There are any number of things that I could put into this piece. If I included everything, you’d be reading until next Thursday. What I will talk about are the changes made by the Administration that, while well-intentioned, may not have been the best decisions. All of these policies were either implemented despite student opinion, or, in the style of Dr. Jackson, with no warning or genuine request for input at all.

Going back a little, we have the 4x4 curriculum reform and the laptop program. The 4x4 curriculum was meant to reform the class structure in such a way that all courses were worth four credits. Part of the goal was to eliminate the need for students to take more than 16 credits per semester in order to graduate. So classes were combined and classes were removed from required lists. Despite what was said by administrators, fewer classes equal to the same number of credits does not equal the same amount of knowledge. To boot, this policy left little room for students to retake a course, and extremely limited opportunity to begin graduate work early or to take extra classes to augment knowledge without an overload.

The laptop program was another brainchild of the administration–the “wave of the future.” Right. It required students to buy a $2000 computer, because it was part of their classes. Their introductory classes, at least laptops had not been integrated into any of the upper level courses when the policy was implemented. Friends of mine, who are teaching assistants, have had students in the past year or two who are not capable of solving a simple derivative or integral—numerically or conceptually—without Maple. Besides taking the emphasis off of understanding the theoretical concepts of classes like math and physics, the laptop computers are a distraction. If there is a lecture part of the course, chances are students spend it chatting over instant messenger or sending e-mail. “Wave of the future?” Maybe. A useful tool that can be used to demonstrate concepts to students? Definitely. Good for teaching students to understand concepts? No way.

In more recent history, we have the new commencement and graduate tuition policies. The Commencement decree, in a nutshell, says that unless you have completed all of your requirements by the end of your graduating semester, you aren’t permitted to walk in the ceremony. You have to petition the provost to do so. A rather sizable slice of the student population does not complete all requirements before their assigned graduation semester, be it due to co-op experience, taking time off to work so that they can pay for school, or retaking some classes because they didn’t do as well as they would have liked the first time around. This assigned graduation year is almost a bond between students, and many (myself included) consider that stroll across the stage the real symbol—next to the diploma, of course—that they have graduated, that they have accomplished something, and that the years of dealing with distrustful, unhelpful professors, incompetent offices, frustrating groups, and really hard work has been worth it. This new policy takes away that symbol. Why bother assigning a graduation year, creating that bond, building the anticipation of that climax, that feeling of closure, if it is just going to be taken away by this policy? I suppose that the designers of this policy feel that it doesn’t matter when a student walks, that the feeling is the same if you walk six months or a year after entering the real world. News flash: It isn’t.

The graduate tuition policy, while well-intentioned, is going to hurt a lot more than it will help. The ideals behind the policy are solid—that much I will admit. Fully funding graduate students is something that I believe should be done. But all graduate students should be funded in some way, not just the full-time ones. I am a self-funded student. I wanted to go to graduate school to further my education, to prove to myself that I could succeed. My funding was what the department could provide and was not guaranteed. But I knew that going in, and took out loans. I have been working nearly full time for the past three years to complete my degree. The current price of the graduate education allowed me to do that. Under the new plan, what I did will no longer be possible. And that is a horrible thing. I have been hired by a top environmental consulting firm to work on one of the largest environmental remediation projects in the history of this area because of my education and background. This policy will deny people like me—those who have the intelligence and ability, but are either late finding the motivation and drive, or are struggling through a major program that does not appeal to them—the opportunity to succeed in the areas that they want to and are capable of, all for the reason of money. It disgusts me.

I’m not going to speak any more about the repercussions of this policy that have been harped on. What I want to mention is something that I haven’t heard anything about, but really cannot be left out of the equation: What this policy will do to the undergraduate education here at RPI. It is known that departments fund their students through grant money. To obtain said funding, professors must write grant proposals–a significant number of grant proposals. The increased cost will force professors to spend more time finding money and less time teaching and actually educating their students … their undergraduate students. Some professors focus on research, some on teaching, while the truly talented manage to dedicate their time to both. But once this policy takes serious hold, there more than likely won’t be any professors who can afford to dedicate the time to care that their students learn. And that in and of itself is a crime.

RPI has earned a reputation as providing one of the best degrees in undergraduate engineering on the East Coast. They key word in that sentence is undergraduate. That reputation will die, or at the very least be extremely diminished, once this policy has been in place for any amount of time. It sickens me to see the original foundations the school was built on sacrificed because the powers that be believe that we have to be just like MIT. Would it really be that difficult to find a solution that preserves the uniqueness that is RPI?

A strong graduate program is important, and an excellent goal to strive for, but it should be done in such a way that the good things the school already has to offer are not destroyed. A plan that even risks undercutting the education of the undergraduate students in favor of the graduate students should not be a viable option. Both are important and necessary parts of a school that wants to call itself a “world-class institution.”

It is also necessary for a school that considers itself a “world class institution” to give a damn about its students. Yes, we are young, but we are not children that always need to be told what is best for us. Maybe we have a better idea than the administration in some areas, and maybe the administration is too wrapped up in its own goals to see a middle ground that may serve the needs of both populations. The students, the faculty and staff, and the Administration share the school. RPI would not be nearly as prestigious without the skills and knowledge taken by the students and applied in the real world. The students and faculty are why the Administration has a school to govern to begin with. Perhaps the reality of that concept has been lost. The things that I’ve observed over the eight years I’ve been here have told me that it probably has and it is not due to a lack of attempted communication on the part of the student government.

Please, watch what is being done and fight it if you don’t agree. Fight for the information, to know what is being forced on you without your knowledge, consent, or approval. At least try. Use The Poly, the student government, your professors, all of your resources. Apathy only tells administration that they can do whatever they want and that students won’t care—an attitude that may lead quickly to the belief that student opinions don’t matter even if they are expressed.

My younger brother is a freshman in high school and is considering RPI for a degree in civil engineering. I told my father not to send him here. The education that he’ll receive won’t be worth the $32,000 a year in tuition that it will most likely cost my dad to send him here in three years. The truly sad part about that is that my father also attended RPI and my other younger brother is currently a student here. Isn’t it sad when one family of legacies decides that the education provided is no longer worth the effort … or the money?

Having vision is necessary. But does it really need to be a necessary evil?

Erika Zamek