'FAU: Forcing Alumni Underground

FAU has made news again, but not in a good way.

University Diaries has been chronicling FAU's "bad press" for some time now. UD has, sadly, missed some of the drama that went down while I was there, but what's available on her blog tells a sordid story.

I will be the first to confirm—okay, not the first and hardly the second, third, fourth, or fifth—that it's ugly in the Boca trenches. Those who've been (un)lucky enough to hear my story know that I don't paint a positive image of FAU. My story is unique, but it's not isolated. I know plenty of English students, former and current, who could tell their own stories.

But let me add that despite my grievances, I have nothing but love for my professors and colleagues at FAU. As Mark has already pointed out in the comments to the above-linked post, "[T]he university does not equal its gormless administration. . . . our students at least are getting an education." USM's English Department can certainly testify to FAU's ability to educate me. But again, I'm not an isolated incident. Many people—and their institutions—know that our graduates hold their own as PhD candidates, faculty, employees, etc.

There's a reason why people joke that FAU stands for "Find Another University." The numbers quoted in this UD post don't lie. What's unsaid is that the 63% of students who don't graduate in six years is made up of two major groups: people who take more than six years to graduate, and people who transfer out.

To be fair, FAU still has a reputation as a university geared toward the non-traditional student. Spring Break at FAU falls a week before Spring Break at most universities—ostensibly so working students could actually have a break. Of course, little of what FAU says in theory actually works in practice. Why would working students want attend class during the busiest week of the Florida year? Plus, FAU's non-traditional students are treated poorly and have as much, if not more, trouble getting the classes they need to graduate.

FAU's retention problem was the impetus behind the Freshman Learning Community (FLC) program. The policy makers hoped that students who took classes together would form lasting friendships and stick around to graduate. It sounds good on paper. Unfortunately, what FLC did was create cliques of student "lobbyists" who used their tandem schedules as a means to bamboozle unsuspecting TAs, instructors, and professors into easier assignments. It sounds cynical, but it's true. The retention problem is still there; FLC hasn't changed a thing. Neither will this gym project.

When I mentioned this to irksnapple, she replied, "Well, you know the reason I dropped out of my grad program was because I couldn't lift weights." Underneath the sarcasm, she makes a good point about how things are run at FAU. What really needs to be improved falls by the wayside in favor of surface-level "tweaks"—things designed to make the school look better, not actually be better.

FAU's most famous graduate is Carrot Top, whose ultra-serious portrait hangs in the library. I can't think of a better metaphor for how the policymakers treat their students—faces to post on the wall, jokers in scholar's clothing. Do they honestly think installing some ellipticals will change that? Will increase student retention, attract world-class faculty, up their rankings, bring in reputable donors, and improve alumni relations? Please.

It will take more than a shiny building on a campus run by scandal-happy bureaucrats to make that happen. The real work of university-making happens in the classroom, not the boardroom. They need to make FAU graduates—the ones who did, and are still doing, what should be done in the university—proud to have graduated from there. Until that happens, I expect those of us who are actually invested in success will continue to roll our eyes.'