Nestled above Broadway Avenue, Portland State University’s motto sits transcribed into one of the campus’s many skybridges. That’s right, I said skybridges … on a campus. Because what else can you jump off of when stressed about midterms and/or suffering from seasonal affective disorder from the area’s lack of sun? The urban, public university is in the most unappealing setting for the college bound – full of continuous concrete, constant construction, and congested traffic. One thing that PSU proves is that nothing screams “college” more than the sound of jackhammer intermixed with the sweet serenade of garbage truck.
If the State of Oregon was a set of parents and its public universities were their children, Portland State University would be the unattractive, overweight, emo, possibly-adopted bad egg in that picture perfect, khakis/polo, All-American family. There’s little Benny and Donald: the all-star athletes who are set to be an engineer (OSU) and a lawyer (UO). Then there’s the set of quintuplets who are each destined to be an accomplished actor (SOU), a prominent teacher (EOU), an advocate for the deaf (WOU), and a computer designer (OIT).
PSU touts themselves as Oregon’s “most diverse college.” But all that means is that you can walk into any given classroom, find a black and a white, a Latino and an Asian, a Mennonite and a Muslim, and a granny and a tranny. These distinct groups of people would never otherwise talk to one another but are forced to have a discussion on topics they could care less about and are only there to fulfill a worthless general core requirement.
Let’s get some real stats, shall we?
- The average age of PSU students is right around 54.5*
- It’s the fallback school for when Portland area high school students get denied at OSU and UO*
- The cost of parking for a month is roughly the same rate as in-state tuition for a school year
- Half your classes will be at night to accommodate the full time single mother of three who sits next to you (and brings her children to class)*
- You’ll watch some sub-par sporting events*
- You’ll see on average seven hobos a day who will beg you for a cigarette or change or will be urinating in the breezeway of the student union.
Yes, let knowledge serve the city.
*Not a real stat but definitely a real opinion
God. All of you suck. You’re too young and full of your own thoughts of how cool you are. Please. Go to school or take acid and go to school but just either go or go work at some retail store and tell others how interesting you are, try it in twenty years. Education Good, cynical idiots espousing narrow views from OR really boring, like uh boring oregon
I go to PSU. I live downtown. I ride my bike to class. I have two kids, one and three years old. There are problems at PSU. The construction is never going to be finished. Repairs are one thing. When was the rec center supposed to open?
The budget for student groups, under the control of the student government is how much?
Student groups don’t need money. Space to meet, that’s it.
The tuition should be lower.
Or, the money should be used on faculty. I’ve had some really good professors, but you can tell they aren’t doing their best. Not because they are jerks, but because they feel dejected.
Students who show that they don’t care about a class either by being inattentive during lectures or a lackadaisical approach to assignments, would naturally have some effect any person’s enthusiasm. Compounding the problem with a convoluted University Studies program, many students end up forced into classes that they have absolutely zero interest in. So professors end up with classrooms full of students who would rather be anywhere but listening to a lecture that might be fascinating to someone interested in the subject, but which, to the university studies student, is tedious.
A professor who is underpaid moreover feels unappreciated, will naturally have a tough time performing. On the other hand, a professor who feels that even with a smaller paycheck, he or she is helping young minds to develop, in a subject that is dear enough to them to have motivated study to a masters or PHD level, will have reason to put much more effort into their performance.
I have found that many professors soak up encouragement. Like a pet from a rescue center, some professors are understandably cautious of kindness from students, until they know that it is genuine. You can’t just sit silently through the course and then say, “Thanks for the class.” You have to do the assigned reading and ask thoughtful questions. Then the professor will know that you share some concern for the topic that they have devoted their life to. In turn the professor’s performance will improve and you will feel rewarded, not only in the education that you receive, but in the education that you contribute towards, and in showing kindness to another human being.
Thoughtless questions will have the opposite effect. Imagine yourself in the professor’s position. People can work for little money if they get a non-financial reward. Genuine gratification, a feeling that your work is important, confirmed in that other people think the work is important is, to many people, a better reward than a large salary.
If you don’t like PSU, that’s cool. Get an education somewhere else. Or enter the workforce. Or blog some more about how terrible things are. Where ever you are, there will be things that could be better. There are people who complain, and there are people who look for what they can do to contribute to improvement. If you are gonna go to PSU, do what you can to make the best of it. What you get from college is your own responsibility and depends entirely on what you put into it.
It would be encouraging to see some more posts on things that students might be able to do to improve the situation.
I have to agree with what everyone posted above. Because I am an older student (25 is old in most universities!), it is helpful to have classes offered in the evening because I have a job. My biggest issue is with PSU’s language department. It is a huge money making scam that wastes 6 terms and thousands of dollars for every student who isn’t a language major. In addition to all the tuition, you have to buy multiple books at about $200 each. Really not helpful in this economy. I don’t know anyone who remembers a damn thing from their languages classes 6 months after. The program is not designed to make you learn a language, French in my case, but rather teach you to memorize as much grammar and vocabulary as humanly possible, spit it back onto a piece of paper and then spend another couple thousand bucks to continue on. I don’t think the people who plan this program take into account that 1) English speakers learn a foreign language easier if their instructor is not still learning English themselves 2) Most people are taking more than just the language class and some of those classes are a bit more important to their major and education that the language 3) If they are going to structure the class to accommidate people who have jobs and families, they need to take into account that people have jobs and families
maybe if you had gone to Portland State or another college you would know that quintuplets means five, not four.
My roommate and I are current PSU students and we must commend your accurate assessment of wonderful education that PSU provides.
* the library is now the defacto homeless shelter/urinal for downtown
* do you enjoy spending money to learn about transsexuals and their sex changes? If yes, then PSU is for you!
* PSU touts diversity and sustainability because they suck at everything else, namely educating anyone.
* do you enjoy science? do you enjoy learning science from someone who barely speaks English? PSU is for you!
* University Studies, alternatively referred to as the biggest clusterfuck invented purely to leverage more money out of students in exchange for teaching them what a day planner is and how to use it.
* fucking hippies. that’s all I have to say.
* a queer resource center, a latio center, a womens’ resource center, a black/asia/lesbian/jewish/insert triple minority center… but no veterans office?
* a student body, in which half of the people register for a class and then never show up. Meanwhile, those of us who need to take PH221 can’t.
* desks and seats from 1940
* academic curriculum from the same time period
* a bookstore that doesn’t understand capitalism… if you sell your shit for twice that of your competitor on one will buy it.
* an overworked and underpaid faculty
* the average student’s gender is androgynous, representing 80% of the student population
* it’s located in Portland, OR which, lets face it, is a giant shithole filled with hipsters
* and finally! spend your money get your degree and enter the Portland job market of… 10% employment!
1)Agreed, the never ending construction is a pain in the ass.
2)Any idiot who says PSU is worse than “The Institution On The Hill” (Lane Community College) must have spent thier time at LCC smoking a lot of weed and drunkenly experimenting with members of the same sex.
3)Some of us would rather pitch ourselves off a skybridge than attend a school full “of picture perfect, khakis/polo, All-American family” students.
I went to PSU my freshman year… 2 months later I was looking at other colleges to transfer to. Although the architecture professore were cool and actually excited about what they were teaching. “University Studies” as they call it, is a complete waste of time and tuition money, not to mention the credits earned don’t transfer to any legitimate university. Moral of the story, don’t go to PSU.
I just got my degree from PSU and I know that the school is a complete joke. The quality of education is barely above high school level for most classes. They do not require writing classes for incoming student and believe that their Freshman Inquiry will teach students everything they need to know. It doesn’t and consequently professors for middle and upper division classes must spend time reviewing simple grammatical rules so that the papers some students write can rise to the level of barely readable.
I wish I were kidding. Even lower to middle level science and math classes are severely dumbed down for PSU students.
PSU most definitely sucks, the teachers are bored or pretentious and don’t give a shit about you or your education. Most of my classes were filled with info spewed directly from a book I can read on my damn own or even worse… filled with people bullshitting and chatting with the teacher and no teaching at all. The advisers are basically useless too. I go there now, online only, so i can take the opportunity to use my loans to move the fuck out of this hipster filled shithole as soon as I can. If PSU is ANY kind of standard, Id say we should all just drop out now and buy some books and do it our damn selves.
True story:
I went to the Registrar to 1.) pay my tuition and 2.) pay a library fee. I wrote two separate checks, thanked the bitter woman behind the desk, and went on my merry way thinking all was good in the world.
Two months later I get a form letter from the PSU library thanking me for my generous 2,000 dollar donation. This confused me. Apparently the Registrar lady accidentally donated my tuition check to the library — but now the gears of bureaucracy were turning, and I had to go though goddamn hell to get the school to acknowledge it had screwed up. I did get the “donation” back but the entire episode screwed with my financial aide and I couldn’t sign up for the next term’s classes in a timely fashion.
I’ve slept with loads of PSU girls and I have to say they’re wonderful in the sack, despite one graduate student I dated spelling “you’re” without the apostrophe or the e, and another not knowing who JD Salinger was despite being a second year English Lit major. But she gave the most amazing blowjob.
PSU is a hilarious excuse for a school, but in terms of dating it beats Reed, where all the women think they’re Sylvia Plath and will kill your dog/burn your house down/cut themselves/smash your car windows/all of the above if you break up with them. And those are the ones from the STABLE families.
I hate PSU…
People who go there try to defend it day in and day out.
Deep down they know they hate PSU and they suck at life.
Yeah, the quality of the instruction is highly volatile, and students are apathetic on the whole.
But I wanna know: Who taught you to call it “Broadway Avenue”?
I’ve been to Lane CC, Portland CC, UO (my first degree), and PSU (working on my second degree). PSU is a shitty, shitty school. I’ve encountered amazing levels of incompetence as evidenced by recurring mistakes with billing and financial aid. You can’t get a straight story out of anyone who works there. If you run into a problem, be prepared to be bounced around. A lot. Every single time I’ve had to deal with a problem, I’ve had to talk to a minimum of two people and two departments. Fucking ridiculous.
And then there’s the quality of instruction, which compared to UO and even PCC is SEVERELY lacking. Several of the programs seem to start freshman off in a hostile environment. I’m here to learn, folks, not deal with the academic equivalent of boot camp, complete with screaming drill instructor.
Actually the average age is 25 and I can guarantee you that PSU was my first choice, not my last. PSU has a long way to go to live up to its reputation but it is far from being the waste of space you attempt to paint it as.