I am currently a
student at UMA Bangor and am writing this to inform the public of
some practices by faculty and administration that I feel warrant
disclosure. Potential students should be aware of what they are
signing up for before they choose to enroll at this school.
Here are a few
things you can expect as a student at UMA Bangor. Expect to have no
idea where you stand in at least half of your classes. I have been
attending UMA for two semesters, taking a total of 8 classes. By
three weeks post-midterm, I had not received any graded work in 50%
of my classes, even though we were turning in work. I asked about
this practice and was told by an instructor, “I don't think it's
right to grade students on their opinion.” This begs the question;
what do you grade them on?
If you do happen
to receive graded work in a timely fashion, be wary of who is
actually grading your work. I am currently taking a Literary
Criticism class. This is an online class that was to be taught by an
instructor that I had heard very good things about. In fact, it was
the high esteem in which she was held that compelled me to sign up
for this class in the first place. As it turns out, this class is
being taught by a faculty assistant (similar to a teaching
assistant, although TA's are usually grad students). This is a person who is a fellow student. She does not
have a degree and does not have teaching credentials. When I asked
about this, I was told by the teacher that she was “really good”
at this class. She also stated that she was “really busy this
semester”. Apparently she is so busy that she doesn't have time to
teach her classes. So written work is being graded by a peer. I inquired of another teacher, whose opinion I value,
what he thought of this and he believes this is unethical and possibly academic malpractice. I agree with him. This is not the only
class where I have an instructor who doesn't seem particularly
interested in teaching their classes.
In another class
that provided no graded work prior to 3 weeks post-midterm, we were
required to do a midterm project. This could be anything. Anything.
Interpretative dance, art projects, power point presentations, you
name it. A week after the assignment was given, we were told that if
we presented our project to the class, we would receive extra credit.
Unfortunately, no parameters were given for these presentations.
Because of this, we spent the remainder of the semester listening to
presentations. What this amounts to is receiving no academic
instruction for the entire second half of the semester. We paid for
an entire class, but received only half of one.
In addition to the classes mentioned
above, I am still trying to resolve an issue with an East Asian
philosophy class that I took last semester. I've been trying to
resolve this for 6 months. This instructor was pushing his personal
faith. Each class was started with 5 minutes of meditation, complete
with gongs. Had he presented the meditation and gong as an example
or demonstration one time, this would have reasonable. I expressed
my objection to this behavior stating that this is not academic
instruction. I was promptly blown off. I then asked one of the many
deans to please explain the difference between this man performing
meditation at the beginning of every class (with gongs), and that of
a professor teaching religious studies starting every class with the
lord's prayer. The dean said it was a question of interpretation.
It seems to me that if there is a question of interpretation, that is
a problem in and of itself. After all, this is a public, tax dollar
supported school. In addition to his praying in class, he also owns
a hermitage, which is a non profit (read: tax exempt) federally
recognized 501(c)3 corporation (the web address is
www.meetingbrook.org)
which is also recognized by the State of Maine as a tax exempt
Religious House of Prayer. Maybe it's just me, but this seems like a
conflict of interest that flies in the face of academic instruction.
In a publicly funded institution, religion should be left at the
door.
I have pursued these issues with the
next-up-the-line dean. I met with her 13 days ago and, as of the
time of this writing, I have not received a response from her. With
a graduation rate of 17% (www.fafsa.org) and 77% of students paying
for this questionable education with Pell Grant money (read-tax
dollars (read-your money)), and student loans (also government
funded), one might expect an administration to be working hard to
ensure that students are getting an education that will actually
benefit them, and to be responsive to students who inform them of
problems within their system. So far, this has not been the case.
What happens to the other 83% of these students? They get grant
money, they get loans, and they do not complete a degree. So they
end up in worse condition than when they started. They have debt
that will follow them for the rest of their lives, with no education
that will help them obtain jobs where they can become financially
stable.
Sadly, this experience is not unique.
Eastern Maine Community College has an equally unresponsive
administration. Perhaps unresponsive is not the right word. It is
more an act of willful ignoring of problems, refusing to answer
questions and complaints, and knowing that students have no recourse
because students are typically broke, putting them in a position of
having no access to outside recourse. Students from this school also
experience the same issues with debt due to not completing their
course of study and, more importantly, being dismissed from a program
of study. I know of many people who have been dismissed from
programs at EMCC. Many of them were dismissed for what seem to be
arbitrary reasons that had nothing to do with academics (given the
highly competitive nature of admission into the nursing program, how
did they fail to graduate 1/3 of their 2012 class?). Once again,
former students are left with more debt and no access to careers that
will allow them to repay it.
But back to UMA Bangor. So why did I
choose to attend this school? Two reasons. The first is price.
This school is considerably less expensive than other schools within
the University of Maine System. The second reason is that they
accepted all of my credits that I earned at EMCC. The transfer
credit policies vary from school to school in the U of M System. So
I could have gone to UMO, paid a lot more money, and had the pleasure
of retaking many of the classes I had already taken at Eastern Maine
Community College, from which I graduated with honors in 2012.
This is a cautionary tale. Be careful
in your deliberations when choosing a school. Do your best to make
sure the school you attend is giving you what you paid for. I know
that the experiences I related here are not unique. If enough
students join together, maybe things will change for the better. And
if you are at the community college, with plans of attending UMO, do
your legwork before you get to the end of your stint at EMCC and find
out that your credits aren't nearly as transferable as you thought
they were. The Transfer College billing
that EMCC is currently pushing is profoundly misleading. But that is
a topic for another missive.
