Governors State University

Alumnus Male -- Class 2000

GSU is a university geared toward serious students. The experience is exactly what you make of it. I suggest that the students looking for a social life or other aspects of a "traditional" college experience look at a four year institution with a reputation as a "party" school. GSU is for students who actually want to learn while at college.

2nd Year Female -- Class 2002

Education Quality: A+, Campus Aesthetics: C

With the luminous exception of the extremely well-managed Performing Arts Center, whose only affiliation, thank goodness, is the fact that the facility is located at the university. Also included in this assessment are the majority of the adjunct faculty, and a portion of the regulars (constantly under siege from the administration), and possibly the most superb groundskeeper working at a university in the U.S.; other than these, there is NOTHING that comes to mind to recommmend GSU. If all you want is a degree, then perhaps GSU is for you. That is, of course, if you REALLY want to earn it the hard way; the ordeal will not likely be found by most students a task worthy of accomplishing. You see, the administration's main activity is to "find 100 ways' to take advantage of the students. They do this through the financial aid department, which awards 'x' dollars, and the student actually receives 'y' dollars(a lesser amount, of course); the business office, whose billing statements are an indecipherable model of warped and highly questionable accounting practices, wherein they bill students for the 'x' amount, even though it does not add up to 'y' with the most basic math; the alleged Student Life Services they charge ever-increasing fees for (with ever-diminshing returns), to provide lame-duck 'services'; and through the practice of hiring those wannabe doctoral candidates who will suck up sufficiently to 'earn' their tenure, then granting that tenure riding roughshod over the votes of the faculty senate, whether deservedly so or not. Furthering your descent into the Inferno, you will find the mostly useless tin badge police forces barely present, except for show, such as when large groups of the non-student public are in attendance; and of course, last but not least, an administration that is more corrupt than the boys at Enron. The difference is that the Enrom boys really WERE "the smartest guys in the room"; whereas, at GSU, those Ph.D.s who run the place are about as smart as snakes, and about as likely as reptiles to be cold-blooded in their view of the student body at large. This school is constantly crying 'Poor', when in fact they are using their connections to render the finances under their control to their own selfish ends. As my advice to prospective students, it is this: " Abandon hope all ye who enter here."

2nd Year Male -- Class 2005

Campus Aesthetics: A-, Education Quality: F