1. Smells like old milk
2. Has the endowment of a toddlers ballet school.
3. Committed to educating tomorrow's Chicago Transit Authority employees.
4. If you can make it there you can make it . . . oh wait, that's New York State University.
5. Chicago State - where you have less chance of graduating than you have of correctly answering the quesion, "how many fingers am I holding up." (Just in case your CSU student, you have a 16.6% chance of answering the question right while CSU graduates 16.2% of their students.)
October 10, 2009
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I've never heard of CSU...until now. Are they accredited? Do they have a football team? What's their mascot?
ReplyDeleteJust barely, for now. Their graduation rate has them under review.
ReplyDeleteThings are turning around at Chicago State. Got a new president, cleaned up the old milk smell; if CTA emp are physicists, nurses, socioligists then you got helluva ride. NYU? oh that's whatz wrong with you, you are not in the same city. That explains the old data. Have a nice one.
ReplyDeleteAnon - Students at the other IL state universities spell whatz with an 'S' but I'm a terrible speller so I can't judge.
ReplyDeleteI did visit the CSU website and it does assure me that the school is still accredited. Having the need to state this might be a problem but hey, that's more than Harvard can say on the welcome page of their website.
The message correctly notes that if graduation rate weren't defined as the number of freshman who graduated, then CSU graduation rate would be much higher.
And CSU did make the #1 spot on the US News Best Colleges in the Midwest list as the school with the highest percentage of Pell recipients at 75%. Anyone who works in higher ed knows how important a high percentage of Pell recipients is to the overall health of the school. Thank God there are MAP grants to keep the place afloat.
And I think it's great that CSU hired a nice retired man to be president. How can he survive on his pension alone? And I say phooey to those who think he should know enough to wait 60 days from retirement before jumping back on the public payroll. Those dollars aren't going to deposit themselves you know.
And you've got the Emil Jones Convocation Center. (I've always wondered what convocation meant. Who knew it meant basketball?) There is no more respected name in Illinois politics than Emil.
Okay, I'm totally messing with you Anon. Go Cougars!
"whatz" was used as collquialism for "what is". I recognize the facetious response. So here's the F.A.Q., you neglected to mention that the "nice gentleman" as decribed above is a Ph.D. from Northwestern University. That he did more for City Colleges than any other leader (with similiar challenges and demographics)with record breaking results. What he does with his career and retirement has nothing to do with student outcome. Not a thing to do with the fact that he cares enough to use every resource that he has gained to reverse a sad situation. One that he did NOT CREATE.
ReplyDelete"People" standing on the outside of a situation that talk badly as you have CSU have no heart for the student(s) enrolled there. I notice you don't talk about your willingness to help students, or suggest resources to help students find outside scholarships should the MAP fall short. Since you so freely criticize those that made provisions for additional monies, buildings etc...where's your name (by the way?). The current President has been on board for all of what? Barely two weeks. He inherited a morass-resulting from years of previous ineffective leadership. It's going to take a lot of hard work and selfless dedication to bring Chicago State around. He has high standards and a laudable track record. It's so easy to criticize...no? What a simple task it is to point and laugh. If you can help, that would make you the bigger person. That's what is needed for student success at Chicago State University. Support and resources. (If I made typos or used slang, I apologize in advance, I have to go to class)
Thanks for your response!
One of the key components to assessing an information source is to . . .assess it. You are reading a lime green blog on which the author has posted a Six Flags caricature as a profile picture and on which the author regularly bad-mouths hippies, worries about zombies, admires hobos, wastes time with old movies etc. Do you really want to take me seriously?
ReplyDeleteNow I’m sorry, but we need to do a little fact checking first:
To be fair, colloquialisms are tied to spoken language within a given region or even a given culture. “Whatz” is just misspelled. Same thing with Kiddie Kollege daycares and pretentious gift shoppes.
I stand by my statement that your new president is a nice man. It’s true that I didn’t mention his degree but this is because I never questioned his qualifications. I simply suggested that a school with so many troubles might be better served by someone the campus community wanted to lead them rather than by someone they felt had been imposed upon them.
He’s been on board for barely two weeks? Ok, he’s not been there long enough to fix the problems caused by your last president, who was a real piece of work (that’s a colloquialism) but it’s not fair to say he’s only been on board two weeks. His contract began August 1 but no one had the sense to review the hire before offering the contract. I know dozens of SURS retirees who knew that they must be away for 60 days before accepting another SURS covered position. It’s actually part of the retirement counseling so Dr. Watson either didn’t listen or didn’t think it applied to him. Your two weeks reference reflects the contract revision that allowed him to “volunteer from Aug 1 to Oct. 1 so that his golden parachute would deploy.
“What he does with his career and retirement has nothing to do with student outcome.” Did you think that one through? Sure, the current mess isn’t on his head but I’d hope that a university president might have something to do with student outcomes. Unless it is, as this statement suggests, that he was put in place by the Governor and his purpose is not to fix CSU but to keep money flowing from Springfield – you didn’t mean that, right?
I hope that you noticed that I wrote another CSU list for yesterday which was intended as my olive branch. If I wasn’t clear, I listed nine silly, mundane items and ended the list with the one remarkable reason that CSU needs to get its act together. There are people on the south side of Chicago who do not have the opportunity or means to earn a degree. CSU serves them and if this is the only reason the school exists, it's enough reason.
In case you didn’t notice, over there on the right-hand side, I accept guest lists. I welcome you to write one of two lists. 1. Reasons CSU is great or 2. Reasons MyDailyList is a jerk. I’ll print whatever you write for #2 as long as it’s clever and not simply argumentative or defensive.