Penn State, a dissapointment

So let's examine the status of our so called great university. 

First lets start looking at examples of the great schools, and seeing what they have to offer. Stanford (see.stanford.edu), MIT (ocw.mit.edu) and others like Carnegie Mellon, Berkley, Illinois are offering all of their course materials online for free. I only mention the engineering schools beause that is what i am interested in, and that is what i can quickly find from my bookmarks. I'm sure there are plenty of other schools offering this same option. These online courses offer everything. Syllabi, video lectures, text transcripts of lectures, homeworks, homework solutions, quizes, quiz solutions, projects, and exams. How can these schools continue to do this, and why do students still flock to $40,000 tuition?

The answer: because the students do not pay for the course content.

That content can be obtained anywhere, for low costs, and extreme detail. The students pay for the best resource of all, the professors. So let's get this straight, we should be paying for the professors, (and that stupid diploma seal).

So with that in mind, lets see what we do at Penn State. We pay $24,000 per year for graduate students, weak lecturers, and professors who don't care about their classes, or students at all. Your life has for the past 12+ years and will continue to be influenced by your teachers, so how many memorable ones have you had.

Those professors that are memorable, are the ones that inspire you, motivate you, and their passion for the material is infectious. How many can you count. Those professors that care about their students are great teachers, loved by students, and able to make the tuition worth it. One problem. They usually do not have time to conduct research, and publish 10 books+100 papers on the same 3 studies. Thus they never really become full professors. They do not get tenure, they are lecturers, and they are looked down on by the other professors. This is a sad fact. Research ocupies professors too much for them to care about the students.