Originally Posted by Twelve Chars

are you kidding me? how can you be offended by that.

obvious troll is obvious...

No seriously, imagine you're Clematis and you're having a real life conversation with someone. You've just told them about how McMaster is so great compared to the expensive, traffic-ridden, dirty-labbed, ugly-ass new school you're going to now. Once you've finished talking the other person says "so what dump are you going to now?"

And then you get offended? Maybe say something like "I don't think that's very funny. I picked the school I am at now and regardless of its faults you shouldn't put it down like that. You hurt my feelings because I chose to attend that school now and you shouldn't make me feel bad about my decision any more than I already do." Is that about right?

The only outstanding negative I can see in McMaster is that EVERY DOOR IS FOR A FIRE EXIT. I had to watch people push doors to see if they would set off alarms or not before pushing them myself.

If anyone with authority on any of the doors is looking at this...would it kill you to slap a sticker on some of them? Just saying.

Rule of thumb: The only alarmed doors are the ones that actually say "An alarm will go off if you open this door." There are some doors that say that but don't set off the alarm, but it's better not to risk it, most doors will ring it. Some doors are only alarm active at certain times, most notably the Mills Library Tower entrance exterior doors. I've exited through those doors many times, but when the tower exit is officially closed, those doors will set off the alarm if opened.

On the other hand, doors marked "Emergency Exit Only" or "Fire Exit" or something like that are not alarmed. You can exit through these doors and people do all the time. I've never seen or heard of anyone getting in trouble for exiting through these doors.

Originally Posted by DanFriz

The only thing i cant stand is the puddles when it rains. I actually stopped going to class during heavy rain days

THIS.
one of my wisest mcmaster-related investments has been a pair of rubber boots. xD
you'd think with the massive amount of crews/equipment/vehicles they have to take care of landscaping and snow removal, they could find a way to fix a puddle problem.

Originally Posted by ooburii

THIS.
one of my wisest mcmaster-related investments has been a pair of rubber boots. xD
you'd think with the massive amount of crews/equipment/vehicles they have to take care of landscaping and snow removal, they could find a way to fix a puddle problem.

EVEN A PLANK OF WOOD WOULD SUFFICE! Seriously! Or just one brick in the middle of the path so that we can safely hop across!

But...I'm still not inclined to view them as a problem, per se. You want a problem, it's those bees. The way they buzz and hover and... *shudders*

Originally Posted by The Guardian

The only outstanding negative I can see in McMaster is that EVERY DOOR IS FOR A FIRE EXIT. I had to watch people push doors to see if they would set off alarms or not before pushing them myself.

If anyone with authority on any of the doors is looking at this...would it kill you to slap a sticker on some of them? Just saying.

YESS! I was touring yesterday during the summer orientation, and my friends and I were so nervous to go through every door! We ended up taking such bizarre routes around buildings because we were afraid of the alarms :X

Originally Posted by adaptation

YESS! I was touring yesterday during the summer orientation, and my friends and I were so nervous to go through every door! We ended up taking such bizarre routes around buildings because we were afraid of the alarms :X

Never been to a door that set off a fire alarm, and I've been through pretty much all of them.

(student centre)

Originally Posted by Twelve Chars

There are big problems at McMaster.

Tuition goes up every year but the same cannot be said for the quality of education. We are increasingly getting less bang for our buck. Students are no longer (if they were ever) the number one group of people the school is trying to please. Private donors will only keep giving if their interests are met, but the same cannot be said for students.
Enrollment is only ever going to increase because getting a post-secondary education is looking more and more mandatory to even the lower class, and because of the school's generally good reputation (90th in the World, wow! (get real)). As tuition rises the students have no choice but to pay it, and they are able to do so with student loans. Our current government's philosophy is that any person who wants to go to university, they can, because the government will loan them however much it costs. Which is great for people like me who are heavily reliant on OSAP, but then where does that leave students down the line after they graduate? I can't feel the effect of rising tuition now, but I sure will when I'm looking at my bill after I get my degree.

Class sizes are ever increasing. There are less tenured and permament professors. Instead we get more sessional professors and PhD students teaching our classes.
There also seems to be a lack of a review process to make sure that our professors can actually teach. I encountered this problem more when I was in Engineering, but there some in the Humanities that classify here (H. Ostavich anyone?).
One problem I've faced every year since I switched to Humanities is lack of variety in course offerings. Our Undergraduate Calandar is by no means comprehensive to begin with, but it's really deceptive to then not offer half the courses year after year. I can only attribute this to lack of professors, which means lack of money, which means lack of commitment to the quality of Humanities/Soc Sci education at McMaster. Coincidentally, in the last decade, from which faculties have the most program/degrees been cut?

Also, world rankings are bullshit. A lot of consideration is given to factors like research, publications, "reputation", and graduate studies, none of which directly affect our undergraduate educations. A lot of the stuff that decides whether you're getting a good university education/experience cannot be measured and ranked. McMaster's rankings are greatly bolstered by research and citations and the fact that we have a med school that has its own damn hospital on campus. Compare that to places like Trent, Acadia, Mount Alison, undergraduate focused universities that are nowhere in any rankings but I guarantee you that the kids there are getting better value for their money than we are.

Think about that 55 million dollar Soc Sci/Humanities building that just got funding. That's great, new facilities are always nice, and something like that might factor into world rankings, but it doesn't actually change anything if the teaching is the same. Never have I thought "Wow, this class is really great, but too bad this classroom is so ugly, that really detracts from my education." I would rather they have committed that money to hiring more professors and decreasing class sizes. But what's more impressive to donors, the public, future students and their parents: "Oh hey guys look at this wicked modern building we just got, it's way high tech and energy efficient and pretty and huge" or "oh hey walk around our half century old dungeons. Recently we made the education a lot better, you can't really see that but trust us, it's so good now."

Just to add a jab to that, I would say that if I were to trust any university ranking it would be QS Rankings. 162 overall. Which puts us 8th in Canada behind Alberta, Montreal, Waterloo, and (gasp!) Queen's. And note the steady decline of Arts/Humanities from 98 to 273 since 2007, which is reflective of what's happened to our funding lately. Also they put McGill over UofT which I think is pretty savvy. But anyway, forget about rankings.

But in the end I'm not too mad at McMaster specifically because these problems run across the board for all Universities in Canada. I can't really think of any McMaster specific complaints. Maybe that the disparity of attention between the Sciences and Humanities is greater here than at other schools. Mugsi/Solar is undoubtedly a piece of shit and actually is like the worst course selection system in Canada, if you believe MacClean's rankings. Oh, and the girls are prettier at Guelph.

Our campus is actually pretty nice. Though I'm not too thrilled with the look of the big glass engineering boxes they're dropping over on the west/south side of campus. That entire area of campus, behind BSB, around ABB and Thode is just plain ugly and uncomfortable. The constant droning coming from the reactor or some other building doesn't help that. Why do people keep saying we have a nuclear reactor on campus like it's a good thing? What has that reactor ever done for me? Noisy piece of crap.

I agree with most of what you say. Quality of education at mac is seriously lacking. I have yet to come across a professor who is good (except for two out of all the profs I had so far). They don't know how to teach and get the ideas and concepts across well. It's like they memorized the textbooks, they are talking textbooks. And the TAs, let's not even go there. What's sad is that the admins or whoever should be responsible for this, don't even seem bothered a bit! Now, if tuition was half what we're paying, I would be the 1st to shut my mouth. But come on now for that much money, one would at least expect some decent teaching staff and not those new glossy buildings popping up every couple years instead. I don't care how new the facilities are, as along as they're kept clean. I wouldn't even mind if the entire campus was like the Art quad.

Originally Posted by RyanC

Never been to a door that set off a fire alarm, and I've been through pretty much all of them.

(student centre)

Haha nice, good to know.

Originally Posted by tiger

I agree with most of what you say. Quality of education at mac is seriously lacking. I have yet to come across a professor who is good (except for two out of all the profs I had so far). They don't know how to teach and get the ideas and concepts across well. It's like they memorized the textbooks, they are talking textbooks. And the TAs, let's not even go there. What's sad is that the admins or whoever should be responsible for this, don't even seem bothered a bit! Now, if tuition was half what we're paying, I would be the 1st to shut my mouth. But come on now for that much money, one would at least expect some decent teaching staff and not those new glossy buildings popping up every couple years instead. I don't care how new the facilities are, as along as they're kept clean. I wouldn't even mind if the entire campus was like the Art quad.

Well its not like more money is going to make the teachers any better, and without those buildings top professors may be less inclined to come to our school. There's no way this is a McMaster specific problem perhaps your prof's teaching methods arent good for you or you are expected high school teachers.

Originally Posted by julianface

Well its not like more money is going to make the teachers any better, and without those buildings top professors may be less inclined to come to our school. There's no way this is a McMaster specific problem perhaps your prof's teaching methods arent good for you or you are expected high school teachers.

Don't underestimate the power of money. If it can buy happiness (which it can), it can buy better teachers. It's all about the Bordens.

Originally Posted by Twelve Chars

Don't underestimate the power of money. If it can buy happiness (which it can), it can buy better teachers. It's all about the Bordens.

It's not like there are just good profs floating around waiting to be bought, there are only so many profs in the country and they are spread out at all different universities, unless Mac offers a ridiculous amount of money to poach the top profs at other schools then money cant really buy better profs, and anyways our tuition would just increase more if we paid profs any more.

Originally Posted by julianface

It's not like there are just good profs floating around waiting to be bought, there are only so many profs in the country and they are spread out at all different universities, unless Mac offers a ridiculous amount of money to poach the top profs at other schools then money cant really buy better profs, and anyways our tuition would just increase more if we paid profs any more.

That statement doesn't make sense.

But I would like to add that although it would cost more to hire profs in terms of their salary, the biggest cost would be to upgrade all their research facilities to be state of the art in order to get research profs to teach at McMaster.

Originally Posted by julianface

Well its not like more money is going to make the teachers any better, and without those buildings top professors may be less inclined to come to our school. There's no way this is a McMaster specific problem perhaps your prof's teaching methods arent good for you or you are expected high school teachers.

Typical attitude on these threads. As soon as someone points out something negative about mac, they get all defensive like they're married to McMaster. And instead choose to ignore reality and facts. Which I understand when you're that much invested in the school already. But if most students adopt this attitude it leaves no room for improvements.

In the end, I believe it's the students' voices that shape a school.