during the university time.

A number of those people who just claim that all unies aren't but a parking space for teenagers probably had this negative experience and, unsurprisingly, conclude that learning is a waste of time if what they have learned so far doesn't command a significantly higher salary ,as they measure the utility of knowing with return of money.

Consequently, investment in knowledge is perceived by many as having poor returns. On the flip side, many companies seem to appreciate well prepared students, but don't necessarily agree to finance all the work that leads, eventually, to useful returns in the foreseeable future. Few companies can afford running their own campuses (Microsoft maybe, Google?), yet as less people are receiving a good training and partecipating willfully, I kind of the expect the average education level to drop into toilets.
posted by elpapacito at 7:11 AM on August 24, 2008

"It's atypical to get a degree in four years," said Kevin Carey, author of the Education Trust's report, "A Matter of Degrees: Improving Graduation Rates in Four-Year Colleges and Universities."

Kids may be foolish, but they're not stupid. Staying in a world of relative freedom, learning, and exploration is way more desirable than becoming a "productive" member of the 8-to-6 workforce.
posted by treepour at 8:20 AM on August 24, 2008 [7 favorites]

Hampshire college represent. Best 4 1/2 years of my life, without a doubt. Suck it, Radar.
posted by wemayfreeze at 8:25 AM on August 24, 2008

I got a chuckle out of the SDSU inclusion as the "Most Degererate Student Body". I went there for a couple years (studying Astronomy) more than 20 years ago and I guess nothing has changed because it was exactly as described. Worse than that, at the time it was the rape capital of the US as I recall. A woman walking alone to her car anywhere on campus after dark was something akin to a death wish. There was a whole division of the SD police that did nothing but patrol the campus, and of course bust up the epic frat parties that made Animal House seem like a seminary social. Way to go SDSU ... so glad I bailed on that school
posted by elendil71 at 8:34 AM on August 24, 2008

Staying in a world of relative freedom, learning, and exploration is way more desirable than becoming a "productive" member of the 8-to-6 workforce.

8-to-6 sounds so depressing. It's funny when a 9-to-5 work week, the old shorthand term for drudgery, begins to seem really cushy.
posted by Telf at 8:36 AM on August 24, 2008 [6 favorites]

It's funny incredibly depressing when a 9-to-5 work week, the old shorthand term for drudgery, begins to seem really cushy.
posted by Telf at 8:39 AM on August 24, 2008 [4 favorites]

My university (in the UK) was but a walk away from a notorious guncrime area. And it was bloody great! Over here there's just the Oxbridge vs redbrick (ie. good universities but set up in the Victorian time - kind of like the Ivy League) vs former polytechnics/'new universities' ie. the equivalent, I think, to US state schools or community college. Many students where I was looked down on the former poly students down the road and admittedly I did meet an English student there who was barely literate, but the traditional universities tend to offer little in the way of visual arts courses, design, textile and other vocational areas.
posted by mippy at 8:44 AM on August 24, 2008

It also cost me about $600, out of a maximum cost for UK students of $6000 per degree course (at the time). This is the case for everywhere from your local night school that offers degree courses to Oxford. I honestly have no idea how people afford university in the States - do you start saving from birth?
posted by mippy at 8:49 AM on August 24, 2008

I went to Rutgers. Not only is the campus ugly, but its spread throughout the town, and connected by a system of shuttle buses. You can have a 40 minute commute between classes.
posted by Crotalus at 8:50 AM on August 24, 2008

I honestly have no idea how people afford university in the States - do you start saving from birth?

Yes.
posted by creasy boy at 8:59 AM on August 24, 2008 [6 favorites]

This article is entirely accurate: everyone at USC owns seven Aston Martins, one for each day of the week, which they only drive to and from their Malibu mansion to their private heliport, where they take the day's corresponding helicopter to school, which only offers majors in "Being Attractive" and "Hurting People's Feelings."
posted by Damn That Television at 9:03 AM on August 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

I honestly have no idea how people afford university in the States - do you start saving from birth?

And paying off until you die.
posted by Jikido at 9:11 AM on August 24, 2008 [7 favorites]

mippy: "I honestly have no idea how people afford university in the States - do you start saving from birth?"

Either that or you take out $100K in loans and pay them off until your kids are almost ready for college. Even Barack and Michelle Obama had $60,000 in loans each when they got out of law school. And that was few years ago, tuition goes up far faster than inflation each year.
posted by octothorpe at 9:18 AM on August 24, 2008 [3 favorites]

Oh, we have student loans, but they're to cover food and board and such. With post-graduate study, though, you're pretty much on your own.
posted by mippy at 9:21 AM on August 24, 2008

Aw crap, Jessamyn, that's our Yurt!

Yeah, just adding to the list of "Hampshire's not that bad" counterbalances, I went to Hampshire, and I'm a doctoral candidate at Columbia (albeit in education). While Hampshire's lack of name recognition puts alumns at a disadvantage in the job market sometimes (except in fields like film, where it's well known), it's a pretty big advantage in applying to grad schools. Since we all do senior theses, most of us have managed a large research or writing project which is good preparation for a dissertation.
posted by gusandrews at 9:23 AM on August 24, 2008

I honestly have no idea how people afford university in the States - do you start saving from birth?

Yes, if you are lucky enough to have parents with money and the foresight. I did not and my student loans will be paid off when I am 48.

It's funny incredibly depressing when a 9-to-5 work week, the old shorthand term for drudgery, begins to seem really cushy.

God damn we need a democrat in the White House.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 9:24 AM on August 24, 2008

Kids may be foolish, but they're not stupid. Staying in a world of relative freedom, learning, and exploration is way more desirable than becoming a "productive" member of the 8-to-6 workforce.

It's important to note that many curricula have grown to 5-year sequences at many universities in the U.S., so many students can't finish in 4 years no matter how hard they may try. Plus, in my experience anyway, many more students these days are working 30+ hours per week to pay for school and living expenses themselves. For more than a few students these days, college is not the idyllic, responsibility-free zone some imagine it to be.
posted by LooseFilter at 9:25 AM on August 24, 2008 [2 favorites]

Either that or you take out $100K in loans and pay them off until your kids are almost ready for college.

Federal student loans are typically the responsibility of the student. We were paying my wife's Stafford until about 8 years after she graduated. Luckily for her, family illness got her switched to grants halfway through.

In my case, Dad co-signed my Stafford loans, so when he died the insurance was required to pay them off. It's a sad way to graduate debt-free.

You're seeing some changes right now in how college is being funded. The Ivies are almost all "pay what you can afford," meaning you're only paying full-price if you can afford to pay full price. Some of the big state schools, flush with billion dollar endowments, are now doing similar things. The University of Washington, for instance, launched its Husky Promise program to cut or eliminate tuition for lower-income students.

I expect most of the major elite colleges and "Public Ivies" will be following suit soon.
posted by dw at 9:34 AM on August 24, 2008

I honestly have no idea how people afford university in the States - do you start saving from birth?

Yes, or keep paying for a long time.

But.

The prices you see are:

(1) Full sticker prices. At very expensive private schools, not many people pay that because most students get financial aid packages. At the extreme, tuition at Harvard is \$0 if your family makes less than \$60000.

(2) Inclusive of living expenses, assuming you live in university housing and eat all your meals at university dining halls. At many schools, you can do cheaper living in an apartment. And of course you were going to have pay for rent and food whether you went to university or not.

With post-graduate study, though, you're pretty much on your own.

For professional degrees (law, medicine, MBA, etc), you're usually on your own but there are some scholarships. For academic PhD programs, you should pay $0 tuition (unless you take too long) and receive a stipend you can live on.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:34 AM on August 24, 2008

Another thing to note as well about UK vs. US education: You typically can't get placed in a UK university without at least one A-level. This acts as a barrier to entry -- most UK students won't take A-levels.

In the US, we don't have A-levels. The closest thing we have is AP classes, which are meant to be college-level classes in a high school setting. But even then, you don't need AP classes to get in to top-tier colleges (thought it really helps if you're trying to get into a Top 25 school).

Even if you squeaked by with a C average in high school, some college will be happy to accept your money. Typically these kids end up in junior or community colleges, prove they can pass muster with an AA, then transfer into a four-year school after that.

The point being, pretty much anyone can go to a college in the US if they want to go. It's just a matter of finding a place that will take you. In the UK, the fact that there's an academic barrier to entry for university means the government can afford to pay for most of school and limit costs to top-up fees.
posted by dw at 9:46 AM on August 24, 2008

True (octothorpe). My alma mater (who, at 143 will likely spin that as "woo! top 200!) cost $18K per year my freshman year (1993). Now it's over $40K. Honestly, I don't think that school is worth ~$40K/year.
posted by emelenjr at 9:47 AM on August 24, 2008

but the traditional universities tend to offer little in the way of visual arts courses, design, textile and other vocational areas.

Is it because those are not university subjects?
posted by atrazine at 9:57 AM on August 24, 2008

Just another Hampshire grad chiming in to say "I kick ass!! Woot woot!!!!"
posted by garethspor at 9:59 AM on August 24, 2008

BYU's rule about moustaches is the best asinine regulation I've ever heard of, but it doesn't hold a candle to the insanity that is Pensacola Christian College.

I was secretly worried that my school would end up on the list somewhere.
posted by dismas at 10:02 AM on August 24, 2008

Staying in a world of relative freedom, learning, and exploration is way more desirable than becoming a "productive" member of the 8-to-6 workforce.

I don't know about that. I've learned more about people and the world from grinding it out in the day-to-day than I did in my two desultory years in college. But, I'll admit that I kind of perversley enjoy the daily grind.
posted by jonmc at 10:07 AM on August 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

I mean the evidence cited against Mississippi seems pretty scant: a single racist comment on a YouTube video? Protests over changing a racist mascot? A non-PC football song?

When the welcoming committee for your college's first black student is a riot with a body count, I think you can safely be called intolerant. In addition, the controversy over the mascot wasn't limited to mere "protests," but involved death threats against the university president.
posted by jonp72 at 10:09 AM on August 24, 2008

Typically these kids end up in junior or community colleges, prove they can pass muster with an AA, then transfer into a four-year school after that.

Keep in mind also that community college is far cheaper than a proper university. Roughly a third the cost of the state university here. A full year of full-time classes is $2828 for a state resident, which is not bad at all. You can get a degree without going into massive debt if you want to.
posted by smackfu at 10:10 AM on August 24, 2008

dw: "Either that or you take out $100K in loans and pay them off until your kids are almost ready for college.

Federal student loans are typically the responsibility of the student."

I probably worded that badly. I meant that your loans would take so long to pay off that you'd be married, have kids and they'd be almost grown by the time you paid off your own loans.
posted by octothorpe at 10:12 AM on August 24, 2008

OK, in seriousness, just in case any prospective students would be in here reading this stuff, Hampshire was probably the best decision of my life. While a lot of new students there squander their first year there before leaving or being pulled out by disgruntled parents or whatnot, those that have any ounce of self-motivation usually end up doing fantastically well there and afterward. While I can't comment much on how well it comes across in the job-seeking world, I had no problem getting into and graduating from 2 top graduate schools.

As much of a hallucinatory dream world of a place it is, it somehow manages to cultivate a real-world "get things done" skill set that is so useful in the end.

And we have a yurt.
posted by garethspor at 10:14 AM on August 24, 2008

...it doesn't hold a candle to the insanity that is Pensacola Christian College.

Just for kicks I followed that Wikipedia link and found this gem:

Physical contact between members of the opposite sex (including shaking hands) is not permitted under any circumstance. Written permission of the dean’s office must be procured for all off-campus meetings between members of the opposite sex. In addition, all mixed-gender meetings (on and off-campus), must have a PCC chaperone present. All stairwells and elevators on campus are segregated by gender. In the absence of being able to have physical contact, a fad has developed among dating students on campus where couples stare deeply into each other’s eyes. This practice by students is variously called "eye kissing", or "optical intercourse" and is jokingly called "making eye babies." This activity however is discouraged by the administration.

posted by danb at 10:16 AM on August 24, 2008 [3 favorites]

Physical contact between members of the opposite sex (including shaking hands) is not permitted under any circumstance. Written permission of the dean’s office must be procured for all off-campus meetings between members of the opposite sex.

Not that far off from famously liberal Antioch College's set of rules. It's hard to tell who's who anymore.
posted by jonmc at 10:22 AM on August 24, 2008

Physical contact between members of the opposite sex (including shaking hands) is not permitted under any circumstance. Written permission of the dean’s office must be procured for all off-campus meetings between members of the opposite sex.

Not that far off from famously liberal Antioch College's set of rules. It's hard to tell who's who anymore.
posted by jonmc at 10:22 AM on August 24, 2008

Physical contact between members of the opposite sex (including shaking hands) is not permitted under any circumstance. Written permission of the dean’s office must be procured for all off-campus meetings between members of the opposite sex.

Not that far off from famously liberal Antioch College's set of rules. It's hard to tell who's who anymore.
posted by mrbill at 10:39 AM on August 24, 2008

I heard that somewhere.
posted by jonmc at 10:45 AM on August 24, 2008

Another Hampshire alum. One who has taken to referring to it fondly as "Weirdo University."

One thing that this article, and most descriptions of Hampshire, is missing is how freaking much WORK it is to graduate. Ok, so you don't have grades. But you DO have to write a Div III.

THAT is why it takes so long and sometimes, people don't live through it. Well, what's a Div III you ask? It's a year long independent project supervised by two faculty members. You are required to take two advanced classes (or TA or some other "advanced learning activity") during this period as well. It is like all of grad school, crammed into one very long year in which you never sleep, subsist on a diet of caffeine and DP Dough (or the take out of your choice), and generally work yourself half to death. My Camp Hamp friends agree that it will take 30lbs. and 5 years off your life. Oh, and it eats your soul. It's not a real Div III until it eats your soul.

Call the Hampshire education a "rip-off" but I personally feel that it was a great investment. If you can live through a Div III and graduated, you're ready for anything. The lack of grades does not imply the lack of work. And sure, some Hampshire students have doofy classes or silly Div IIIs, but the majority of them are pretty rad. Our infamous alum who graduated with a "degree in Frisbee" was in fact working with the physics of Frisbee and building a more aerodynamic design.

after all, a detailed "narrative" of your strengths and weaknesses could be much more revealing than a grade. I think it probably depends what they're planning to do after graduation. If you're applying to like a grad program related to your college work, well, they're going to read the evaluations in detail. If you're just skipping off into the world, then the evaluations will probably be ignored.

Yeah, my Div III committee hated my work and told me point blank that if I wanted to go to grad school, I needed to take an extension. (Of course, they told me this in the middle of my final meeting, which was a debacle all of its own.) Thankfully, I never ever planned to go to grad school. And it's a good thing. The evaluation is really unprofessional and awful, going so far as to call my (art) work "trite" and myself as a person "lazy." The real world has only ever cared that I managed to graduate. Somehow.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 11:04 AM on August 24, 2008

(Talking to a Hamp alum friend while reading this, his take: "hampshire is great for people who will take it by the balls and make something of it. for almost everyone else, it's an expensive place to smoke weed.")
posted by grapefruitmoon at 11:10 AM on August 24, 2008

the Hampshire alum I knew before that was also an alum of The Hudson Valley Sudbury School and didn't know how to write a substantive paper.

I think I dated that guy.

My favorite thing about the evaluations as opposed to grades is that teachers actually had to sort of KNOW you and so I felt that I got more attention to paid to me generally even if only so that they'd have something to say come evaluation time. Also you could get teachers from other colleges to write evaluations for you [sometimes] and when I took creative writing with David Foster Wallace at Amherst, his evaluation of me and my writing [I got an A in the class] stands out as a high point of college grading. Like many Hapmshire people, I went on to grad school and now do what I'd wanted to do before I went to college - go live in the country somewhere with a job I like that doesn't require me to wake up early. Hooray.

I did graduate in four years though, how else are you going to be alternative at an alternative school?

Note: Ken Burns only went ot Hampshire for like a year
Note: Liev Schreiber and I went to Hampshire at the same time [also Eliot Smith]. He had a dog named Phideaux.
posted by jessamyn at 11:16 AM on August 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

Isn't it like that at some other, famously liberal, college? I know I heard it somewhere, but it's getting hard to tell who's who any more. Is it Antioch College?
posted by kcds at 11:23 AM on August 24, 2008

I'd join the string of defenses of Hampshire here, but it feels like a category mistake to respond seriously to this. What's really offensive isn't that this list is wrong about everything, it's how lame and unimaginative its "humor" is.

It's perfectly emblematic of this gormlessness that the Radar "writer" didn't recognize On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored as the title of a book by the brilliant psychoanalytic essayist Adam Phillips, but thought it was some hippie kid's invention: this lazy hack, skimming through the course catalog looking for the LOLHIPPIES they had already decided they'd find there before reading a word, was doubtless far less literate and intellectually curious than the student who used that title on her independent study.
posted by RogerB at 11:28 AM on August 24, 2008 [3 favorites]

All this Hampshire talk makes me wonder if there's a specialized ranking and analysis that evaluates all of the "less-structured" colleges against each other.

Hampshire sounds like a big rip-off to me, only because I went to Evergreen, which is pretty much the same school for half the price.
posted by billyfleetwood at 11:34 AM on August 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

Kids may be foolish, but they're not stupid. Staying in a world of relative freedom, learning, and exploration is way more desirable than becoming a "productive" member of the 8-to-6 workforce.

Well, it definitely depends. My (state) school is with exceptions inexpensive and generous with aid. A lot of people can afford to stay longer to pursue something they really like, or to change majors, or get multiple degrees. So yeah, four years can be underrated.

A lot of schools are very expensive and also hard to graduate from in time (tough to get into classes, poor advising help) and students who change majors are pretty much screwed into paying another 20-30+k. Sometimes they don't change and still need to stay longer just to finish up their last few general or degree requirements. Good way to get an ulcer I imagine, and they're not exactly sticking it to the system. Pretty much the opposite.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 12:15 PM on August 24, 2008

Rev Moon owns UB, the Washington Times, and funds Bob Dole and many other right of center politicians in America...and he has served time as a felon. The school is a dumping ground for free rides for students from third-world countries and low-score (SAT) Americans. Used to be a fairly decent place at one time, which shows that some places can improve while others fall apart.

Education being what it is, you would expect competition etc to make all school increasingly difficult to get into...but this is not the case with a few "choice" places.
posted by Postroad at 12:15 PM on August 24, 2008

Plus, yeah, college is absurdly expensive in the United States. But speaking from experience, if you're smart enough to get into a nice private school you're smart enough to get a good scholarship somewhere else. It's not as if the only choice intelligent kids face is paying loans their entire life - they make that choice, and deem it worthy of 4 years at X school.

The situation is much worse for lower-middle-class kids who can't get a scholarship and can't get enough financial aid. They don't have a choice between "loans" and "don't go to college." Which is often why you see those same kids under ridiculous pressure to get sports scholarships.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 12:24 PM on August 24, 2008

blah, they only have a choice between...
posted by Solon and Thanks at 12:25 PM on August 24, 2008

Ole Miss gets the "most intolerant" title while having a minority (I'm guessing that means "African-American" or is it all minorities?) enrollment of 19 percent? OK.
posted by raysmj at 12:43 PM on August 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

A poorly tolerated minority.
posted by smackfu at 1:16 PM on August 24, 2008

Then I guess we should call your state of Connecticut intolerant given that blacks rioted in New Haven before most Metafilter members were born.

Otherwise, the racist comments on youtube evidence is moronic and certainly not worth any earnest defense or response.
posted by raysmj at 1:40 PM on August 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

Another Hampster here (we seem unusually well-represented on Mefi).

Though Hampshire's lack of structure made things insane (this was earlier in its history when academic advising was virtually non-existent), I honestly don't think I could have endured the rules & regs of a more conventional institution.

Two priceless gifts I received from Hampshire: no fear in the face of abject confusion, and a life-partner as curious and quirky as myself.

Our daughter applied to and was accepted to Hampshire; despite the offer of a generous financial aid package, we were both relieved when she chose to matriculate elsewhere.
posted by squalor at 1:50 PM on August 24, 2008

I spent six years at five different schools getting my undergraduate degree; one of the best of the bunch was an art school that had no grades. At the end of each term, you would present EVERYTHING you had produced in the course of the term to a 'review board' of two prof's and two students who would each write an evaluation and collectively decide whether to give you the 16 credits for the term.

It made it easy to set up mentor/student relationships with the faculty, and it was strongly encouraged to both mix up and have recurring faces on your review boards, so your work could get different eyes and be examined over time. And for an art school, it was an excellent system, since no one cares about your grades anyway - it's the portfolio that matters when you graduate.

I actually hope to one day teach at a place like Evergreen or, now that I know of it, Hampshire.

(For the record, I left to study in a different field, not because I was unhappy about anything at the school.)
posted by kaibutsu at 1:57 PM on August 24, 2008

I did a week of college tours a week ago with a girl I mentor. She's all over the place in her choices so it was a bit of a confusing, but ultimately illuminating, week to spend at all sorts of different schools. In the space of two days we visited both Cornell and Hampshire so I'm still recovering from that particular mental whiplash.

After seeing seven schools in five days I think if I could do it all again I'd love to go to a place like Hampshire but I'd have been a disaster there at 17 years old. Since I went to college in the early 90s in Canada where your choice was comparatively very limited the whole vast world of the US university options are mind-boggling to me. It takes a whole lot of work but there is something out there for everyone. Even, I guess, some of the places in Radar's list.
posted by marylynn at 2:32 PM on August 24, 2008

Otherwise, the racist comments on youtube evidence is moronic and certainly not worth any earnest defense or response.

Ha, guess we found an alumni of Ole Miss.
posted by smackfu at 2:45 PM on August 24, 2008

I spent a year at Hampshire and only have good things to say about it. I dropped out because I was an unfocused eighteen year old who had enough presence of mind to realize I was completely wasting my parents' money going to college at all at that age, not because of any shortcoming on Hampshire's part.

Like everyone who's ever gone to Hampshire, I knew plenty of kids who were just biding their time there smoking expensive weed on Mom and Dad's dime (just like at dozens of other schools), but I also knew plenty of creative, curious, intelligent people who had the self-discipline required to thrive in a less restrictive academic environment.

So yeah, fuck you, Radar.
posted by tits mcgee at 3:12 PM on August 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

Ha, guess we found an alumni of Ole Miss.

Who undoubtedly knows about 80 times more about the history of race relations in the United States than you do, in part as a result of going there. It doesn't deserve an award, as someone else said, there's much worthy of satirizing about the school (the Greek scene, snobbery, etc., Trent Lott and brother-in-law Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, etc.), but there wasn't any comedy in that piece outside of Lott. John Grisham is, meanwhile, a Miss. State alum, went to Ole Miss for law school, is associated more with Oxford (a vastly different town than it was in the early 1960s) for having lived there when his career took off.

Speaking of tolerance, I think it's more embarrassing to have a alum who co-wrote "Man in the Mirror," but you're entitled to disagree.
posted by raysmj at 3:28 PM on August 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure what it says about Hampshire or Metafilter that there are so many Hampshire students, ex-students, and alums on Metafilter.

I'm leaving in a week to start my second year at Hampshire, and the thing about the place is that, even though there are burnouts, slackers, and potheads running all over the place, it's not a big deal. There's no culture of competition at Hampshire; I never feel the need to compare myself to anybody. The people who suck don't usually make things worse for the rest of us. They're just off in their own little world, sucking. If they're paying full tuition, so much the better—they can fund me and my friends' financial aid.
posted by silby at 4:23 PM on August 24, 2008

I'd consider Wesleyan University second to Hampshire. My impressions from college tours in 1988: at Wesleyan I was shown around a dorm by punk rock / hippie looking students (combinations of black leather and long hair) who had beautified their common room by hanging thousands of strips of newspaper from the ceiling. I wasn't offered any drugs, but that's because I was a clueless geek.
posted by bad grammar at 5:02 PM on August 24, 2008

This thread really makes me wish I'd gone to Hampshire. Saying that, my alum wasn't too bad, although its proximity to Bob Jones led to hilarity when their students would come to street-preach on our campus.
posted by ukdanae at 5:04 PM on August 24, 2008

There's no such thing as "an alumni." It's alumnus. So, which one of the colleges on the list did you go to?
posted by Dave Faris at 5:10 PM on August 24, 2008

I wasn't offered any drugs, but that's because I was a clueless geek.

Then how do you know?
posted by jonmc at 5:12 PM on August 24, 2008

There's no such thing as "an alumni." It's alumnus.

Or alumna. So, which three of the colleges on the list did you attend?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:20 PM on August 24, 2008

In the absence of being able to have physical contact, a fad has developed among dating students on campus where couples stare deeply into each other’s eyes. This practice by students is variously called "eye kissing", or "optical intercourse" and is jokingly called "making eye babies." This activity however is discouraged by the administration.

Holy crap, I did that! (I was an Orthodox Jew.) I thought we made that up.
posted by callmejay at 6:10 PM on August 24, 2008

There's no such thing as "an alumni." It's alumnus.

Hampshire just says "an alum." The biggest gift I got from Hampshire was never ever having the "omg there's a test and I don't know where it is" dreams; I sometimes have the pantsless ones, but they don't faze me.
posted by jessamyn at 6:26 PM on August 24, 2008

Hell yeah! I'm sending my kids to Bridgeport or Drexel. Toughen them up for the real world, which is infinitely more shitty and fucked up.
posted by fungible at 7:28 PM on August 24, 2008

USC, class of '84 here.
"Most 'superficial' campus?"
'Tis all true.
Pretty, perfect robots.
posted by Dizzy at 8:37 PM on August 24, 2008

BYU number one underground party school! Seriously tho that place must be lame...
posted by Mastercheddaar at 5:52 AM on August 25, 2008

Aw, Drexel. Yeah, it was a little gnarly there.

I always got the feeling that Penn students were either snickering at us, or just didn't know we existed. Just like high school, I guess.
posted by medeine at 11:07 AM on August 25, 2008

I used to work at Camp Hamp. Great place, as folks have mentioned, for the motivated. Great place, too, for rich kids who want to grok poverty by wearing US$300 Peruvian sweaters knitted by peasants while taking drugs and playing in bad bands of various sorts.

Do they still do sheepdog research?
posted by QIbHom at 7:50 AM on August 26, 2008

When the welcoming committee for your college's first black student is a riot with a body count, I think you can safely be called intolerant.

Safely? Really? It was, what, 55 years ago. Is there a statue of limitations at which you stop vilifying people for the sins of their fathers (or, in this case, their grandfathers)?
posted by kjs3 at 12:50 PM on August 27, 2008

Do they still do sheepdog research?

The singing dogs? They were there my first year (2000-2001), but I think they lost funding or something, because they were gone after that.

I hope they weren't made into Peruvian sweaters... I still remember the looks of horror from various concerned vegans every year when it came time for some fresh, tasty, farm center bacon!
posted by grapefruitmoon at 2:31 PM on August 27, 2008

Speaking as a current Trojan, GO SLUGS!
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 8:32 PM on August 29, 2008

UCSC: Uncle Charlie's Summer Camp! Classes in Muppet Magic and The Beatles and a lot of nudity and weed. I got in under the wire to escape having to take any grades at all. All narrative evaluations. I was explaining this to my grad cohort at USC yesterday, how I don't have a GPA, but I got mostly Avocados, some Taboulleh and one errant Roach on my transcript. L'ol. It also rates highly on value and most beautiful campus. So you have money for weed, brah. And a bench with a view to smoke it on.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 8:40 PM on August 29, 2008

Another Hampshire alumn (same era as jessamyn) who became a librarian. I call it Hippie College.

I'm off to friend all you alumns and Hampsters.
posted by Riverine at 10:28 AM on August 30, 2008

Over here there's just the Oxbridge vs redbrick (ie. good universities but set up in the Victorian time - kind of like the Ivy League) vs former polytechnics/'new universities' ie. the equivalent, I think, to US state schools or community college.

The former polytechnics are most decidedly not the equivalent of U.S. state universities. Many states will have flagship and land grant universities which I would describe as equivalent to the redbrick universities. Of course they will also have second- and third-tier universities that will be closer in quality to former polys.
posted by grouse at 1:45 PM on August 30, 2008

I did a little happy dance when they said that Cornell was most likely to be accidentally excluded from a list of Ivy Leagues, rather than my alma mater, UPenn. 'Course, I didn't know Penn was an Ivy league until I was nearly finished with my application there.
posted by nursegracer at 9:34 PM on August 30, 2008

Everyone's defending Hampshire, but no one wants to go out on a limb for Most Insufferable? I know I'm not the only Swattie here....heteronormativeglobalizationsomethingneuroticpostcolonialismnoreallyIsodidnotwanttogotoYale.
posted by youarenothere at 3:02 PM on August 31, 2008