stinky cheese man wrote:

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having been through this with two children, let me suggest the "unpardonable" on this site--USM is pretty good.

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Stinky, what you say was true four or five years ago or whenever your children entered USM. Today, however, we have a different USM - one that has lost some of its best faculty and administrators, faculty morale shot to shinola, some students and their parents  avoiding the place like the plague, and with the academic eye of the nation is looking down on us in our embarrasement. Your knowledge of the current state of the university has probably enabled you to effectively steer your own children through the unnecessary maze of uncertainty that has been created here. Most of our entering students do not have that advantage.

stinky cheese man wrote:

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i have one in school currently, and i really disagree that things are substantially different than 4-5 years ago in many departments.

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Stinky, stinky, stinky. Things are different. Look about you. Read the message board. Examine the Faculty Senate minutes. Attend the AAUP meetings. Listen to the recording of the Stringer/Glamser hearings. Look at the stealth raises. And then tell me that things are not substantially different.

perspective--i'm not dense, only been here 20+ years. when it comes to in-the-classroom instruction--which is what i was responding to--i know my colleagues well enough to know they are still effective. i know i am. and remember what i also said, the opportunity to study overseas is a real asset to bright students. put a child in the british system and see how they fare.

stinky cheese man wrote:

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i know my colleagues well enough to know they are still effective.

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Stinky, how effective can half the faculty be if they are no longer here? How effective can Gary Stringer be from College Station? How effective can Noel Polk be from Starkville? It must be tough to be effective from Greensboro. Pull up the list of departures and you'll see what I mean. USM instruction has taken a gigantic hit.

Anne Wallace is now in NC.  Others are far gone as well. I will say that the exodus began in the spring of 2002. 

That English degree is nice, but not as nice as it once was.  I'm glad that my child grabbed it and left several years ago. Jameela is one of the few shining stars left.  Godspeed.

If USM becomes a Davidson, a William & Mary, or a Swarthmore, that's where I'll advise students to apply. But the recruiting will have to be a whole lot different than it is now. If USM loses its remaining scholars it is more likely to turn into a very large Delta State or Jackson State and serve this part of the state just fine.

Oh My my, oh He$$ yes.

Hamburger and French Fries wrote:

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....state universities dominate small private schools in terms of success per dollar spent. Send your kid to Ole Miss and make them take as many hard courses as you can find. Then they will have skills to get into a good graduate program

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Hamburger and French Fries, it's an hour later here in Blacksburg, Virginia than it is in Hattiesburg, and I'm very sleepy, but I read your post a few minutes ago. It woke me up and prompted me to respond with these facts: "Since 1929, Mississippi College ranked #1 in graduates receiving doctoral degrees in professional fields, among 911 non-doctoral granting institutions. Pre-medical school acceptance rate for MC students are 15-25% higher than the national average." The name of an MC graduate even occasionally appears on this board (e.g., Noel Polk, B.A. (English) 1965; Andy Griffin, B.S. (Chemistry) 1969. Among the scores of MC graduates practicing medicine in Hattiesburg is USM's own Dr. Virginia Crawford (B.S., 1979). Although my own academic career was spent solely on the faculties of large public (state) universities (e.g., LSU, Rutgers, Virginia Commonwealth, Virginia Tech), I never discounted the value of the undergraduate liberal arts education I received at then-tiny MC or the success my undergraduate MC colleagues had in obtaining admission to top graduate and professional schools.  

 

Hamburger and French Fries wrote:

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Commitment wrote: I'll take a small undergraduate liberal arts college anyday, regardless of location. Those types of schools have been largely neglected in this discussion.

Hamburger and French Fries wrote: Why? So your child can have his or her hand held . . . . Send your kid to Ole Miss and make them take as many hard courses as you can find.

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HFF - It sounds like you're the one who advocates holding your child's hand . . . . "send your kid to Ole Miss" . . . . "make them take as many hard courses as you can find" . . . " etc.   

Ask Daddy wrote:

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Hamburger and French Fries wrote:


Commitment wrote: I'll take a small undergraduate liberal arts college anyday, regardless of location. Those types of schools have been largely neglected in this discussion.
Hamburger and French Fries wrote: Why? So your child can have his or her hand held . . . . Send your kid to Ole Miss and make them take as many hard courses as you can find.

HFF - It sounds like you're the one who advocates holding your child's hand . . . . "send your kid to Ole Miss" . . . . "make them take as many hard courses as you can find" . . . " etc.   

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Yes, I advocate taking a strong hand in a child's education, even if that child is 22 years old. I want my child shown how to swim and then thrown in the deep end of the pool, not outfitted for water wings.

I would assume from your response that your approach is to pay the bill and let the child find his own way. That's a fine approach as long as you don't expect him to be anything when he comes out the other side. Spend $20,000/year for a small college liberal arts education, have your child take exactly the courses that interest him, and watch as he drowns in a sea of thousands of liberal arts majors trying to get one of a few hundred slots in a professional school or graduate school. Meanwhile, either you or your child will be drowning in debt. If he does get into a professional or graduate school, have him look around and take a roll call of his peers' undergraduate institutions. I'll bet that at any reasonable institution the mix is 75% public, 25% private. My assertion stands that public schools are nearly infinitely more cost effective.

Advocate wrote:

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I used to talk to my kids about going to USM and brag about how much I enjoyed the Honors College.  However, today was a sad day because we were discussing the possibility of them going to Ole Miss.  I never thought this day would come, but I had to honestly tell them I'd prefer for them to go to Ole Miss over Southern Miss.

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I have been out of State for a number of years now and don't know the history behind the fall of the Honors College...What happened exactly and when?...I remember that the Honors College was well respected and growing but lost touch with things about 5 years ago...The Honors Forum was always well respected and well received...I remember attending those talks back in the mid 70's...Why was the Forum canned?...It couldn't have been too expensive an operation to run, could it?...Can anyone give me the chronology and reason for the downfall of these two good programs?...

Little old lady wrote:

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 Make it easy and they will come.

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You are right. Make it easy and they will come. But its not that simple The distribution is bimodal. They will also come if you make it difficult. Witness the hoards of students beating down the doors to get in the academically challenging universities. A sure way to incrrease enrollment is to elevate academic standards (although I once had a dean that didn't agree with that approach).  

Yes Sir wrote:

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Little old lady wrote:  Make it easy and they will come. You are right. Make it easy and they will come. But its not that simple The distribution is bimodal. They will also come if you make it difficult. Witness the hoards of students beating down the doors to get in the academically challenging universities. A sure way to incrrease enrollment is to elevate academic standards (although I once had a dean that didn't agree with that approach).  

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Isn't it strange how there is always a waiting list of prospective undergraduates trying to gain admission to the most demanding schools, but the easy schools have to hustle for every student they can find and they sometimes use every trick in the book to get a student to enroll? Like telling them we're world class in everything we do.

Invictus wrote:

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What concerns me is the quality of students entering & the necessity for remediation. I have to confess that I was utterly floored when I found out how many 099 English sections were offerred at USM. That's something that ought to be happening at jucos. And while English does have a remedial track, most of the social & natural sciences don't, so my guess is that freshman psych or soc or intro-to-physical-science classes have a pretty high proportion of under-prepared students taking up space & using oxygen.

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Invictus, you hit the nail on the head. There is no legitimate reason for the large number of 099 sections at USM. Those students would be far better served at one of our  community colleges during their first two college years.  It hardly seems fair to immerse the highly motivated and very bright USM student into a classroom where the instructor must design the course for the underprepared. As it is now, the bright and motivated students can sit on his duffer and coast along with little or no effort.The bright and motivated student sits around bored and unstimulated, while  the unprepared student meets the low grading expectation and winds up with an A to B grade average by the end of his four years. The  then seems shocked when his GRE score is not high enough to get him into graduate school. Some 099 classes are entirely appropriate, but their proliferation does a disservice to the unprepared, to the very bright and motivated, to the instructor, and to the institution itself.