When I was watching my online financial accounting lectures the other day with a few hundred of my closest friends, it got me thinking about what kind of education we are paying for at UF.
Over the past few years, I have read in the Alligator about how much of a bargain our education is here at UF. The administration consistently tells us that we ought to pay full freight for the world-class education we receive for a relative pittance. By and large, they are correct in that we pay far below the national average for tuition, which is one of the reasons I decided to go to UF.
Now consider the proposed 30 percent tuition increase along with the 15 percent increase in tuition every year until we reach the national average.
I have no problem paying more for my education, but if this was any place other than a university, I would expect more services in exchange for paying the higher fees.
The unacceptable truth of the trend in courses at UF is that there is a race among the colleges, especially business, to put as many classes as possible online. These classes generally fall into two categories: the ones that are jokes and the ones that TutoringZone helps us pass.
UF’s faculty-to-student ratio is abysmal. It consistently pulls down our ranking in US News.
When money is spent on new professors, it seems like the college of medicine is just as likely as arts and sciences to get the position, which does not eliminate the problem of overcrowded undergraduate classes even though it reduces our faculty-to-student ratio on paper.
I have had some unbelievably great professors at UF, but it seems that the number of incentives for professors to focus on research protects some very awful teachers who happen to be fantastic researchers.
UF is a research university, but most of the attention the administration has provided to raising teaching standards at UF appears to be more lip service than anything else.
I have written maybe half a dozen papers longer than 10 pages in my three years at UF, probably because the marginal benefit of grading something like that for professors is approximately zero.
If the University of Florida is to remain the preeminent institution in the state for higher learning, teaching and course quality need to be greater priorities.
If I wanted to watch lectures online for every class, then I just could watch MIT lectures for free.
Maybe we could negotiate a deal with the university where we pay 50 percent of our tuition in exchange for a degree that says we learned something.
It seems like that is a compromise that the college of business would be happy with at least.
