Nine Worst Colleges in America
Yes, it’s another college ranking list, but this snarky / cheeky one really stands out. Radar Magazine Online recently put together a “semi-scientific guide to the most substandard schools in America.” Using a wide variety of sources, Radar took up the challenge of choosing which accredited 4-year colleges with physical campuses made the “dishonor roll.”
Worst Party School: (Tie) California State University-Chico; San Diego State University
Illustrious Alumni: Chico lays claim to good-time-guy novelist Raymond Carver (who graduated elsewhere) and bare-knuckled political consultant Ed Rollins, while SDSU graduated disgraced former CIA executive director Kyle “Dusty” Foggo and oft-disrobed former C-movie actress Raquel Welch.Worst Trust-Fund-Baby College: Bennington College (VT)
Notable Course: “SHHH! The Social Construction of Silence,” a class focused on breaking down the classification of silence as an absence of sound and “establishing it as a presence.” Or, the class where you sleep off your hangover.Worst Ivy League University: Cornell University (NY)
School Pride: “I haven’t overheard a single intellectual conversation in three years, unless it was between Indian or Asian students,” writes an architecture major on Students Review.Worst Christian University: Liberty University (VA)
School Pride: “The mountains and all are beautiful. It’s right near the Wal-Mart too,” writes a student on Campus Dirt.Worst of the Big Ten: Michigan State University (East Lansing)
It’s not surprising this hard-drinking football school hasn’t made it to the Rose Bowl since 1988: Much of its student body seems to be in jail. Over 1,000 students were arrested for drug and alcohol offenses last year, along with another 1,224 perps in the crime-ridden city.Worst Military Academy: Virginia Military Institute
VMI excluded women from its ranks until the U.S. Supreme Court forced the academy to admit female cadets in 1996.Worst Women’s College: Texas Woman’s University
Notable Course: Cultural Perspectives of Personal Appearance.The Worst College in America: University of Bridgeport (CT)
Fun Fact: At orientation, all incoming students are given a “personal alarm locator” that will send swarms of campus policemen racing to their rescue whenever they press a panic button.
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.