<p>I’m actually GLAD to know they will use part of D’s tuition to fund scholarships. If there is one place where I would increase my charitable giving, it would be education! I believe there should be much more affordable State U education, as well. AND I believe college students should handle their own scheduling issues and communicate with thier deans and professors on thier own, regardless of who is paying. Whoever is “paying” for education, we will all “pay” if qualified intelligent, creative Americans are not offered the opportunity to develop thier talents. There is advantage to being full pay and that advantage is in getting into and being able to attend “better ranked” schools. There are advantages to being in every position on the spectrum and disadvantages, too. But, as far as education goes, it is worth every dime to make sure every kid gets the best education we can ALL afford. But, being full pay isn’t going to assist anyone’s kid in learning how to handle the world where having been full pay isn’t going to mean a thing to the employer. SIL works in recruitment for fortune 100 accounting firm, says she has parents call about childs employment situation? Says that kid, no matter how highly qualified, is immediately out of the running.</p>
<p>cadmiumred,
The AU administration addressed all of your concerns within a short period of time, yet your “nightmare at AU” thread lives on, this time with more complaints. You continue to sign off as “upsetmom”. I’m just wondering - what does it take to make you happy?</p>
<p>With reference to the paying for service comments …</p>
<p>As a consumer who is paying for something – no matter how you are paying for it, cash, check, personal loan, credit card, barter, second mortgage, first born son, etc etc you expect to get what you pay for. </p>
<p>If you contracted for a first class ticket between New York and Chicago, you’d be pretty unhappy if it morphed into an economy class ticket to Madrid. Likewise, if you contracted for an art major college education which included certain required courses, you’d be pretty unhappy if that morphed into a general studies curriculum that couldn’t be organized to include those courses.</p>
<p>I’m hoping American works out for the OP’s D – but I would have cut and run.</p>
<p>I’m glad to have sparked some discussion over this. My original intent was to point out that asking for different levels of service based on how someone is paying for their education is absurd. Spreading around financial information about students to all offices at a University reeks of entitlement and privilege based on wealth rather than on academic merit.</p>
<p>As for levels of service demanded, EVERY student should be able to access classes they need to take and want. The degree is from the same University no matter what the funding source. In addition, you can not expect the same “levels of service” from a University that you would from an airline. To fail all of your classes costs exactly as much as getting all A’s.</p>
<p>No doubt private college is expensive and those decisions, including the financial ones, should be made with care, but to mix student accounts in with academic service is frightening to me.</p>
<p>Every child, regardless of the amount they pay for tuition, deserves the same treatment. It would be ludicrous and unfair to expect anything else.</p>
<p>However, if a student is receiving financial aid, they may be more bound to a particular college in terms of finances. It might cost them more money to leave one school and go to another that is not offering an equal financial aid package.</p>
<p>In this case, it would have been easier for cadmiumred’s D to switch to another school because finances were not holding her to AU. It would have been an appropriate argument to use with administration if she was at the point of considering pulling out from AU’s program.</p>
<p>However, it is not appropriate to feel entitlement to a better education becasue of one’s bill.</p>
<p>As CNP55 said, you should get what you pay for! I was responding to John;s comments about getting service for what you pay. I believe that one of the fundamental problems is that the colleges and universities are are taking advantage of the our wanting our children to attend a good college. They are not taking the responsibility to charge a reasonable amount of money for tuition, not something ungodly like $50,000 year. Honestly no college is worth that, I do not care how prestigious. We have seen numerous cases where a full ride is given to athletes with low GPAs, international students(because they are international) with low GPAs, kids of alumni who make big donations with low GPAs get accepted to high tuition schools. They do not deserve to attend free ride or no ride at the expense of other parents who are middle to upper middle class, with kids who are truly qualified academically. Colleges and Universities are BUSINESSES foremost. If you are paying full tab you should get exceptional service. So-called prestigious universities like Tufts, NYU and Brandeis risked university investment money with Madoff and are now crying about losses and budget cuts, but expecting $50,000 a year from innocent hard working parents who unfortunately through savings have to pay high prices for their investment errors. Intelligent investment professionals know that there is high risk relative to high return. Also, because there was an unusually high applicant pool this year, the colleges and universities took advantage of this to charge full tab to the middle class because they are foremost BUSINESSES. They follow the rules of supply and demand. Big demand=Big price tag!!! Therefore, if we pay a big price tag, then then we are absolutely entitled to the highest level of service.</p>
<p>Upsetmom</p>
<p>Many of us are in the position of having " too much" and having to foot the “whole bill”. Colleges are into making money! Know this and apply accordingly! This situation is not unique to American, and they are probably in a better position than others according to their literature regarding additional staffing and programming.
Colleges will demand what the system can supply. $50,000 a year is nothing new and is not related to our current economy. This has been going on for years! It’s up to us as parents to do our homework with our children. We need to be realistic and informed about the options available to our children.</p>
<p>At this point cadmiumred’s remarks are so out of this world that I can’t begin to comment on them. I suspect she will continue to be “Upset Mom” for the next four years whenever anything in her daughter’s academic life is remotely displeasing to her and will make the lives of AU’s administration a living hell with a series of entitled demands. I’m sure if any of them are reading this thread, they are praying that she decides that, indeed, no college is worth $50K a year and pulls her daughter out of AU ASAP. Her kid didn’t get any merit aid from AU, and she has to pay full boat, because, as the saying goes, they just weren’t that into her. Others institutions may feel differently.</p>
<p>Upsetmom–You are voluntarily purchasing a product for your daughter. No one is forcing her to attend AU and the pricing was not hidden. If you don’t feel it offer sufficient value for the price you are being charged, purchase you product from a different source–That is, another college that is either a) cheaper or b)provides the service you demand. Why is this such a difficult concept to grasp??? </p>
<p>We all make consumer tradeoff every day-- My son turned down WashU because of the price tag and accepted AU because after the substantial merit award, it represented the best “value” to him. OTOH, if he gets off the waitlist at his dream school, he will happily pay for that increased value.</p>
<p>Another point you need to understand, is that just like in every other commercial transaction, you have no control over how the college spends your tuition money. Once you write the check, the money belongs to the college to spend in any way the college wants. Think of it as buying a car-- What I get for the $30,000 car price is a car, not a say in what General Motors spends that $30,000 on.</p>
<p>the sad thing about Upset mom’s comments is that she is indirectly supporting an educational system where the superich could demand better service than she thinks she is entitled tio because she is paying full freight, and I’m sure she wouldn’t like that at all. If i slipped the Registrar or Chairman of the Art Dept a few thousand, should my S get into the Art Courses her D wasn’t allowed to register for. All the students should be treated equally but of course that went away years ago. How tragic that she wants special handling for paying full tuition without considering what others might bring to the table. As one poster pointed out, sounds like AU just wasn’t that into her daughter. And she could have gone elsewhere. What is also astonishing to me is that she can’t see that by doing a lot of the complaining etc. herself she disempowers her daughter, and that’s not good for her daughter. I’m with those who think this is the beginning of a long run of “complaints,” that began with a justifiable frustration that the Art Program was not sold honestly to her D. That’s where a post looking for current Art Majors @ Au and their experiences or exploring the fact that there WEREN’T very many in the first place might have been a better use of her time. If my S wanted to be a Ballerino, and he couldn’t find many happy ones @ MIT, i think it might have changed whether he accepted a spot in the first place.</p>
<p>The reasons colleges and universities accept students who can’t pay the list price is because it enhances the quality of the college experience for ALL students, not just those who receive assistance.</p>
<p>I’m glad they created new sections to fill the need. Last year, after they saw how many students were seeking classes, they also created new sections in Arabic (and, I believe, Chinese) in order to meet demand, as well as new writing sections for first years. Obviously, they can’t do that until they know who is going to attend (not established until around May 10th at the earliest) and then have them select course preferences (a week later). I am excited to hear that this year there are more art majors! and that the school responded to the need so efficiently.</p>
<p>One of the really exciting things about American is this early preliminary course registration. At some schools (including that of my older d. - a high ranking LAC, and now at an Ivy), course registration happens the week before classes, and if you are shut out, you are shut out - there is no administrative flexilibity to add sections or courses, and to ensure they are taught by high quality faculty. The system at American increases the possiblity that student demand can play a significant role in curricula offerings.</p>
<p>I admit that I will never win my argument about value. You are right that everyone deserves equal service at universities. I am really not singling out any particular university on this. I guess that it is particularly painful to us to earn the money through hard work or investments and then see it go out the door and not get the courses you were originally promised. Perhaps it is more psychological. Everyone comes out with the same the degree, and thus everyone should get the same service. I still think the universities, in general, should lower the ticket price. Hopefully AU will come through on their changes for my daughter this fall. She was offered big time scholarship money from all of the art colleges as well as universities like Syracuse. Again, she thought AU was going to offer the best balance of art and academics, because of the BFA program. Strangely enough though, to compound the problems, I got an email that AU’s Admissions Welcome Center was literally just moved to the Katzen Art Center, taking up art classroom space for admissions presentations to thousands of students who will be walking in and out of the Katzen Art Center all week long Will this be conducive to study forthe art students?</p>
<p>Upsetmom</p>
<p>The location of the new welcome center should not impact students. The classroom they are changing is right above the entrance, so the only walk is up the main stairs up into the classroom. The motivation behind moving the center is to try and show off the art center as one of the jewels of the campus, rather than “that building across the street.”</p>
<p>Additionally, student art is regularly displayed around the Katzen center, and in the Rotunda, so it will give a lot more views of your D’s future work.</p>
<p>John:
Wouldn’t it imply that the administration thought the art center was being underutilized and that they needed to move other deptatment offices into it? Forget using it as an admissions office focus. How about building up the actual art program already???</p>
<p>Upsetmom</p>
<p>Ah, but this is only the welcome center. The offices for admissions personnel is a separate building entirely. First impressions mean a lot, and having future Eagles come in and see the art building as their first campus building helps with building up the arts focus.</p>
<p>The arts building can’t be an Ivory Tower that only the art students go to, that happens enough in high school. As with the Gen Ed program at AU, the school strives towards interdisciplinary and allowing students to follow multiple interests. Break down walls, don’t build them</p>
<p>John:</p>
<pre><code> I agree about getting future Eagles excited about the arts at AU, but you do not need to have hundreds of kids walking through the arts building to accomplish it. The Welcome Center, an Admissions Office function, belongs in Admissions not the Art Center, a place where students need concentration to learn and work. How would the business or international studies professors and students like it if hundreds of students are daily, all day, walking through their building. The Welcome Center doesn’t belong where classes are! It doesn’t make sense.
</code></pre>
<p>Upsetmom</p>
<p>cadmiumred, it sounds as though nothing will satisfy you. It seems though at this point you are just looking for flaws and less than perfect qualities of AU. No college or university can run perfectly and it sounds as though they solved your original problem very well. I would say that you should begin to look at sending your daughter and your money to AU as a positive experience or you should choose another school. The AU thread doesn’t need all this negativity based on one person’s issues with the school.</p>
<p>Raichee:</p>
<pre><code> I thought the purpose of these posts was to voice concerns and solve problems?
</code></pre>
<p>Upsetmom</p>
<p>Also, maybe AU should and can move up in the US News rankings if there was consistent excellence throughout the school, not just certain departments.</p>
<p>Upsetmom</p>
<p>I’m not saying that you should not voice your opinions or concerns. However, you have already done that! And your problem was solved, yet you continue to pick out flaws and speak negatively about AU. I understand the frustration and concern you have for picking a school for your daughter but if you are this unhappy with AU than you shouldn’t be sending you daughter. I just don’t understand why you are continuing to speak poorly about AU, if anything you should be happy. Essentially, you voiced your problem, most likely nagged the heck out them, and in the end they solved your problem. Isn’t that what a school should do? You should be praising AU for all their help. </p>
<p>I don’t even want to get into what you said about tuition and not wanting to pay for families and kids who cannot afford full price, it doesn’t even merit a response. </p>
<p>In regards to your last post, that is just absolutely ridiculous. I feel that it is at a point now where you are just throwing out anything you can to give others a bad view of AU. Like I said before, if you feel this strongly about the school, do not send your daughter. There’s no use to continuously complain about everything and then send your daughter and your money.</p>