| One thing I don't exactly get is how we can have such huge classes of undergraduate students, charge them that much for tuition, and still be in need of money. Anybody know how much accountability there is the "the system" for making sure money is being spent right?
I don't think having graduate students teach some classes is that much of a problem. They only do it for the really large introductory classes, and even then most of them are taught by professors, and graduate students only run the discussion sections (and even then not always, my discussion section leader for physics 240 E&M was a full professor and is teaching physics 405 E&M this upcoming semester). The only classes I've heard of that are actually taught by graduate students are calc I and calc II, and in that case whether it's a graduate student or professor, it's really hit or miss as to whether or not they'll be able to talk down to students and make them understand. In any case, with that many people taking those classes, there are tons of other opportunities available to get help. For econ 101, outside of lecture and discussion the professor had office hours, GSIs had open office hours so you could go to any one you wanted, and I think some business fraternity hosted tutoring sessions.
I think the two specific things you mentioned about MSU are kind of exceptional cases. For nuclear physics, it's not like MSU is just better than Michigan, but last I checked in the USNWR or something like that they were best in the country. So I don't think we can really conclude that Michigan is failing for not being #1 in some category. Also, MSU was originally an agricultural college, and was designed to have lots of space and facilities for things related to biology, so it makes sense that they'd have a very strong biology department.
The split-campus set up isn't that bad, though it's becoming more of an issue because housing issues are forcing the university to put more and more people up on north campus. But the busride between campuses (campi?) is pretty short and runs about every 5 minutes during school days. Lots of people I know who live on central campus have never even been to north campus.
Why exactly is south quad considered bad? The only times I've heard people say anything bad about it is from people on this forum, and my parents ( because they both lived in West Quad). We have probably the largest cafeteria (and thus the one with longer hours/more likely to be open and whatnot), mini-convenience store, ping pong, air hockey, foosball, big screen tv w/couches, classic 50's diner study area (used to be where the convenience store was), computer lab/study area on the 9th floor that's always quiet and open 24/7, ideal proximity to both central campus and athletic campus, large rooms, Honors college, certain hallways have gotten custom paintjobs from former residents (my hall's theme was heavy metal groups of the 70s/80s).
If you want an idea about how much we care about basketball, women's softball is about to pass it in popularity (which one local radio personality said should win us some kind of Title IX trophy). I guess at least we're not consistently mediocre in football and our hockey program is better (at least insofar as our home ice atmosphere is a lot better, we don't play boringly godawful Ron Mason-style hockey, and hopefully next year our underclassmen will finally breakout and we can make a more formidable run down the playoff stretch) |