<p>taxguy,</p>
<p>Some of the professors I had while at Syracuse were an embarrassment. Not only were many of these professors new to the United States, and lacked the communication skills needed, but they were lacking teaching skills period. Some were so easy and laid back they would’ve been better off teaching high school. This isn’t representative of the whole group. Some professors were excellent. Also, class sizes are getting larger, and it’s getting more difficult to get into the classes that you want to. I don’t have anything to compare this to, but I’m sure that some students at other schools don’t like some of their professors.</p>
<p>Syracuse’s attraction to parents right now is a relatively cheap private education for your minority A or B student. I’m a minority, poor, and I had better than a b average so not only did they give me a ton of financial aid (relatively), but I got an academic scholarship. I think this is a good initiative, but giving free tuition to Syracuse high school grads goes too far and is a bit unfair in my opinion, to the students coming from all over the country or even Buffalo and have to actually pay for their education.</p>
<p>Going back to diversity, I kind of didn’t want to bring this up, but we’re on the topic of diversity anyway. Despite the diverse proportion of students, Syracuse is very very SEGREGATED. Syracuse reminds me of lunch time in high school where all the black kids sit together, all the white kids sit together, and all the hispanics and asians sit with their groups. I don’t think this is caused by the school as much as it is just a problem in society, but I think this is worth mentioning. Ask any student at Syracuse and they will agree with me, guaranteed. Personally, I’m black, and my roommates my two best friends from school are white and asian, and people would constantly mention that we were an unusually “diverse” group or household when we lived together. The segregation is probably more social class segregation rather than race. The blacks were poor, the hispanics were relatively poor and spoke spanish, the asians were relatively wealthy and spoke chinese and so on. Why is this important? If Syracuse is being so diverse in order to bring something educational and worldly out of it, then what is the point if the different races are actually integrating and learning from each other? This conversation could go on and on, but I just wanted to give another example of one of the problems the school is facing and factors the school consider in it’s effort to become so diverse.</p>
<p>I turned up the better and free (with in-state) econ program at UMD College Park to go to Syracuse and pay student loans in part. I wasn’t 100% sure what program I wanted to do at that point, and Syracuse in general, and being private, seemed attractive. I’ve become doubtful of my decision, but I don’t regret it at all. I am satisfied with my decision based on my overall experience at Syracuse. The Syracuse name does, for the moment, still carry a bit of clout behind it, which is what I primarily was hoping for. Also, the college experience and worldly people I met were amazing.</p>
<p>I love what my school is doing, but in the words of a great man, “This is not sustainable”. Hopefully the school is just in a transitional phase, and Cantor does actually have a plan. Maybe the “image” of Syracuse U. is to become a school for undergraduates, not based on “traditional” research. Rather than doing research, Cantor is promoting Scholarship in Action. It’s no coincidence, that SU, through it’s initiative to help the city of Syracuse, has attained the number one ranking in public affairs. This is a real result of scholarship in action. The money issue will need to be solved before Cantor can continue in this direction. Dropping out of the AAU and falling in rankings will not help to attract the wealthy students who can actually afford to pay the full tuition, offsetting the financial aid. If anything, I feel like Syracuse is going to start accepting dumb rich kids, who were rejected from the private Ivy Leagues, or NYU, and are looking to go to a private school.</p>