Christendom vs. FUS

[Brother Adam]

[quote name='Fides_et_Ratio' date='Dec 29 2005, 08:37 AM']Neither of you have gotten their once a month "donate to Franciscan" letters yet....
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Yes, I do get them. But they have to support themselves, and they offer alot of non-loan financial aid when it comes right down to it. And if you want to compare to Ohio Universities and their need for money, walk around Franciscan and then walk around Cedarville. They have the same number of students.

[Fides_et_Ratio]

My tuition was enough for FUS to support itself! I didn't get any financial aid.

And those letters are annoying. I'm not going to donate money to a college--any college. Tuition is high enough. If they'd stop wasting money on re-doing things that aren't in need of being re-done, they'd be fine.

[Brother Adam]

[quote name='Fides_et_Ratio' date='Dec 29 2005, 08:46 AM']My tuition was enough for FUS to support itself! I didn't get any financial aid.

And those letters are annoying. I'm not going to donate money to a college--any college. Tuition is high enough. If they'd stop wasting money on re-doing things that aren't in need of being re-done, they'd be fine.
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Then call and ask to be taken off the list. Every school has benefactors. That doesn't make the school greedy.

[Fides_et_Ratio]

I never said FUS was greedy.

[Brother Adam]

[quote name='Fides_et_Ratio' date='Dec 29 2005, 08:49 AM']I never said FUS was greedy.
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You said "Neither of you have gotten their once a month "donate to Franciscan" letters yet.... "

I assumed that was in response to my response about Franciscan being more interested in money than academics.

[Fides_et_Ratio]

They can be more interested in money than academics without being "greedy". FUS won't do everything for money. But they DO ask for it all the time.

FUS has some pretty cruddy teachers in some departments, but they are more concerned about the JC, or sports (at least last year--not sure if that issue was resolved) than they are about fixing their teaching staff.

[jgirl]

[quote name='phatcatholic' date='Dec 29 2005, 12:17 AM']what exactly are you referring to here? what makes you think FUS is more interested in money than academics?
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They underpay the professors, and then mistreat some of the better ones who aren't Scott Hahn. My favorite professor is looking into a civil rights lawsuit because they failed to promote him to full professor on two occasions when he was qualified for the promotion (not to mention the university said nasty things to him and about his teaching style when they never once stepped foot inside his classroom). Professors often joked that the friars on campus take the vow of poverty and the profs live it. It's probably fair to say that a lot of them who have kids live below the poverty level.

This comes at the same time that the university is adding Division III. It doesn't have the money to buy books for the library when that money is in the budget or pay the professors decent salaries, but it has money to develop a full scale intercollegiate athletic program.

There was another situation where the administration offered to create a job on the main campus just for the Austrian Director of Student Life, so that they could move back to the states. The university created the job, but then they filled it with somebody else (Schmiesing), basically leaving the other guy on the street. Good thing that the Lord is good because after 6 months, he finally found a job that provided a house, somebody donated a van to them, and the family could be reunited (the wife and kids lived with her parents in Seattle and he lived with his in Minnesota).

They also mishandle money on a regular basis. When they get general grant money, they don't put it into a fund for scholarships or use it to boost the salaries of the professors; they buy buildings to boost the amount of students they can hold without boosting the numbers of professors that can teach them, so class sizes are going up (although still not up to the level of most public universities). They are doing the same thing by converting existing dorm rooms into triples. The only dorm that's big enough to hold triples is Kolbe-Clare. They aren't temporary, and they only give the students who live in them a tiny discount, meaning that they are making a fair amount of money off the triples.

The stories go on and on...

[Brother Adam]

[quote name='Fides_et_Ratio' date='Dec 29 2005, 08:58 AM']They can be more interested in money than academics without being "greedy". FUS won't do everything for money. But they DO ask for it all the time.

FUS has some pretty cruddy teachers in some departments, but they are more concerned about the JC, or sports (at least last year--not sure if that issue was resolved) than they are about fixing their teaching staff.
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I'm not sure how you can know their intentions. I work next to executive staff, and I don't understand that to be their intentions, and some departments are going through the hiring process right now...What departments are you refering too?

[homeschoolmom]

All schools, public and private, send out requests for money. That's not unique to FUS.

[Fides_et_Ratio]

[quote name='Brother Adam' date='Dec 29 2005, 10:00 AM']I'm not sure how you can know their intentions. I work next to executive staff, and I don't understand that to be their intentions, and some departments are going through the hiring process right now...What departments are you refering too?
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see jgirl's post... she pays better attention than I did on campus.

history... prof. fitzgerald is NOT a teacher.

need I mention a certain theology class where we watched Antonio Banderas play a "catholic" priest who leaves the priesthood to "worship God in his own, personal way" in a movie where they supposedly find the Body of Jesus and how the Vatican is portrayed as working with terroists, etc. to cover it up?

and there are other departments. ask around.

[jgirl]

[quote name='Brother Adam' date='Dec 29 2005, 07:47 AM']Then call and ask to be taken off the list. Every school has benefactors. That doesn't make the school greedy.
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They don't take you off the list. I tell the phoneathoners everytime they call to stop calling me. They still call.

My favorite was when we had the "optional" senior gift. We were asked to donate $20.03 to the rugby team for new bleachers. I refused saying that rugby wasn't worth my money (besides the class of 2002's senior gift was a large amount of money for new songbooks, and we see how well they used that gift...there still aren't songbooks). I gave my money to the French department seeing as the university thinks it's a useless program and refuses to fund it.

Representatives from the university called me twice over the summer of 2003. They first time, they were wondering where my $20.03 was, and the second time, they were pleading with me to reconsider not giving.

[homeschoolmom]

Well, you should probably just get used to that... any time you give a donation to a charity, you will be called again and again for more. Policital charities are worse than any university....

[jgirl]

[quote name='homeschoolmom' date='Dec 29 2005, 08:10 AM']Well, you should probably just get used to that... any time you give a donation to a charity, you will be called again and again for more. Policital charities are worse than any university....
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I hope they didn't see my tuition as a donation!

[franciscanheart]

Before changing my major I was looking seriously at FUS and Benedictine College (and had considered University of Dallas) but oddly enough, even knowing someone who attended Christendom, never considered Christendom. I couldnt tell ya why!

[jgirl]

This is part of my letter to Father Terry I sent a few months ago regarding their treatment of the professors. The whole letter was a lot longer.

[quote]What makes a professor great? I am inclined to think that the Administration of Franciscan University equates greatness with the number of students that the professor brings to the university. Perhaps greatness comes from the number of books a professor has published. Possibly teaching performance hinges upon the support of Division III athletics as well.

Apparently teaching performance has nothing to do with passion. I had a professor who won a faculty award who totally lacked passion. His lectures didn’t encourage me to do anything besides memorize the text in order to regurgitate the information on tests. I didn’t take the class because I was interested in the subject matter, but because they were required...

...When people ask me if I regret the decision I made to attend Franciscan University when I had a full scholarship to other public universities, I always say that I don’t regret it. I value the education I received, particularly my education from Dr. Williams. I always recommend the French program to anybody who expresses interest in Franciscan University because the caliber of the program is very high.

If I took 10 courses with a professor whose teaching is marked by incompetence and mediocrity as Dr. Max Bonilla has suggested, then I would have demanded a refund of my tuition money. I chose Steubenville because of its unique mission, and I stayed because my favorite professors truly embodied that mission.

David Lowenthal remarked that a liberal arts education is “aimed at affecting character, taste and intellect together, shaping the whole soul because the good life involved the whole soul.” By not only refusing to recognize a professor who truly adopted that as his teaching philosophy, but also attacking his teaching performance without evidence, it is evident that Franciscan University is moving away from its mission statement to provide its students with an education “rooted in long and proven tradition”

Furthermore, by making such claims against Dr. Williams, the university risks alienating its alumni. Nobody wants to support a school that promises a quality education at the beginning and then after the fact says that their coursework was marked with incompetence and mediocrity. I am personally insulted by such claims, and I expect that many of my fellow French students at Steubenville have similar thoughts.[/quote]

[Brother Adam]

jgirl, I've let a couple of very kind, caring people here know about your concerns.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Fides_et_Ratio' date='Dec 29 2005, 08:46 AM']Tuition is high enough. If they'd stop wasting money on re-doing things that aren't in need of being re-done, they'd be fine.
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I agree with that.

...as long as we agree that they need to redo the chapel...with a wrecking ball and a long, rectangular foundation...

There are a few things that could use renovation, but I'd much rather they just upgraded the wires in the halls rather than rebuilt the halls all together...and cut our tuition accordingly.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Fides_et_Ratio' date='Dec 29 2005, 09:03 AM']history... prof. fitzgerald is NOT a teacher.
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I'm getting nervous about my class with him this semester.

[Brother Adam]

[quote name='Raphael' date='Dec 29 2005, 11:22 AM']I agree with that.

...as long as we agree that they need to redo the chapel...with a wrecking ball and a long, rectangular foundation...

There are a few things that could use renovation, but I'd much rather they just upgraded the wires in the halls rather than rebuilt the halls all together...and cut our tuition accordingly.
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Your tuition doesn't pay for that stuff. wealthy people do.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Brother Adam' date='Dec 29 2005, 12:01 PM']Your tuition doesn't pay for that stuff. wealthy people do.
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Well, can the same wealthy people pay my tuition instead? I'm paying more each year for this education than I'll be making each year in the job I'm getting the degree for. :