Obviously you haven’t done your homework about Bennington! My daughter (who is NOT by any means a trust-fund baby) took this psychology class about silence - silence as communication, in relationships. She learned an enormous amount. Because part of your evaluation is your class participation (it is in all of their classes), this is certainly not a class you can sleep in!

I have taken two classes at Bennington myself. Yes, the titles can be “interesting”, but the courses are amazing. I took one class called “The Secrets of the Ancient Astronomers” which was a trigonometry/astronomy/ancient history course where we studied the history of trigonometry. I majored in math in college, and in four years, never had the understanding of trig that I got from this class.

My classes had 8-12 students. We had up to 200 pages of reading and 5-12 pages of writing each week. Every class included long class discussions that made you THINK - not just repeat information. They were not easy courses!

Here’s a joke about a women’s liberal arts college in WI but you could put in a variety of schools to make it work: What’s the difference between 6 years at Alverno College and 6 years at a diploma mill?…

The diploma!

Beware of schools that do not require attendance in order to get a degree!

Some online, for-profit schools (Strayer University, Regis University, others) will let you gt a degree without ever attending a traditional class.

You do all your work online, and exams are open-book and unproctored.

This situation is loaded with abuse; however, the regional accrediting association (MSCHE) doesn’t even raise an eyebrow.

Olga Mae

Strayer offers exam guard program. I doubt if you are the cheater that doing cheat. There are regular class meetings. Students have options to join regular class or online class. Moreover, the theory you learn will never as simple as to look your book.
There are comprehensive writing finals, term papers, final projects which require using specific skills and programs, and so on…

I say beware your comment here. Watch out your spelling “unproctored”? Maybe you feel bad to be one of these schools… since you cannot even check your spelling?

Michigan State University is one of the largest schools in the nation (ranked 7th in 2006)…undergrad & graduate combined comes close to 50,000 students. 1,000 students were arrested last year (so you say)…I believe that can be reduced to 1 in 50…which leads us to 2%. Not a staggering number. The football team just sucks either way. Your logic is flawed.

I urge Appalachian Americans not to fall victim to the scam sweeping Eastern KY and parts of Ohio. Each year the marketing powers that be lure students into PAYING to work at Alice Lloyd College. No that is not a typo, students pay to work at Alice Lloyd. It’s a requirement. They also require students to live in the dorm, so they can get more money out of them. They hire people with Ph.D.’s and only offer them 25,000 for a year’s salary. I know! I was one of the professors. Needless the say, it’s either the inexperienced (as I was at the time) or the bottom of the barrel instructing the classes. The library at the college is outdated even by 1960’s standards. The staff running the various offices are underpaid and bitter. They take it out on the students. I have heard many students complain about mysterious fees appearing on their students accounts. When they question these fees, they are given the ol’ “shut up and pay up” routine.

In my youth I heard someone remark “I don’t go to college, i go to Kent (State).” So guess where I went off to? Other than that i think you’re opinions are bull shit.

YOU HAVEN´T EXPERIENCED A BAD UNIVERSITY UNTIL YOU HAVE BEEN A WIDENER UNIVERSITY STUDENT. WHAT A HORRIBLE SCHOOL IN A HORRIBLE NEIGHBORHOOD. THE PROFESSORS ARE THE WORST I HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED TOO. AND DO NOT GO NEAR THEIR SPECIAL EDUCATION OR LANGUAGE DEPARTMENTS IF YOU WANT TO LEARN.

“Strayer offers exam guard program. I doubt if you are the cheater that doing cheat. There are regular class meetings. Students have options to join regular class or online class. Moreover, the theory you learn will never as simple as to look your book.
There are comprehensive writing finals, term papers, final projects which require using specific skills and programs, and so on…

I say beware your comment here. Watch out your spelling “unproctored”? Maybe you feel bad to be one of these schools… since you cannot even check your spelling? ”

Dear GOD your grammar is atrocious!! I take it you attend one of the before mentioned school, by the way before criticizing someone about their spelling, why don’t you run grammar checker once or twice for your own good. Then go and sign up to get you some real “edu-mi-cation”!

Thanks to you “reversemind” after reading your comment I am proud to say “my college” has at least taught me something.

Well I go to a school here in Sacramento California called American River College. Its lower than worst. Everyone listens to the same music, students constantly talk on their cell phones, instructors and their classes are really boring, and there is never anything interesting going on either.

Oh, could I tell you stories about Widener University. Besides slandering my good name, and almost throwing me out of the school for something I absolutely never said, I have a list of ways the rarely available adminstraters and many of the teachers cheat students. First of all, the campus is extremely violent. There are shootings on the campus, and even their security used to go into girls dorms without permisssion when I in attendance. The school even covers up campus crime such as rape. I was an adult student there, so you are not just getting the opinion of a kid. I was discriminated against because I am Jewish. In addition, I hardly learned anything. Further more, many young students, especially the foreigners, used to cry to me about how they were cheated and lied to by the university. Many of them wanted to quit, but they had already spent too much money to forget about finishing a program. Oh, by the way, don´t even think about majoring in Special Education there because you will learn less than nothing. The head of the department, Dr. Lynn, needs to grow up and re-educate herself before there is any hope for that program. It is useless. I could go on and on about Widener because it is such a lousy over priced school. If you don´t believe me, sit in the library in the back for a few days, and as some of the students how they feel about the place.

This list do not include the ABSOLUTELY WORST college ever, Latter Day Saint Business College, a school that has little business classes, almost all classes are attendance based and their required classes are more like being at high school. The security here act like they are gods personal police and the administrators couldn’t care less what is taught here. I have a required class in which I am disrespected and learn to disrespect others through communication that the school brain washes me as normal. I hate this school. If you think for yourself on any issue here, you are an outcast.

Alice Lloyd College by no means offers guaranteed tuition. This college includes government funding in their tuition guarantee. They cater to poor students so that they can do this. Students at this socioeconomic status would have received free tuition from the government at a state university. Alice Lloyd College makes sure that students do not receive any residual money from state and federal grants as they fluctuate the students’ tuition costs so that all the funding can go to the college.
Students are required to work on campus and then sign their federal work study checks over to the college. These same students would have been able to use this money at a state college for living expenses.
There have been several instances of strange fees being charged to students’ accounts at the end of a semester with no reason given as to why this occured.
Students are rewarded private scholarships that they never see even after their bill has supposedly been paid. These students’ pictures are taken and they are given certificates and the scholarship money is never seen by the student.
Alice Lloyd College divides what really is tuition into tuition and then fees. They claim to guarantee the tuition and then charge $500 in fees. No other college in the state of Kentucky does this. However, at any state university, up front fees are counted as tuition. It doesn’t matter what it is called if this student must pay it to attend. This is not a tuition free school.

I would say Widener University is one of the worst. From slandering students names to a staff in the Education Department that is immature and non-caring, I would say Widener wins. It is an over priced joint, and worst of all, it is in an extremely dangerous setting. Good luck if you are desparate enough to waste your money on this poor excuse for a university. When I was a student there, the head of the Special Education Department was stupid enough to make fun of my project about bullying. She said it was not a very important idea to waste time in creating an anti-bullying program nationally for all schools. She even annouced that my idea was a waste of time to an entire class. One year later the massive shootings in Columbine High School occurred. Now I ask you, is “Dr. Margaret Lin” a professor you would want to study with. A better bet would be Neuman, a neighbor of Widener. My husband graduated from that fine university. He got a fabulous education!

Cornell? Worst Ivy League University? How can you claim that one of the top 9 Universities in America is one of the nine worst?

Without question, University of Tennessee Knoxville is the worst university among all the thousands of universities in the nationwide education system. This is of course if you like to attend a school where a football is above and beyond more important than a book or syllabus.

I’m a student at Liberty University and I am very saddened to see that it has somehow sunk to the ranking of the worst Christian college. Admissions criteria is becoming stronger, the amount of applications is increasing exponentially and the shift in leadership from Jerry to Jerry Jr. has only brought positive changes. The University is still young (founded in 1971) and has made great improvements and will continue to do so. I’m a National Merit Scholar in the Honors Program at Liberty and I find myself academically challenged as well as spiritually encouraged. Liberty University is on its way to becoming the premier Christian university.

Hey guys, I graduate from Stayner and I am now studying Economics at Harvard. Take that !!!

Cornell is NOT the worst Ivy, it is under rated. it is an all around great school which doesn’t get the respect it deserves.

You know, cornell is a terrible school. And there’s nothing to do in Ithica. For the amount of credit it gets, it is very disappointing.

I am currently a physician assistant student @ Nova Southeastern University. I pay around 48,000 dollars a year. However, I get nothing out of my education. I am being taught by “has been” Physician Assistants who are completely unqualified to teach. I sit in class and read medical manuals while my professors lecture on outdated and often incorrect information. I am sorry to sound like a negative student but I am just looking for a platform to voice my complaint. So for you graduate students that are investigating the physician assistant field I highly recommend the career move but I would strong advise you to find another university.

I almost never express my opinion in public or on the Internet, but when I saw this story about UB on the web, I felt compelled, as a graduate of the University’s MBA program in 1983, to respond to it and to the subsequent comments written about it. But, before I start, I must provide a disclaimer. Although, most see me as an educated person of average or above average intelligence, I am not an exceptionally good writer, and am most certainly capable of making spelling and even more egregious writing errors. I am completely aware that within the realm of debate, on and off the Internet, there exists a well worn debate strategy of attempting to disqualify an opposing person’s augment by impeaching the person’s speaking or writing ability that has nothing to do with the central point being made. My lack of writing excellence is not, and should not, be viewed as reason to disqualify the validity of my statements and opinions.

As an impoverished child growing up on welfare in the inner city of some of the worst slums in America I dreamed. I dreamed of one day of escaping the inner city poverty, condemnation, and crippling low expectations that others of better circumstances of life were forcing on me. What I dared to dream, as a young child, was so much like that of the dreams of millions of other young idealist Americans that passionately believed in what the United States stood for. What I dared to dream was simply the American dream; of success through diligence, determination, integrity, and hard work. Throughout American history, this dream that was responsible, in large measure, for building America, was motivated out of desperation and a passion to succeed. This dream, I believe, is so basic to American existence that it is one of the most cherished and sacredly held value in America. Unfortunately, there are plenty of greedy, unscrupulous opportunistic individuals and organizations that attempt to exploit this sacred American dream by making false promises and selling false hopes at exorbitantly high prices to the poorest and most desperate of the American poor.

Long before the faculty at the University of Bridgeport went out of strike, there were indications of questionable practices at the university. UB’s willingness to exploit the hopes and dreams of young, vulnerable, and innocent people was reminiscent of the worst practices of many “for profit” proprietary schools that exploited the poorest of the poor in their quest for private profits. Back in the early 1980s, the University of Bridgeport engage in a high glitz ad campaign, taking out full page advertisements in the New York Times and other nationally know newspapers, comparing the education received at the University of Bridgeport to the quality of educational available at Ivy League Universities in the United States. It falsely exaggerated the earning power and career success of its graduates. Although, clearly hubris, false and misleading to the more knowledgeable, to the likes of this young person (at the time) and many like me, these very sophisticated and expensive advertisements were stunningly impressive. The photos and physical description of supposedly the school’s campus were equally false and misleading at the time. By looking at the photos used in their advertisement, one was left with the impression that the school was located at a beautiful pristine beach front community that was completely surrounded by a lush forested park.

Little, if anything, of the school’s advertising and recruiting literature was remotely close to reality. While I was a student in the early 1980s at the University of Bridgeport, the incident of crime, including violent crime was intolerably high. I was personally attacked three times on, or near the campus by residents from the low income housing projects that surround the perimeter of the school. During my second year at the school, a man was found shot dead about three blocks from the university campus. It was simply not safe to walk on, or near the campus most of the day. The fear was omnipresent. Adding insult to injury, the career marketability and opportunities claimed to exist for graduates of the school by the university was in, large measure, false. The career planning and placement office at the school was a joke and pitiful. I remember frequently walking into the office and finding no staff at all in the office. After completing my first year at the university, reality about my career prospects began to set in. Things really began to get scary. I remember walking down town Bridgeport and a passerby asking me what university I was attending, and me telling him I was a UB student and his dreadful response. He told me that he had graduated from UB more than a year earlier and was completely unable to find work. This was unfortunately to be an onion in regards to my own future career prospects as a MBA graduate of good academic standings from the University of Bridgeport. I, like many other graduates of UB have graduated to unemployment and perpetual under employment. I had spent years on my career search after graduating from the University of Bridgeport, sending out many hundreds of resumes to no avail. I feel that, as a young innocent and vulnerable person, my American dream was deliberately violated and exploited for the revenue seeking needs of the University of Bridgeport. The school is nothing more than a highly questionable diploma mill.