Dear President Thomas,
It is rewarding to see that your Masters Degree Programs are so successful that your graduate admissions office cannot even find the time to issue a courtesy pro forma "Sorry, we do not offer the type of program you are seeking. Best of luck in your continuing academic endeavors."
(Irony is not dead; but irony can be deadly.)
I phoned the graduate admissions office a few weeks back. The very pleasant person I talked with advised me that her boss, who could answer my question in re: an interdisciplinary masters degree program was recruiting in the Chicago area, but that she would leave for her my name and telephone number.
I continue to await her call, but have long since given up holding my breath.
I also sent an e-mail to the head of your admissions department. He may even have kept his copy of it. I suspect he was most unimpressed, but, once again, had not the simple courtesy to send a pro-forma "sorry, but we can't help" response.
I graduated WIU in 1973, one quarter early, and although I was nominated for Phi Beta Kappa, because of my early graduation, it seemed like a moot point.
My father is in the WIU Athletic Hall of Fame, having varsity lettered in four different sports - football, wrestling (which he also student-coached), boxing, and golf.
MANY of my friends and acquaintances have graduated from what I once considered to be as fine a school as any in the land, on the basis that ALL my teachers' doors were opened to me at any hour of the school day. ALL my teachers shared a genuine appreciation of my scholarship. And what is the heart and soul of the university, anyway, if not its professors?
I have spoken of these matters at great length with Dr Lenora Jean Daniels, PhD, who was blackballed from teaching a number of her specialty courses in Philadelphia, and who was a victim of the academic equivalent of genocide, the purging of all the socialist, anarchist, and liberal social science professors from the University of Wisconsin.
Apparently, WIU has chosen to pick its students to fit a certain preconceived mold, that will dovetail nicely with corporate interests.
Here's a news flash for you, sir:
Corporate interests and the college-aged youth of America are SO at odds with each other, that students, unable to get jobs in their fields (engineering, DP, CIS - those which have not been outsourced have been filled by the 250,000 academic admittees to the US from foreign lands who are willing to work for 50-65% of what American workers would find acceptable, thereby supressing the wages of American workers). The Occupy Movements are NOT going away any time soon, and, quite frankly, the irrelevance of degrees from Universities below the brand name recognition of the usual suspects - the Ivy Leagues, U of C, Stanford, MIT, to major law firms, investment banks, etc, etc, etc, is so transparent and apparent, that in the very near future, if not already, the salad days of universities blithely increasing their tuitions annually (yes, I am most assuredly aware of Western's guarantees in this arena), the better to fund their big athletic programs ever more generously, are going to be a thing of the past; and a dim past it has been.
While I actually expect no response whatsoever from you based on what I have so far written, the corporate stance of the university in these matters appears to be to play ostrich and hide its head in the sand, I now, like all good professors do, reiterate, and expand upon some earlier points:
I graduated WIU in 1973, one quarter early, and although I was nominated for Phi Beta Kappa, because of my early graduation, it seemed like a moot point.
My father is in the WIU Athletic Hall of Fame, having varsity lettered in four different sports - football, wrestling (which he also student-coached), boxing, and golf.
MANY of my friends and acquaintances have graduated from what I once considered to be as fine a school as any in the land, on the basis that ALL my teachers' doors were opened to me at any hour of the school day.
The grand children of our friends and acquaintances are getting about to be college age.
I fully intend to write EACH AND EVERY ONE to express my disappointment with YOU, with my alma mater, and with your graduate admissions staff. I will strongly encourage them to donate to other, FAR MORE WORTHY CAUSES - the world health organization, KIVA, the March of Dimes, to name a few that come to my mind.
I will encourage my father to do the same with his colleagues.
Why should an irrelevant university get our charitable donations?
AND irrelevant you are fast becoming, (as are most of this nation's colleges and universities, and as some of the major ones ALREADY ARE - Harvard, University of Chicago to name but two - which essentially brought us the IT bubble, the housing bubble, ENRON, etc, etc, etc).
There WILL (always) be a place for forward thinking universities with freedom of academic thought.
There is not a place for your university as it appears to me to be presently positioning itself.
Sincerely yours,
Mark Raymond Ganzer
